Dear List! I was lucky enough to lay my hands upon
a copy of "The third grammatical treatise", an
ancient Icelandic treatise on grammar, that was written
"Olafr Þordarsson Hvitaskald" in the 13th century.

The book does look a bit difficult, but at the same time
also extremely interesting! The author evidently knows
a great deal about Latin Grammar, and now writes a treatise
about the grammar of his contemporary Icelandic language,
where he carries over many of the same ideas. I have the
Icelandic text with a German paralell translation. But
right now I'd like to share one of the sections with you,
that I will attempt to translate to English. The section's
title is "Here begins soloecism". The author then goes on
to explain the meaning of this term as follows:

"SOLOECISM is an error in the composition of the language,
committed against the rules of correct usage [of the language/
correct sentences]. Soloecism arises in two or more parts
[of language]. Barbarism, however, appears in a word, as
has been explained above. [The name] Soloecism derives from
the castle, that was once called Soloi, but is now called
Pentapolis. The people of this town went to Athens in Greece,
in order to learn the language there, and they corrupted
every word that was spoken with a false pronounciation,
and the Greeks called this error of speech SOLOECISMUS, after
the town Soloe and CISMUS, which is the 'cutting apart' or
'tearing up' in our language, because it cuts apart [interrupts]
the parts of language, when it corrupts the languages."

That is it -- just to give you a taste of what the book is like.
In the above, I have translated mostly after the German text,
which was translated from ancient Icelandic by Th.Krømmelbein.
In consequence, the translation is likely to be inexact here
and there (two consecutive translations), but it does give
a good idea what the text is all about. What I would like to
do next -- hoping that the listmanagement will wellcome it --
is to type up the original Icelandic text, because I think
it will afford us with an excellent opportunity of reading
a few sentences in ancient Icelandic. And I thought it might
be of especial interest to this group to read a text whose
subject is grammar -- because that is after all the subject
we are trying to learn.

I chose to present an English translation first, since the
Icelandic text would be quite difficult to read without the
aid of a paralell translation.

Here is the 1st Icelandic sentence of the above section:

"Soloecismus er lavstr isamansettv mali gær imoti reglvm rettra
malsgreina, ok verðr soloecismus itueim p@... eða fleirum."

-- just to give a taste.

(the text is unnormalized)

words:
er = vb. is
saman settu = com-position
mali = máli = language (dat. sg. of mál)
gær = from "to do"?
imoti = í móti = against
lavstr = l@... = error
reglvm = reglum = dat. pl. of "rule"
rettr = adj. right/correct
grein = branch
verðr = 3rd. sg. pres. ind. of verða = to become
eða = conj. or
fleiri = adj. more
itueim = í tveim = in two
(I'm not sure about all details, and some of my renderings
may indeed be in error. I hope you still enjoy it!)


With best regards
Keth


P.S. The 3rd grammatical treatise is also interesting
because it has lots of stuff about runes!