Hi Keth,

On Wed, Jun 06, 2001 at 05:43:55PM -0000, keth@... wrote:

> I looked through some saga texts. But I felt many of the
> sentences were too easy. Here is one that is a little bit
> more difficult than average. But NOTE : I think it is best
> if you do not use a dictionary. (that's cheating)
> Okay, here is the sentence :

Right off the face of it, if this is a single sentence, it's way
too hard. IMO, anyway. Far too long for a single sentence.

It's also spelled in an interesting manner. Not one of the normalized
spellings I've seen. In particular, I see a lot of instances of V where
the word seems to me to require U. You've also got some special character
apparantly being represented by the english comma (,) If you are going to
use transliterations like this, please as a minimum provide a transliteration
key. (I see the comma always after o; is this your transliteration of the
o-with-tail, more commonly represented as o-with-2-dots?)

> Her verða skiot vm skipti, þilik
> sem grimm hrið kiemi moti bliðv solskini,
> eðr þvert veðr kiemi at skipi siglanda aaðr
> goðan byr; ok betr maa hon nv kallaz
> Severa enn Serena; þviat skirleikinn
> kastaði hon, þviat hon tekr ser þann
> vargham, at her aa ofan skemmir hon hann
> með sva fo,llnum orðum: "Se her," segir
> hon, "leiðr skaalkr ok full farri! hvilikr
> þv vart, ok huersv þu drott þinn flatan
> fot v syniv vt af þinv moðvr hvsi, meðan
> þv kvnner æigi sva mickla hoftyft, at þv
> me,ttir þer skamm laust mat [at munni
> bera hia o,ðrv goðv folki. Ok nu i samri
> stvnd verð vti, vaandr þorari! af þvisa
> herbergi með o,llvm þeim fo,ntvm ok ribb-
> alldvm, er þv drott her inn, sva framt
> sem þv villt v skemðr vera!"
>
> Please read it carefully 2 or 3 times,
> and make up a list of the words you
> are unsure about. Maybe you can also
> state what you *think* this is all
> about.
>
> (that way we can find out what the right level is)

Hmmm... I'm getting approx 1 word in 3. That's without a dictionary.
And without doing too much compensation for your odd transcription
(e.g. "mickla" has letters that don't occur in OI; I suspect "sva"
should be "svá" ... both _might_ be words I know with unusual
transcriptions, or might be some other word that I'm not familiar
with.)

Anyway, this is well beyond my _reading_ level, probably within my
_translating_ level (with dictionary). (There's a big difference.)

--
Arlie

(Arlie Stephens arlie@...)