Heill Keth,

Þú reizt:

> Somebody wrote:
>
> "Við Haukr munum vega Eystein. Eysteinn er feigr. Vega munum við

hann."

>
> Here is what it says:
>
> Haukur and I will put roads through Eysteinn. Eysteinn is a loser.

Fight

> we shall with him.

Keth?!? Perhaps you're kidding there, but you didn't make it very
clear; if this is your real translation, take a look at the lesson
vocabularies again :)

> Here is how I think it should be in modern Icelandic:
>
> Við Haukur munum vega Eystein. Eysteinn er feigur. Vega munum að

honum.

Not really. First off, the whole vocabulary and style of it is very
archaic, and simplistic at the same time; we'd say (for the same
meaning):

"Við Haukur ætlum að drepa hann Eystein. Eysteinn verður drepinn. Við
ætlum að drepa hann."

(still very simplistic style)

> And here is how I think it should be in Old Norse:
>
> Vit Haukr munum vega Eystein. Eysteinn er feigr. Vega munum at

honum.

We prefer "hánum", though that's really just a question of how old
forms we're using. But "Vega munum at honum/hánum." is a rather fishy
sentence; "Vit munum vega hann." is normal. "Vega at" is also not the
same thing as just "vega"; "vega at" is a phrasal verb that
means "attempt to kill, attack", not simply "kill".

> (The original message was evidently some kind of mixture of modern

Icel. and Old

> Norse. I have also put in an error or two, just to make it

interesting :)

Keth, remember what I told you about less statement-like sentences?
You may have been joking, but in either case, your uncertainty or
your joke is not clear. Even our modernistic Old Norse will usually
be better and more correct than your sentences (at your current skill
level), no offence meant :)

> A difficulty with my example is that we now know that at Cæsar's

time

> the Romans raher DID pronounce the æ (=ae) as a diphtong. At least,
> that is what Wheelock is saying, (3rd edition, page xxxii)
> who has the 'ae' in 'carae' and 'sapae' as the "ai" in "aisle".
> But it is my impression that by the 12th century the diptong
> had disappeared, and become replaced by the monophtong "æ".
> This is, however, something I do not know, only something I assume.
> But it must have changed some time, since the Latin taught in
> 19th century schools used the "æ" as monophtong.

The Classical Latin (i.e. Cæsar's language) pronunciation of "æ" was
[Ai]; the Late Latin (alias Vulgar Latin) diphthong become a long
monopthong [E:]. This would have happened sometime by the 3rd century
AD, AFAIK.

The exact same development happened in Greek, where Classical
Greek's "ai", pronounced [Ai], became [E:] in Koine Greek (alias New
Testament Greek, roughly contemporary with Vulgar Latin).

And then we have the reverse development from Old Icelandic to MI: OI
[E:] (into which 'oe' [9:] had merged) diphthongized ("split") into
[Ai], which is the modern value.

This relationship simply depicts a very common pattern of development
in human languages, not only in this specific diphthong, but in
diphthongs and monophthongs in general.

> At least to me, such tables are extremely helpful, since I do not
> remember the exact meaning of Sampa or Pot(?) -- I just don't use it
> often enough for that. (But I will look at it Óskar, if I only had
> some book that lists the symbols)

Pot? There's IPA and SAMPA (essentially the same thing). I'll still
tell you that you should learn to use them, because tables like those
are often inaccurate without you having a chance to know it. I admit
though, that inaccurate authors are just as prone to use inaccurate
IPA... but if you can read it, at least you can spot the authors
faults by comparing the transcriptions to the approximations, which
practically leaves you immune to the inaccuracies.

Óskar