On Wed, Feb 07, 2001 at 10:22:24AM -0800, Keth wrote:
Hi Keth,

I think people learn very differently. I find the stuff you post to be
"interesting", but hard to understand. Plus, if I'm remembering right,
rather well supplied with errors. Net result: I haven't been making it
a priority to attempt to translate your attempts at Icelandic. (And why
is it that you never seem to use vocabulary from the course, but always
words the other students have probably never seen?)

Now that's just my reaction, as one of your fellow students. (And I may
be misremembering who posted what ... I think it was you who posted the
comments about schools and students, with no english interpretation ....
I never did figure out what you were saying, but on the other hand I
didn't try very hard.)

> Personally, I would have liked to be on a list where
> you receive a "daily portion" (of Old Norse).
> Because I think that is the way to learn a language.
> An Italian girl I met on the net (where is she?
> did any one tell her about the course?) Had learned
> both Swedish, Dutch and German by using the internet.
> And she was only 17 years old!
>
> I think the same thing could be possible with Old
> Norse.

Daily portions would be fine ... but from my point of view as a fellow
student, I would prefer daily portions that (a) are correct and (b) that
build on what I already know.

> I think that it is okay to present stuff that
> people already know. That is because languages are
> learnt by constant repetition of things you already
> know - interspersed by a small amount of new things.
>
> It is of course a problem if everyone were to shift
> to the "let's talk ON" mode all of a sudden, because
> everyone would then make lots of errors and no one
> would know what was right.

Yes, can you imagine the mess I'd make if I tried posting these
comments in Icelandic (old or modern)? My vocabulary is far too
limited. And even if I succeeded perfectly, who here would understand
me? Probably only the native Icelandic speakers ...i.e. our teachers.

Yet I could post simple sentences ... drawn from the vocabulary and
grammar I've learned so far ... and probably have them be mostly correct.
But this would be things like: "I am called Arlie." Nothing too complex.
Not much use for interesting conversations.

> That is why I thought up
> the idea of phrases. Because if communication
> happens by play upon a limited but sufficient
> set op phrases, then you get the effect of constant
> repetition for free. And you don't get many errors
> either, because everybody can check their words
> against a common list of phrases. That would also
> approximate the way childeren learn, because they
> have good memories, and learn by storing phrases.
> They don't worry about grammatical detail. That
> comes later, after they already know how to
> communicate
> about simple things.

I don't see the point of phrases. I mean, suppose I know the words
(and declensions/conjugations) for "food", "porridge", "fish", "cheese",
"meat" along with "eat", "hunt", "cook", "want", and "hungry". With these,
I can say a number of things. Whereas with phrases, I might have "I am
hungry","You cook porridge","Olaf has some cheese", etc. ... I wouldn't
be able to say anywhere near as much.

> And often it is accidental things that cause you to
> learn best. For example when you wrote Reykjavíkur
> and I reacted by calling it "nominative", but you
> corrected me by saying that it was a genitive
> (because vík is a femininum), then that's an example
> of us accidentally stumbling onto something that
> cased me to learn something -- yes, an example of
> some good teaching. All honour to you for that!

We will get to the genitive case ... and feminine nouns ... reasonably soon.
(So says the proofreader, who sees lessons before they are released to the
list.)

> And what does the pupil do? He takes this tiny little
> gem to the library, and there tries to expand upon
> his newly acquired knowledge. And so he looks up
> ON vík, verifies it is fem. and sees that its gen.
> is víkr, and so is its plural. From there he goes
> to a grammar book and looks for the relevant model
> noun. And indeed, he finds the right(?) scheme under
> "eik" f. (oak), which has the following pattern
> of declension. (See in the back of Geir T. Zoëga's
> dictionary, where there are tables of noun
> declensions).
> The so called 3rd Declension of feminine nouns is
> as follows:
>
> SING.
> NOM. eik
> GEN. eik-ar
> DAT. eik
> ACC: eik
> PLUR.
> NOM. eik-r
> GEN. eik-a
> DAT. eik-um
> ACC. eik-r
>
> >From that I'd say that vík follows the same pattern.
> But I don't *know* this without actually checking
> with other books that may be more complete. But who
> knows, I was told by someone far up in the ON business
> that Zoëga's ON-english dictionary is actually quite
> good. And judging from that, it would appear that
> there is some chance that his noun-tables are complete
> enough to cover the case of vík, which isn't an
> uncommon word. (víking!).
>
> So, I therefore *propose* the following *solution* :)
> vík, víkr, vík, vík; víkr, víka, víkum, víkr.
> (s;p/N,G,D,A)
> But I will then be dependent on the teachers goodwill,
> if he actually has time to answer my question.
> The question is:
> "did I use the right kind of tools?"
> "did I use the right kind of logic"
> "was the answer correct?"
> "where did it go wrong?"

I'll let one of the teachers comment, except to say that this looks
strange to me. It could be what Barnes calls a "strong feminine" ... but
in that case, I'd have expected víkar (or perhaps víkir) where you have víkr.
But perhaps I've missed some rule here.

> The goal then is - to be able to decline any ON
> noun ........ a distant asymptotic goal.

Not that distant, really. And surely not asymptotic.

--
Arlie

(Arlie Stephens arlie@...)