--- In norse_course@yahoogroups.com, "kunphuzil" <kunphuzil@...>
wrote:

> Ugh! It seems so arbitrary to name them with their proto-germanic
> stems if they are no longer present. Even so, the stem charts don't
> help in conjunction with the dictionary if they both employ

different

> systems. Does anyone know which stems match to which declension?

Not all text books follow this system. Tarrin Wills' paradigms [
http://teaching.arts.usyd.edu.au/english/2000/icel/grammar.html ]
aren't given specific names, just descriptive (or not so
descriptive) titles such as:

"masculine, gen. sing. -ar; nom. pl. -ir"
"masculine, gen. sing. -s; nom. pl. -ar/-jar"
"other forms" (!)

Which seems very confusing to me. I'd rather have arbitrary names
that I can remember. As Norse Course emphasizes though, different
learning methods suit different people. Old Norse Online [
http://www.utexas.edu/cola/depts/lrc/eieol/norol-TC-X.html ] uses
the Germanic stem letter names, a-stems, etc. This seems easiest to
me, but maybe that's just because I was introduced to it that way,
through Gordon's Introduction to Old Norse. It worked for me partly
as an arbitrary mnemonic, just like the numbers used by Zoega,
except that it's also helpful for seeing the connections between
other old Germanic languages. If you already know some Old English
or Gothic, etc., or if you go on to study these languages, it's
convenient when text books use the same terminology. Also I imagine
letters and numbers as each having their own distinctive colour, so
I see u-stems as black or very dark grey, and a-stems as sandy
yellow, i-stems reddish pink...but that's another story.


Zoega conversion chart!!
(I don´t know if this will help, or just add to the confusion):

Nouns

Zoega Gordon, ON Online, Others

masculine

1 heimr, himinn = a-stem; læknir, hilmir = ja-stem.
2 i-stem
3 u-stem
4 consonant stems

feminine

1 nál = o-stem; fit = jo-stem (with short root syllable);
heiðr = o-stem (with long syllable).
2 i-stem
3 consonant stems

neuter

1 skip, barn = a-stem; nes = ja-stem (with short root
syllable); högg = wa-stem.
2 ja-stem (with long root syllable)



Weak Verbs

Zoega Others
1 2 kalla
2 1 with long root syllable doema
3 1 with short root syllable spyrja
4 3 vaka


Strong Verbs

1 3 brenna
2 1 rísa
4 6 fara
5 5 (same) gefa
6 4 bera
7 7 (same) gráta, hleypa

> > (að) means like 'kalla' [...]

This is the easiest to remember and a good starting point. If Zoega
prints (að) in brackets after the infinitive, the verb is conjugated
just like 'kalla'.

In other books I've mostly seen this labelled as the 2nd weak
conjugation, but Zoega labels it as the 1st.




Other weak verbs will be recognisable as weak by the dental
consonant or consonants, -t-, -d- or -ð-, in the endings printed by
Zoega in brackets after the infinitive. What follows isn't a
complete explanation of all the possibilities by any means, but I'll
just take three weak verbs as examples of what grammatical
information can be worked out from the forms Zoega gives, then one
strong verb.


lykja (lyk, lukta, luktr) "to shut in, enclose, close; put an end
to".

lyk = 1st person present indicative singular, ek lyk "I close".
lukta = 1st person past indicative singular, ek lukta "I closed".
luktr = past participle, e.g. luktr hjálmr, a type of helmet
(enclosing the head).

The i-umlaut in the infinitive ('y' versus the 'u' of the past)
tells you that this doesn't belong to the same class as 'vaka'. The
short root syllable (LYK + JA) tells you that it's conjugated like
SPYRJA. Let me know if I´m using unfamiliar terms here.



lypta (-pta, -ptr) "to lift" also has an umlauted vowel, but because
the root LYPT- is long (ends in two consonants), it stays umlauted
in the past indicative, and is therefore conjugated like DOEMA
(which is long by virtue of its long vowel).

ek lypti "I lift"
ek lypta "I lifted"
ek em upp lyptr "I am lifted up" (or if I was female "lypt").



For impersonal verbs, the past is shown by the 3rd person singular, -
i, instead of -a. And the past participle is shown in its neuter
form. E.g. lygna (-di, -t) "to become calm".



Example of a strong verb: 'hefja' (hef; hóf, hófum; hafiðr and
hafinn). "and" indicates alternatives. The first form in the
brackets is the 1st person present indicative singular. Next come
the 1st person past singular and plural indicative. Finally the
past participle.

ek hef "I lift"
ek hóf "I lifted"
vér hófum "we lifted"
ek em upp hafinn "I am lifted up"


Irregular or rarer types of weak verb have similar imformation.
Well, that's enough for tonight. If this is all completely
baffling, don't worry, I'm sure there are much better explanations
in Norse Course and ON Online, etc.

LN