--- In norse_course@yahoogroups.com, N thomsen <nbs1883@...> wrote:

>
>
> well, let me show you an example for how similar Icelandic and Old

Norse are.

> this is my description from me VF profile.

Great example, well done! I hope you don't mind if I make a few niggly
comments about the grammar ;-)

> Old Norse:
> Hæ ek heiti Hrafn,

'Hrafn' is boy's name in Old Norse. Of course you might have disguised
yourself like Hervör, in Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks, who used the male
name Hervarðr when she went to be a pirate...

> ek er 17 ára stúlka ^^ Ek bý í Danmörku. sætt lítið land, en vit

höfum of mikila rigningu.

I've a feeling 'hæ' is a fairly recent loanword into Modern Icelandic
from English. I could be mistaken, but I don't think it's recorded
anywhere as a greeting in Old Norse. You could say 'heill', which
would be declined depending on the gender of who you're talking to and
how many there are of them.

The older form of 'sætt' would be 'sœtt'. The sound represented by 'œ'
came to be pronounced the same as the sound represnted by 'æ' in the
late 13th century in Iceland. You got all the other examples of 'œ' right!

Modern Icelandic uses the word 'við' where we use 'we' in English. In
normalised Old Norse spelling, this word was 'vit'. But in medieval
times 'vit' was the dual pronoun, so I'd say 'vit' for "we" if there
were only two of us. But if there were more then two, I'd have to use
the old plural 'vér' "we". In Modern Icelandic 'við' (descended from
'vit') is used just like English "we" whether there are two people or
more.

In Old Norse you'd say 'mikla' here, just like in Modern Icelandic,
e.g. 'þá virðir hann þá í öllu framar ok lagði á þá mikla virðing'
"then he respects them more highly (than others) in every way and
bestows great honour on them". Notice also that feminine nouns with
the suffix -ing added -u in the dative in Old Norse, but not in the
accusative. That's one of the small changes in morphology that have
taken place. I couldn't find any Old Norse examples of the word
'rigning' in the Orðabók Háskólans text database [
http://www.lexis.hi.is/corpus/leit.pl ]. If it was used in medieval
times, it seems to have been much rarer than 'regn' "rain". There are
lots of examples of that. So maybe you could say 'regn mikit' or in
the plural 'regn mikil'.

http://www.lexis.hi.is/corpus/leit.pl?lemma=regn&ofl=&leita=1&flokkar=Fornrit&m1=regnit+regnum+regn+regni+regni%F0+regninu+regns+regnsins&l1=Leita&lmax=1

> Ek á einn kött, hann heitir Ninja *ek elska hana ^^ * Ek á ok eina

systur, hon er hlœgileg XD Ek vil læra Norrœnu mál,

You'd have to use the neuter accusative ending here 'norrœnt mál',
because 'mál' is neuter, or you could even use the older term 'danska
tungu' which was used by the writer of the First Grammatical Treatise
in 12th century Iceland for his own language.

> en hon er svo eftið

Feminine 'erfið' (but I guess you just made a typo here, as you got it
right in the Modern Icelandic version), or if you're using the noun
'mál' it should be neuter 'erfitt'.

> >.< En ek elska allt Norrœnt, Norrœna nafn

Again, you'd want the neuter ending 'norrœnt nafn'.

> mitt er hmm, þat vil ek eigi sigja

Old Icelandic 'segja' "say", at least in normalised spelling. I'm not
sure if there are any examples of the roor vowel raised to 'i' in Old
Icelandic manuscripts, and I'm not so familiar with other kinds of Old
Norse, so maybe it happened there?

> xb
> Icelandic:
> Hæ ég heiti Hrafn, ég er 17 ára stúlka ^^ Ég bý í Danmörku. Sætt

lítið land, en við höfum of mikla rigningu. Ég á einn kött, hann
heitir Ninja *ég elska hana^^ * Ég á og eina systur, hún er hlægileg XD

> Ég vil læra Norrænu, en hún er svo erfið >.< En ég elska allt

Norrænt, Norræna nafn mitt er hmm, það vil ég ekki segja xb

>
>
> hope that helps ^^

Good work, it illustrates a lot of useful things about the kinds of
changes that have happened in Icelandic since the Middle Ages, and it
also shows how the basic grammar has stayed pretty much the same. Well
done!