--- In norse_course@yahoogroups.com, Robert Wilkinson
<xnoheartx@...> wrote:

> Seems to me the main difference grammaticall between Latin
> and ON is that the first has no umlaut vowel changes at all while

the second

> has very very very many (excepting vocabulary).

The fact of having case endings and three genders and lots of
personal endings in verbs makes ON like Latin. And there are lots
of underlying similarities due to their shared Indo-European
heritage, but also big differences in grammar as in vocabulary.

> I'm kinda new to all this Speak english. I know Latin well and am

Just

> wondering how many tenses are there in Old Norse?

Of simple tenses there are actually only two: "present" and past
(also called the preterite). But plenty more (perfect, pluperfect,
future) are expressed with auxiliary verbs, so more like English in
this respect than Latin.

The Germanic languages lost a lot of the old Indo-European tenses
very early, before they were written down. The earliest Germanic
language of which sizeable records survive is Gothic. It has one
tense for present + future, and another for past + perfect +
pluperfect, etc. But where it was essential to emphasise the future
Gothic used compound tenses made with auxiliary verbs. In Old
Norse, the future can be expressed with the present too, but the use
of auxiliaries is more common, especially MUNU. In Gothic, verbal
prefixes like GA- and US- often have a perfective function, and
sometimes perfect and imperfect aspects are distinguished according
to which auxiliary is used to form the past passive. But often the
fine distinctions of tense in Greek and Latin are just not
expressed. Old Norse, on the other hand, has lost these old
prefixes, and instead uses the auxiliary HAFA "have" (or with some
verbs VERA "be") + a past participle, very much like modern English.

ek em - I am
ek var - I was
ek hefi verit - I have been
ek hafða verit - I had been
ek mun vera - I will be
ek munda vera - I would be
ek mun hafa verit - I will have been, etc.

...except that the verb MUNU can also imply probability in such
instances. It might just mean that the speaker suspects something
to be so. Another verb SKULU can sometimes be used as an auxiliary
to make the future, but it also has a sense of obligation: what must
be. I'm still got a lot to learn about the subtleties of how these
auxiliaries work in modern Icelandic and how they differed in Old
Norse...

> Also Does Anyone know
> anything about names of characters in Lord of the Rings and what

they did?

> For Example i know Friði (Frodo) was a king of some sort I

belieive (correct

> me if I'm wrong)?

Fróði, also called Frið-Fróði "Peace Fróði", was a legendary king of
Denmark. He ruled over a golden age, according to Snorri´s Edda,
about the time of the Roman Emperor Augustus----in other words,
about the time of Christ. (From memory...) In Fróði´s days there
was no theft and no killing; even if a man saw a ring of gold on the
ground he would just leave it lying there; even if a man found his
father´s slayer in chains, he wouldn´t hurt him. (If this sounds
like unusual behavour to us, think how it sounded to Vikings!)

There was a reason for this.

Fróði had two huge millstones that no one could turn except a pair
of giant women called Fenja and Menja, given to him as
slaves. "Grind me gold and peace and joy," Fróði asked them, and
they did.

And they wanted to rest.

And Frodi said they could rest as long as the cuckoo is silent [in
spring] or as long as it takes for a song to be sung.

So they sing a magic song and grind out an army of vikings. Then
Mýsingr and his army of vikings came and killed King Fróði. He
carried off Fenja and Menja with the mill in his ship. He told them
to grind salt. They ground salt and soon the ship sank, and that's
a whirlpool now, and that's why the sea is salty.

Llama Nom