Please, not HORRIFIC! Most of the paradigms follow a pattern. And verbs are really much less complicated than in many other languages. Even strong verbs follow a pattern English speakers should be aware of (many aren't because of the TERRIBLE information supplied in schools -- I'm on a local school board in PA. A few years ago, I reviewed a text that described verbs in English as being either regular [ending in -ed] or irregular [essentially all the others]. The book specifed RIDE and DRIVE as examples of "irregular" verbs -- it didn't seem to occur to the authors that the very pair of examples they cited exemplified a certain regularity.).

Really, Germanic languages shouldn't be that difficult for speakers of other Germanic tongues. A little advance knowledge of the SIMILARITIES will go a LONG way in alleviating the fear of learning.

Don't be discouraged, Rose. Good luck in your pursuits.

Erek


--- "david tolstrup" <david_tolstrup@...> wrote:
your right (as you have probably heard from dozens of people) Icelandic would be you're choice. Modern Icelandin is relatively unchanged from Old Norse. Good luck - the grammar is horrific!!!!!

----- Original Message -----
From: Rose Lieberman
Sent: Saturday, April 10, 2004 2:08 PM
To: norse_course@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [norse_course] Newbie with QUESTIONS

Hello, All. My name is Rose, I'm 56, I live in rural upstate New York. I have embarked on a study of the runes and it has kindled an interest in Old Norse, especially for the reading of poems, eddas, etc.

QUESTIONS: Other than learning Old Norse, I would also like to learn a living language that is as close to Old Norse as possible. What would that language would be? And are there any online resources for learning it? Would it be Icelandic, Norwegian, Finnish?

My thinking is that even though Old Norse is no longer spoken, it must still bear at least a faint resemblance to some extant language akin to it; for example, as Italian is to Latin, perhaps.

This is all very new to me as I have never studied a language on my own. Latin and Spanish in high school, but that was alotta presidents ago......

Thanks,

Rose


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