Thank you Haukur for looking at my attemt at writing ON!
It is very useful to have someone from Iceland weed out
the worst mistakes and misconceptions.

I hope you don't mind if I give some further comments,
since everything is far from obvious to me:

>Keth is writing in ON again.
>I'll try and respond.

I feel flattered by your statement "K. is writing",
since you might equally well have said "K. is trying to write",
which is actually the truth as far as I am concerned.
:)
The problem, as I was writing to you, is that I lack a LOGICAL
vocabulary. That is, such structures as "If, then", "Therefore", etc..
Also, I sense a lack of conversational phrases. It is also clear
why it is like that. It is because most of the saga stuff is merely
DESCRIPTIVE, i.e. "The man goes to this place or that place"
"He went there yesterday", "He hits his enemey over the head with
a svord" (Hann vegar ulfrinn! ;)

My suggestion is that we draw up (together) a list of conversational PIECES.
And also LOGICAL ones. this could be a COLLECTION of maybe a HUNDRED
PHRASES or so. Also, whenever we discover another phrase that proves
useful in conversation, we can add it to the collection.

>
>> Heill Haukr!
>>
>> Ek man skóladagarnir þá vér allr lærðum at benda maðr útan bókar:
>> maðr manns manni mann, menn manna mo,nnum menn.
>
>Corrections:
>
>skóladagarnir -> skóladagana (accusative)

Hm.. I thought it worked like this:

dagr m. -> acc. pl. "daga".
For the postfixed definitive article acc. pl. m. I have "-ina",
which gives "daga" + "-ina" = "dagaina" -> "dagana".
Great Jupiter, you are right! If I only do it carefully (with help
from teacher) I get the same answer as he. A bit irritating it is,
that in modern norwegian (nynorsk) it would also have been "dagane"!
:) And so the correct answer was actually much closer to home than
I thought. (in this case)

>allr -> allir (plural)

This goes like the standard example of adjectives (positive) I suppose:
spakr, spaks, spo,kum, spakan; spakir, spakra, spo,kum, spaka. (m/sg;pl/NGDA)
"allr" after the same pattern does indeed give m. pl. nom. "allir".
(please correct the logic I use, if you find fault with it)
BUT: Let us say it was a mixed shool class I went to. (it was)
Wouldn't it then have been better to use the neutrum bending
(=beyging/inflection) of spakr as model? In that case spakr becomes
"spo,k" in the neutrum plural nominative case, and likewise allr
becomes "o,ll"?

>Glossary:
>
>muna + acc = remember
>læra, læri = learn
>skóli, skóla, skólar m = school
>dagr, dags, dagar m = day
>beygja, beygi = decline (MI of course)
>útan = without
>bók, bókar, boekr f = book
>(without book = by heart)
>
>(Your accusative plural of "dagr"
>was Faroean there, Keth:)

That is very possible! (did you get yourself a copy of Lockwood btw?)
I also had a problem finding the ON word for "lesson", and so I performed
the *dirty trick* of merely inserting the corresponding LATIN word
(=lectiones = plural accusative, I think..)

>
>
>> Ef konungr bendisk á sama hátt, svo heitir þat:
>> konungr konungs konungi konung,
>> konungar konunga konungum konunga.
>
>á sama hátt = in the same way
>
>svo -> svá (the first is MI)
>
>
>> En skip er hvorugkyn (neutrum), ok þat er mik óvissari:
>> skip, skips, skipi, skip; skip, skipa, skipom, skip.
>
>hvorugkyn -> hvárugkyn (but the word is MI, of course)

Yes, I had problems finding the Old Norse word for the grammatical
NEUTRUM. All in all, that is a great problem, to find genuine ON
words for the various ABSTRACT terms that have their origin in the
typical MEDIEVAL CURRICULA.

Thanks for the tip "hvárug" btw.
I then find the ON word "hvárugr" with somewhat unclear meaning
as "any" or "none". This word also has several alternative forms as
hvárgi/hvárgin/hvárigr/hvárugr, and is classified as pronoun.
It's declination then ought to be as follows:

m: hvárugr hvárugs hvárugum hvárugan; hvárugir hvárugra hvárugum hváruga;
f: hvárug hvárugrar hvárugri hváruga; hvárugar hvárugra hvárugum hvárugar;
n: hvárugt hvárugs hvárugu hvárugt; hvárug hvárugra hvárugum hvárug;

(Here I slavishly followed the model of the strong adjective in positive.
But the real forms seem to deviate somewhat, such as the frequent dropping
of the u.) In the combination hvárugr + kyn n., I'd expect the nominative
singular neutrum form of hvárugr, i.e. according to the above scheme hvárugt,
hence "hvárugtkyn". But the dictionary says the documented nom. sg. neut.
form is actually "hvár(t)ki", which would give us the ON form "hvár(t)kikyn"(?)
Any way, the above just shows how variable the old language seems to be
and how difficult it is to find simple schemes.

