I recently received a letter from one of
the course's most active students in which
it* stated that it would leave the list to
those who knew what they were talking about
in the future.
This is not good:) I am afraid that some of
you may have been scared by such things as
our and Keth's (and I do think Keth would be
the first person to state that he _doesn't_
know what he's talking about:) discussion of
Icelandic phonology, comparison between German
and Icelandic, the meaning of the word "ben" etc.
Let me assure you that none of those discussions
were important or remarkable. You can rest assured
that you didn't miss anything if you didn't spend
countless hours diving into them. Your time is much
better spent on the actual course materials.
A clarification of the purpose of this list will
be in order. First of all I must say (even though
it has been stated before) that _the list is not
the course_. The course consists of the homepage
and the files in the file section of this yahoogroup.
This list is only intended as a _supplement_ to the
course.
That said, discussion such as I mentioned above,
while on topic, are not what the list was intended
for. The idea was that students could post questions,
feedback and requests for help here. Even (and perhaps
especially) if you're stuck on lesson one and can't
figure out why you say "Óláfr er konungr." and not
"*Óláfr er konung." you have every right and reason
to post here.
I will summarise my points:
1. If you see scary topics on this list and you have
no idea what people are talking about DON'T PANIC!
It's probably irrelevant to you and you can just as
well delete the messages unread.
2. If you have any questions, no matter how basic,
then bring them on! No-one will make fun of you,
we're here to help.
Best regards,
Haukur
* Gender not disclosed
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