--- In
norse_course@ yahoogroups. com, Justin Farwell <chelagil3@. ..> wrote:
>
>
> OE 'theoden' 'prince' ON 'thjothinn' 'prince'
It's 'þjóðann' in Old Norse [
http://lexicon. ff.cuni.cz/ png/oi_cleasbyvi gfusson/b0739. png ].
> the grammar of OE is a bit simpler, but the vocabulary is very
similar to Old Norse.
True, although, personally I find that it can sometimes actually be
easier to remember a paradigm where most of the forms are clearly
differentiated:
Old Norse:
Nominative: sonr . synir
Accusative: son . sonu
Genitive..: sonar . sona
Dative:...: syni . sonum
Old English:
Nominative: sunu . suna
Accusative: sunu . suna
Genitive..: suna . suna
Dative....: suna . sunum
And, of course, if your main interest is
learning Old Norse, you'll
get there quicker by starting to learn Old Norse straight away! With
Old Norse, you have the advantage that there is more variety of prose
texts, whereas some of the most interesting Old English literature is
poetry. With Old Norse, you have the advantage that a large number of
texts are available online with standardised spelling (either the
normalised Old Norse spelling stystem used by Old Norse textbooks, or
in Modern Icelandic spelling), whereas Old English texts are usually
presented in the chaotic spelling of the manuscripts. Still, that's
not much of a difficulty in the long run.
> There's alot more learning material out there for OE than ON, and
alot of the OE textbooks are easier to use than the ON; ON textbooks
are rather old-fashioned and usually written by old German
philologists before World War 2.
Besides the modern online courses and "A New Introduction to Old
Norse" (1999)
that I mentioned, there's a fairly recent Spanish
textbook that you might be interested in: María Pilar Fernández
Álvarez (1999) "Antiguo islandés. Historia y lengua".
Sorry, Justin--I'm just in a Devil's Advocate mood today ;-) But I
wouldn't want to dissuade anyone from learning Old English too.
They're both great languages!
P.S.
> > > Nu eow is gerymed; gað ricene to us, guman to guþe;
> > god ana wat hwa þære wælstowe wealdan note.
> > > (Now the way is clear for you; O warriors, hasten to the battle;
> > God alone knows how things will turn out)
I think that last word should be 'mote', shouldn't it?