I want to share a bit of what I'm up to regarding my study of ON. I've been
wanting to do something like this for most of my life. Unfortunately I
didn't get a very good formal education, especially regarding the field of
language.* I've had to come up with my own way of approaching things such as
learning ON. For me, language is something of a chicken and egg problem.
It's meaningless to try and Learn a bunch of grammar rules if I don't have a
feel for the language. It is equally useless to try and understand a
language without some concept of its grammar. I therefore find myself
jumping back and forth between formal study and direct exposure.

My current project is to create a web site which breaks down the Norse
lexicon into functional categories and shows the morphology of all the HEAD
FORMS (The words before their morphed. <(-:}). Here is the current state of
that project:

http://members.bellatlantic.net/~hattons/norse/grammar/outline-frameset.html

There's a lot more to be done in this regard. I'm currently working on
converting the whole indexing page into javascript(yet another language). A
while back, I brought up the idea of a grammatical database. My real purpose
in doing so was to get people to think about the data structures involved
rather than to encourage them to build the actual database. I do believe
such a database would be useful, and should start with a digitized form of
Zoega's dictionary.

I don't want to get the list too bogged down in a discussion of this subject.
I just want to share with others how I am thinking about the task of
learning ON.

I also wanted to point to my humble and very incomplete project. What
currently exists is simply my transcription of the tables in Gordon's section
on nouns. If someone feels like proofing my work, I would appreciate it. I
know there are a few issues such as the OE-Ligature, that are debatable. I'm
trying to avoid such issues until I have a better base to build on.

Steven

*[NOTE: I did have some good teachers, and the problems were due mostly to
social circumstances. I.e., I'm not blaming my teachers, that is with the
important exception of the Vice Principal of Turkey Foot Junior High School
in Fort Mitchell Kentuckey, and a few others like him. I will say there were
no Germanic languages taught in the schools I attended.]