Hi Bob! (Heill Hróbjartr!)

> Please be patient with my rather novice question.

Your questions are of the kind that this list was originally
conceived to answer. They are most welcome.

> I'm currently up to lesson 5,

Good for you! Any questions and comments on the lessons are welcome.

> and I'm somewhat concerned about two things.
> First, my progression is somewhat uneven.

The lessons are somewhat uneven. Some are definitely more
difficult than others.

> I feel that in translating
> written from ON to English, I'm probably working well about 90-95%
> accuracy. From English to ON, that drops to about 65-70%. Anyone
> find the same? Something I'm doing wrong?

Probably not a thing. This is very normal. Understanding is easier
than producing, that's true for almost any language learning.

> Second, I don't think I'm very good in the "spoken word"
> pronunciation. I know there are some references in the lessons to
> the pronunciation coding, but I find them very confusing. Does
> anyone know of other sources for a simplified breakdown of the
> various pronunciations in ON?

Yeah, I should probably work on that... Originally Óskar and I
surmised that descriptions of Modern Icelandic pronunciation were
probably plentiful enough so that we'd probably be spending our
time better describing the "reconstructed" pronunciation.

I recently reformatted and corrected (slightly) Óskar's original article:

http://www.hi.is/~haukurth/norse/articles/pronunc.html

I can sympathize if this isn't completely helpful for the beginner.
I really should write a new article using another approach; and I
also should write something about modern pronunciation. Other than
that there are just my recordings:

http://www.hi.is/~haukurth/norse/sounds/sounds.html

Also note that there are some recordings in the reader;
here you have two people reading the same text:

http://www.hi.is/~haukurth/norse/reader/faerey2.html

If you find a good site describing Icelandic pronunciation let me know.

If you're thinking of buying Barnes' grammar I think he had a pretty
decent description.

> I'm not looking for an "easy" out, but
> sincerely would like to learn the correct pronunciation. Further
> this, I think it's stated that ON is very similar to modern day
> Icelandic.

Correct.

> However, I've gone to an online Icelandic radio, and find
> I can't understand even a single word!
> Even the pronunciations don't sound similar. I thought I'd be able
> to pick up a few "he, she's, we's" in the mix, but I couldn't make
> out anything. I have only a rudimentary understanding of Spanish, but
> can make out some words and phrases on TV/Radio, and I guess I figured
> it should be the same for ON. Any thoughts?

Well... I guess connected speech is difficult. One quirk of Icelandic
that English and (I think) Spanish don't have is the suppressing of
vowel endings when the next word starts with a vowel. Another problem,
since you mention the pronouns, is that the common pronouns 'hann',
and 'hún' usually drop the 'h' when not at the beginning of a sentence.

Thus a sentence that's written like this:

"Þeir fóru að hitta hana." (They went to meet her.)

is usually pronounced as if it were written like this:

"Þeir fórað hittana."

This may account for some of your difficulty.

But understanding spoken language is always difficult. For example I
read French fairly fluently and can even make myself understood speaking it.
But when I listen to two natives having a conversation I often can't
pick out a single word.

Good luck!

Kveðja,
Haukur