Haukur - Thank you so much for your very valuable information.
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That's great! Glad you've done lesson 8.
How about lesson 9 and the number lesson?
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I will be starting lesson 9 this weekend.
I had done the number lesson in April and
posted a big long "completion" of the story
about our holy Olaf at that time. This little
ditty spawned a great many questions, in
my mind alone - it would seem, about V2 order
and inverted order. To my thinking, questions
of this nature are important and are dealt
with early on in, for example, the German
textbook that I have used. Perhaps the simple
word order rules adopted for modern German
(as known to me) cannot be replicated for
ON. It would be of considerable interest, to
me, if you, or anyone else - for that matter,
could say around 20 or 25 words on the subject.
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Concerning your very excellent comments, I would just ask
for clarification on a few points.
sé ek mik sem einn maðr er ekki sér
et ek alla himininn ok brátt em svangr
vil ek á vötnunum at ganga en mun ek eigi svima
því næst munu vindar keyra mik um skýin
heim blása þeir en þar er þeir fara ek elti eigi
stend ek gegn aldi svát gamlan mun ek verða
aldr, m. age
ekki, n. pron. nothing
ský, n. cloud
svima, swim
vatn, n. water
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I'm going to try to translate what I think you're saying:
"I see myself as one man who sees nothing
I eat all the sky and soon I am hungry
I want to walk on the waters but I will not swim
and after that winds will drive me through the clouds
they blow home but I do not follow where they go
I stand against age so I will not become old"
Assuming that I'm on the right track there are some
grammatical issues that I am going to point out:
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This is, except for the final line, exactly
what I was attempting to say.
Comments (1) and (2) are perfectly clear.
However the motivation for comment (3) is,
I must admit, not too clear.
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3. I know this word order thing is difficult. Usually I'm
telling you to put the verb earlier - now I'm going to tell
you to put it later. I recommend: "eigi mun ek svima" or
"ek mun eigi svima".
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I write, literally the clunky phrase
"will I not swim" and you recommend
"not will I swim" or
"I will not swim" which is precisely modern
english word order.
Now, all three follow our basic V2 rule so
is the motivation for the change stylistic
or something to do with standard usage?
Also, I don't comprehend comment (4) at all.
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4. I'm afraid "V2" will force you to change to: "en þar er þeir
fara elti ek eigi"
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In accordance with your translation, I could
also write
"heim blása þeir en ek elti eigi þar er þeir fara"
- or -
"(heim blása þeir) en (ek elti eigi) þar er (þeir fara)"
which, I think, is formally identical to
"(heim blása þeir) en (þar er (þeir fara)) (ek elti eigi)"
which assumes that "þar er" is a conjunction as
it is listed within lesson 6. The problem is that
"ek elti eigi" is perfectly acceptable, according
to my present understanding of basic V2 rules. Also,
"þar er" looks more to me like an adverb so that
"þar er þeir fara" should be "þar er fara þeir"
Is this not the change you had in mind?
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6. The verb 'verða', like its counterpart 'vera', takes a complement
(nominative) rather than an object. Thus 'gamall' instead of 'gamlan'.
I suppose in modern English you might say (about a transsexual):
"he becomes her", but in Old Norse we say "he becomes she" (hann varð hon).
(Or maybe you do say the latter; I really don't know.)
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This is a very good example and makes
what you're saying clear. In fact, we
hicks would say "he becomes her", or,
at least, that's what I said about my
cousin Larry - ah - I mean Larisha.
I must mention one more thing:
How did you get
"I stand against age so I will not become old"
from
"stend ek gegn aldi svát gamlan mun ek verða"
(which should be
"stend ek gegn aldri svát gamall mun ek verða").
Where did I stutter when I meant to say
"I stand against age so that old I will become"?
This is simply
"you will get what you refuse to have".