Dear Haukur,

Many thanks for getting back to me so swiftly and so helpfully. I'm sorry
to say, though, that I'm still at sea with ae. I jumped on that article on
pronunciation you suggested, but found there, once again, just words riming
with 'air'. You suggested listening to HM the Queen, but I don't get to do
that very often in New Mexico, hearing instead the bungled utterances, alas,
of George Bush. Had the bright idea this morning of Googleing SAMPA to see
what [E:] would be in the sound system of German. And what do I find as an
example? 'Spaet' (Sorry to spell it thus; this gizmo produces an Umlaut only
with the greatest reluctance.) Unfortunately, I've heard the a-Umlaut
pronounced any where from a long e (Ger 'Beet' SAMPA [e:]) to an ash (Eng
'at' SAMPA [{]). If memory serves, I heard the [{] more often in the north.

This machine doesn't have a sound card or whatever, so I can't hop over to
hear a couple stanzas.

Any other suggestions?

In the mean time, you asked about my supposed field. English. I began, in
fact, as a philosophy major (interested mainly in ethics & esthetics), but a
year's course from a logical positivist convinced me I didn't want to waste
years of my time arguing with people who are cheerfully convinced that the
big issues we've been discussing for two or three thousand years are just
illusions generated by the peculiarities of our languages. I did a lot of
Latin (I'd already had four years of Latin & two of Greek before I went to
college) and a lot of German. A year's fellowship in Germany (Goettingen,
Tuebingen--my apologies to every Umlaut) helped with the German. Grad
school: chose Yale chiefly to work with W K Wimsatt, whose work on fine
points of versification impressed me greatly (as they still do--I should
explain that my next love after philosophy is poetry, which I also make); I
was pleasantly surprized to find WKW was also keen on philosophy. I got to
take Anglo-Saxon with John C. Pope (Beowulf, with lots of attention to the
versification; did still more Latin (the 'neo-Latin' poets were a pleasant
surprize). Began a dissertation, under Maynard Mack, who--seeing all that
Latin--insisted I should write on Alexander Pope and the Latin poets. Never
did finish the thing; grew, in fact, to dispise Pope (the man, not the
poet), & so on. So my highest degree is a humble M. Phil.

And yourself? Surely an Icelander; search to wide world & there'll be not a
single Albanian with a name like that.

Must away,

Best,

David

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