> I will be starting lesson 9 this weekend.
> I had done the number lesson in April and
> posted a big long "completion" of the story
> about our holy Olaf at that time. This little
> ditty spawned a great many questions, in
> my mind alone - it would seem, about V2 order
> and inverted order. To my thinking, questions
> of this nature are important and are dealt
> with early on in, for example, the German
> textbook that I have used. Perhaps the simple
> word order rules adopted for modern German
> (as known to me) cannot be replicated for
> ON. It would be of considerable interest, to
> me, if you, or anyone else - for that matter,
> could say around 20 or 25 words on the subject.

Yes, of course word order (syntax) should be taught
very early on and of course it's a very important
part of a language. It's not you, it's me. For all
the grammar I've learnt, in school and out of it, I
have only a very cursory knowledge of this particular
aspect.

If I could write a 25 words clarification of Icelandic
word order I'd certainly do so. I just don't know enough
as it is. I can tell you if a given sentence is right or
not but I have trouble expressing exactly what may be
wrong with it. Maybe this really is horribly complicated
and you have to learn all sorts of rules for all sorts of
phrases - but I suspect that it really isn't any worse
than the German rules, if expressed clearly.

The three problems people seem to be having:

1. The infamous V2 rule in its various manifestations.

2. Subordinate clauses

3. Trying to hard to make the ON WO different from the English one.
This is probably my fault. In trying to emphasize early on that WO
was considerably more free in ON than English it was easy to obscure
the fact that, very often, the WO is quite similar in the two languages.

So, what I'm saying is that I should learn a bit more about syntax
and then, hopefully, I'll be able to be more helpful. :)

- - -

Nevertheless, let's look at a problem or two.
How about IF clauses?

There's one type that exactly mirrors an English structure:

Úlfrinn deyr ef Óláfr vegr hann.
The wolf dies if Olaf kills it.

In this case the English word order is by far the most natural ON one.

Then there are the IF-THEN clauses which might be a bit more difficult:

Ef Óláfr vegr úlfinn þá deyr úlfrinn.
If Olaf kills the wolf then dies the wolf.

The last clause absolutely has to have the verb before the noun.

Let me think about the rest some more.


> I must mention one more thing:
> How did you get
> "I stand against age so I will not become old"
> from
> "stend ek gegn aldi svát gamlan mun ek verða"
> (which should be
> "stend ek gegn aldri svát gamall mun ek verða").
> Where did I stutter when I meant to say
> "I stand against age so that old I will become"?

Sorry, I saw a negative that wasn't there

:)

Kveðja,
Haukur