>mik -> mér (more unsure _to_ me)
>óvissari -> óvissara (it's an adverb)

To recapitulate the sentence in corrected form:

En skip er hvárugkyn, ok þat er mér óvissara:
skip, skips, skipi, skip; skip, skipa, skipum, skip.

Here I seem to have a misconception: For I thought that in sentences
of the type <Noun = A>, example "The house is green",
the word "green" is an adjective. (Húsit er grönt)
And that is because you can *also* say "the green house"
(="gröna husit" - adjective 'grönr' follows the weak scheme here).
Now, by analogy you can say "The weather is uncertain" as well as
"The uncertain weather", and "uncertain" is an adjective, just
like "green" was in the previous example.
("veðr er óvist/úvíst" vs. "óvisa/úvísa veðrit" or "hitt óvisa/úvísa veðr")

Here perhaps some explanatory remarks to the English reader:
"I am certain of something" -> Icel. "eg er viss um eitthvað".
Then take the 3 degrees:

certain, more certain, most certain.

viss, meira viss, mest viss. (Icelandic)

or: viss, vissari, vissastur (better)
also: óviss, óvissari, óvissastur (the 3 degrees of uncertain)

In Old Norse this ought to be "víss, vísari, vísastr".
And then by analogy "úvíss, úvisari, úvisastr".
(I think the double s is only in the masculine.
Feminine and neuter ought to be vís and víst. Do you agree?)

Thus, if we take the middle degree (=comparative), i.e. English "more
uncertain", we shall have the comparative "úvisari", which gives
the neuter nominative singular form "úvisara". (in the comparative
the adjectives follow the weak declination only) Thus, the corrected
sentence assumes the final ON form:

En skip er hvárugkyn, ok þat er mér úvísara:
skip, skips, skipi, skip; skip, skipa, skipum, skip.

(okay, I have now tried to go through it carefully, minding all the
details that I am aware of. And again you were right! except that I think
I misled you by quoting a MI form óviss, whereas ON is úvíss - I think(?))

>Your declension is correct although we use
>another order for the cases and normalise
>to "skipum" rather than "skipom".
>
>
>> Var þat rétt?
>
>Svá er.
>
>
>> Ok nú hef ek tilmæli sem nóg mun gjeðast ykkr Óskari vel:
>> Ek myndi mjo,k gjarna hafa sét *lectiones* ykkar skrifaðar á
>> norr¦nni eða íslenzkri tungu!
>
>gjeðast -> geðjast

Yes, of course!
But I must confess I found this a difficult verb.
The dictionaries I consulted had rather few examples of its use,
and at first I had trouble determining the subject of the sentence.

"geðjast einhverjum vel" = to like someone well.

This is a funny verb, because it has *only* a reflexive form.
My dictionary lists it as "geðjast", but I suppose this is
the same as "geðjask"? If I then compare with the given example
of the reflexive declination of telja (in O.E.Haugen), I see
that the form "teljask" belongs to the 3rd person plural present
indicative declination and can be seen as a contraction of
"[þeir] telja sik" (=they count themselves) --> "teljask".
By analogy "geðjask" should also have an implied "they" as
subject. I then thought that this must be the unseen "it"
that is the subject when we say "it rains". So instead of saying
(in Icelandic or Old Norse), "I feel good about someone or something",
you rather say "it feels good about someone or something" -- or
something to that effect. And by the same token you don't say
"I like you", but "it likes you", the "it" being something inside
-- your "mood" as it were. "My mood likes you", "it likes you"
-- "something inside me responds positively towards you" --
"good feelings are generated inside of me, by the "it" that is
responsible for generating emotions". In the same way there is
a neuter "it" subject that generates the weather. By analogy:
Good weather outside = good mood inside.
:)

>
>tilmæli, tilmælis, tilmæli n = suggestion
>gjarna = gladly
>hafa sét = have seen
>norroen tunga = Norse tongue
>
>It would be a lot of extra work to translate
>the course to Icelandic:)

I know. I'll bet it is already a lot of work. But it would still be extremely
useful to have a parallel Icelandic version. Maybe not all the long
explanations that are intended for those who have English as starting point.
But maybe only short comments and explanations/definitions/captions
that accompany the info itself, as it occurs in the various tables and lists
that you are writing. Because that would give us (or at least me) valuable
extra training in the icelandic terminology itself. Then I could also begin
to think ABOUT Old Norse grammar IN the same language (Old Norse or Icelandic)
and that would be a very GREAT advantage. The point is, I think, that even if
another language is needed as springboard, one should try to free oneself
from the springboard as soon as possible. Otherwise we'll linger too long
within the realm of English, and have only OCCASIONAL excursions into
OLD NORSE, whereas the goal ought to be to USE Old Norse as much as possible
and as early as possible.

Kveðja,
Ketill