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

>
> I am going to attempt to draw a Norsetoon, but I would like

someone to

> check my grammar first:
>
> [Ragnar ok Oddr sigla í bátum. Þeir sjá hólm.]

Looks alright to my not-perfectly-trained eye (if they're sailing
in "boats"), except that the nominative in Old Icelandic is Ragnarr
(as you have it in later sentences), but this becomes Ragnar in
Modern Icelandic. If there's just one boat, as in the later
sentence, 'báti', dat.sg. Point of curiosity, I wonder if there is
a preferrence for 'í' or 'á' when it comes to travelling in boats.
Is there any difference between the way they´re used in Icelandic
and in English?

>
> [Oddr spyrr, "Hvárt heitir hólmrinn, Ragnarr?"]

I think 'hvárt' as an interrogative is just used with a yes-no
question, i.e. where there are two alternatives to chose from.

Hvárt grætr þú nú Skarp-Heðinn?
"Are you crying now, Sk.?"
(Njáls saga 130).

(The answer, of course, is NO!) And in reported speech, "whether":
Hann vildi vita, hvárt hann var í brynju. "He wanted to know whether
he was wearing armour." Instead, for "what is the island called",
you could use one of these:

hvé heitir...
hversu heitir...
hvat heitir...

The first two mean literally "how is...called", compare German 'wie
heisst".

>
> [Ragnarr svarar, "Geirshólmr heitir hann."]
>
> [Ragnarr ok Oddr fara ó bátinum ok ganga á hólmin.]

Did you mean 'ór bátinum' "out of the boat"?

>
> [En þar býr illr draugr, en heitir Geirr.]

I would expect: ...er heitir Geirr "who is called Geirr". I´m
guessing that´s what you meant to type. That said, 'en' and 'ok' do
occasionally occur where English uses a relative pronoun, but maybe
there would need to be more of a contrast to use 'en' or a more
elabourate phrase? The examples with 'en' I've made a note of so
far are all from Modern Icelandic, e.g.:

Þá verpa allar íslenskar andategundir, þeirra á meðal húsönd en hún
verpir hvergi annars staðar í Evrópu. [
http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/IcelOnline/IcelOnline-idx?
type=HTML&rgn=DIV2&byte=165747&q1=húsönd ]

"All the Icelandic species of duck lay eggs in the area, among them
the "húsönd" (the golden eye duck, lit. the house duck), which nests
in no other part of Europe."

Does anyone have a similar example for Old Norse?

>
> [Ragnarr ok Oddr sjá Gair ok nú flýja.]
>

'Geir'. The grammar looks good to me. Looking forward to seeing
the Norsetoon!

Lama Nom