At 6:37:50 PM on Tuesday, October 27, 2009, Edgar Widlund
wrote:

> Hi People,

> In lesson 8 the text gives the declension of the
> pronoun-Hinn(the other) where it lists the accusative
> singular as hinn which is the same as the nominative
> singular.I would at first think it might be hinan but then
> I thought it might also be an irregularity in the
> declension. Could anyone enlighten me on this?

The pronominal declensions are a little different from the
adjectival declension; this difference goes back to
Proto-Germanic and further to Proto-Indo-European. In this
word the accusative was not always identical to the
nominative: an earlier stage of the accusative is seen in
the phrase <halli hino> 'this stone' (accusative) on the
Strøm whetstone (ca. 600 CE). It was never what you'd
expect on the basis of the adjectival declensions, though.

> In reading people's translations of the sagas I try to
> look up unfamiliar words since of course my vocabulary is
> limited.In doing so I find that I can't seem to find
> numerous words in the dictionaries. I imagine I am looking
> in the wrong places.I am missing something and would
> appreciate any suggestions.

One problem is that the version of Njála that's being posted
uses modern Icelandic spellings, which differ somewhat from
the normalized Old Icelandic forms found in such
dictionaries as Zoëga and Cleasby & Vigfusson. For
instance, OIc. <á> often appears as modern <o>, as in
<hvort> for OIc. <hvárt>.

Another possible source of difficulty is the fact that
different inflectional forms don't always have the same
root vowel. For instance, the nominative singular feminine
of <langr> 'long' is <löng>, because in Proto-Norse the nom.
sing. fem. was *langu: the *-u of the second syllable caused
what is known as u-umlaut or back umlaut, changing the *a to
/ö/ before it was lost. The tables of irregular verbal and
nominal forms at the back of Zoëga are extremely useful in
dealing with this problem.

Brian