Vér heil dú óg !
Vil du freista å tala det gamle målet ?
Då må du røyna meg, og eg mun svara!

>--- In norse_course@..., keth@... wrote:
>> The only way to become fluent in another language is by living
>> in a country where they speak the language for a number of years.
>>
>> For this reason it is impossible to become fluent in Old Norse,
>> because it is a dead language. It is however possible to become
>> more or less fluent in modern Icelandic, and that is then the
>> next best choice.
>
>Heill ves þú Keth!
>
>My idea is to read ON sentences daily, grammar, etc...then proceed to
>an online e-zine about simple news, translated paragraphs and then
>years later converse in Icelandic and Old Icelandic forming a ON
>lanuage community.
>
>Besta,
>
>Anþanrikr

That sounds like a good idea.
Sounds a bit like what they did in Israel. As you probably know,
the Hebrew language was pretty much extinct in the 19th century.
But they managed to resusciate it, because enough people were
once again living together to form a community.

As I have experienced it, it is quite difficult to completely
separate in ones mind two languages that are very close.
Youngsters can often manage it, though seldom perfectly.
The older one gets, the more both languages start to assimilate
each others structures. (read: mix up)

It is much easier with languages that are farther apart,
such as e.g. English and Spanish, than for example American
English and British English.

There also is a gothic language group, where they already
made some efforts to make gothic into a workable language.
The problem with gothic is that its vocabulary is rather small.
Hence there is a need to invent new words for the words that
are missing from the dictionary one has been able to build.
These new words are called "neologisms" or something similar.
(neo-gothic?)
The problem is that it is very hard to find a system that everyone
agrees with. What do you for example call a car?
Do you simply use the American word, or do you make up a new gothic
word based upon gothic roots ?


The same with Old Norse. The best bet would then be to simply use
modern Icelandic, that has already gone through the long process
of adapting itself to modern times.

Listening to the Icelandic radio sounds like a good idea.
What about television ? The thing is that I already tried
to read an Icelandic newspaper. But I had to stop because
I did not have the time. It was also difficult to get tuned
into the events there, when I am not there myself and can also
participate in how people feel about things.

A group of non-Icelanders will also have a very hard time to
"pull each other up" to a level of proficiency. The ideal situation
is that you are are alone surrounded by only people who speak
the other language, so that you are forced to use the language in
your daily life.

Learning a thing means to interact with it.
But, as Werner Heisenberg showed, interacting with
a thing (or "measuring" it) also changes it.
Heraklit also said that you can't step into the same river twice.

Keth