Thanks Brian =)

--- In norse_course@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott" <bm.brian@...> wrote:
>
> At 7:20:51 AM on Monday, January 9, 2012, Hrafn wrote:
>
> > I am doing so research on nasales in old norse, and of
> > course i am using "Fyrsta MálfrÅ"ðiritgerðin". One thing
> > which i cant understand is the following phrase "Þriggja
> > syna austr mun ek þér sẏna."
>
> <Þriggja syna austr mun ek þér sẏna>, but both <y>'s are
> actually long. In other words, the first <syna> is <sýna>,
> and the second is the same but with a nasalized <ý>.
>
> The third word is <austr> 'bilgewater'; the <-r> is part of
> the root (as can be seen from the genitives <austrs> and
> <austrar>), so <austr> can be either nominative or
> accusative. Here it's accusative, the object of <sýna> 'to
> show'. <Þriggja> is the genitive, so it's 'I will show you
> bilgewater of three <sýna>', and <sýna> must be a genitive
> plural. Unless we're dealing with a word that is not in
> Cleasby & Vigfusson, Zoëga, Fritzner, or de Vries, this
> could be either <sýn> and <sýni>. Unfortunately, none of
> the senses given by any of these sources for either word
> really fits the context.
>
> Einar Haugen translated the sentence as 'I shall show you
> bilgewater three laps deep'. I'm guessing that 'laps' here
> refers to the overlaps of adjacent strakes forming the sides
> of a Viking ship's hull, so that it would be bilgewater
> three strakes deep, but I've no idea where this
> interpretation of <sýna> comes from; perhaps it's a
> technical term too rare to have made it into the standard
> dictionaries. At any rate, without a clear idea of what
> this word is, I'm not willing to guess why the vowel wasn't
> nasalized.
>
> Brian
>