Heilsan fagra Nicole!

Well, I'd go about it slightly more circumlocutorially,
because the "whither goest thou", to use a more old-fashioned
mode of expression, reminds me of that book title "Quo Vadis",
which I suspect derives from the Vulgate text:

" haec autem vobis ab initio non dixi quia vobiscum eram
at nunc vado ad eum qui me misit et nemo ex vobis
interrogat me quo vadis "

(But now I go my way to him that sent me; and none of you asketh me,
Whither goest thou?)

From there it is but a few short steps to the Icelandic Bible,
which gives me

" En nú fer ég til hans, sem sendi mig, og enginn yðar spyr mig:
,Hvert fer þú?' "

So there it is: a more old fashioned rendering of your sentence
as a genuine quote from an Icelandic text.


In fact, when seeing the suggested text that someone gave you,
I soon noted that its verb construction looked a lot like
the English way of saying it with the "are you" sequence in it.
As I see it, it ought to be the more straight-forward "Hvert fer þú?".

The Bible is really one of the best sources for finding correct
phrases in other languages, because it is very much like a
Rosetta Stone, the same text having been written in almost every
language that exists. As for the beautifull part, I'd go with
the "fagur" word, because that is the one I seem to recall as
used in the saga litterature. Hence we get

" Hvert fer þú, fagra? "

I hope that is satisfactory. As an afterthought, I see that I could
have written it like that right away (Older English also prefers
the direct indicative present mode "goeth thou" instead of the
now more fashionable "are you going". I guess it has something
to do with the English verbs having lost their suffixes/declination
endings, and so they use the present participle (going)
in order to repair some of the damage.

But the thing with old language forms is that you can never
be quite sure exactly what words they would have chosen,
because it is a dead language now. That is why I prefer
to find old text fragments, because that's the only way
you can be sure that someone actually would have said it
that way.

Best regards
Xigung
















--- In norse_course@yahoogroups.com, "Nicole Bovard"
<crystalunicornfarms@...> wrote:

>
> Hi! Thanks for replying. I did have someone else reply to me,

stating that

> Icelandic and Old Norse are similar enough that persons of the two

different

> languages could converse with one another. I asked for a

translation of

> "Where are you going, beautiful?" (which, of course, is modern

lingo) and

> came up with "Hvert ertu að fara, fallegar?" Does this seem close, or
> incorrect?
>
> Nicole
>