I am a beginner, and what I need is a computer file or
cassette that tells me audibly how to pronounce this
stuff. I find the written pronunciation guides in the
books to be inadequate. I use AN INTRODUCTION TO OLD
NORSE by E. V. Gordon. Any suggestions?

StaveRunner

___________________________________________
--- Arlie Stephens <arlie@...> wrote:

> What do people want from this list? Can it be more
> useful than just a place
> to ask questions when you find yourself stumped on
> some translation?
>
> Well, one thing I think we could do is work on
> things in parallel. That is,
> have everyone interested working on the same
> translation at the same time,
> and discussing their results and progress. The
> advantage here is that you
> get feedback on your efforts, without needing to
> have someone more experienced
> available to act as teacher, and overloaded with the
> task of correcting
> the exercises of many students. And you get to see
> others' answers, and
> think about whether you like their approach better.
> (Since there are generally
> several options in translating anything.)
>
> The problem, of course, is finding an accessible
> text to work on. It should
> be something reasonably accessible to people with
> fairly little ON background;
> ideally, simply having finished the already
> completed lessons. It shouldn't
> be too well known, lest we know what to expect
> already, and "translate" based
> on that expectation. And there should be
> translations available, so when
> we do get stumped (or simply think we've translated
> a passage successfully),
> we can find out how someone with more experience
> would have translated it.
>
> For me personally, Hrei�ar's ��ttr meets these
> requirements. The ON text is
> available from the Viking Society in Anthony
> Faulkes' "Two Icelandic Stories",
> complete with a vocabulary list. There's a
> translation available in Penguin's
> "Hrafnkel's Saga and Other Stories" by Hermann
> P�lsson. The prose is fairly
> simple, and it's obscure enough that the average
> person interested in ON
> doesn't have it already half memorized.
>
> On the bad side, I don't see an online source of
> this particular story. (I'm
> not sure what resources people have.) Personally, I
> like the Viking Society
> publications better than online texts, because of
> the glossaries included;
> however that's less important now with Zoega's
> dictionary available online.
>
> Would other people find it useful to work on
> translating this in parallel,
> all working at a similar pace and posting results?
> Would it also help to have
> each week's portion of ON posted to the list at the
> beginning of the week?
> (Or would people mostly rather just get the printed
> version?) Would a different
> text be better, perhaps something already available
> on line? (If so, what?
> My vote would be to avoid poetry, and stick with
> fairly easy writing; other
> than that, I'm pretty flexible.) What sort of pace
> makes sense?
>
> --
> Arlie
>
> (Arlie Stephens
> arlie@...)
>

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