Thank you. Your explanation makes great sense, and I have learned a bit more Old Norse from it....

--- In norse_course@yahoogroups.com, "AThompson" <athompso@...> wrote:
>
> Rob
>
> Personally for <spacestation>, I don't think you could do better than
> the modern Icelandic word <geimstöð>
>
> Firstly, modern <stöð> essentially retains its Old Icelandic meaning, as
> per Zoega, of a (1) landing-place, berth, harbour, (3) dwelling-place,
> abode – ie all the attributes of a modern space "station". <ver> in both
> modern and old Icelandic, while able to be translated as "station",
> seems to have a more limited sense related to fishing and hunting.
>
> Secondly, modern Icelandic words for space-capsule (geimhylki)
> spacecraft (geimfar), spaceship (geimskip), space-station (geimstöð),
> space-shuttle (geimferja), space-suit (geimbúningur) are formed using
> the attributive prefix <geim-> which derives from the modern icelandic
> noun <geimur> meaning a vast open space, or outer-space. From my reading
> of the Clisby-Vigfusson dictionary, Modern <geimur> is derived from the
> Old Icelandic poetic noun <geimi> meaning the main, the sea. Given the
> vastness and emptiness of the sea, one can imagine how its modern
> meaning of a vast open space may have developed and its specific
> application to the vast open spaces of "outer-space" in the universe,
> although I have no idea how recently this shift in meaning occurred.
> <rúm> in both modern and old icelandic, while able to be translated as
> "space", does not suggest to me the same sense of vastness and openness
> that <geimr> does.
>
> If modern Icelanders coined the word <geimstöð> to describe the concept
> of a space station, I see no reason for believing that, had they been
> exposed to the concept of outer-space in the modern sense and the
> existence of space stations in their own world, old icelanders would not
> have come up with the same word to describe it.
>
> Kveðja
> Alan
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: norse_course@yahoogroups.com [mailto:norse_course@yahoogroups.com]
> On Behalf Of rob13567
> Sent: Friday, 9 April 2010 11:02 AM
> To: norse_course@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: [norse_course] Star Wars -- That's no moon....
>
>
> I found it instructive to attempt a translation into Old Norse, so I
> thought I would try another one, again a quote from Star Wars:
> That's no moon. It's a space station.
> For the first sentence, I came up with:
> Sá er ekki máni.
>
> As I did some more research, I discovered that < máni> is the poetic
> word for moon, and there is another word <tungl>, which might fit the
> context better, so I then made it:
>
> Þat er ekki tungl.
>
> Working with the second sentence provided more challenges. The obvious
> difficulty is "space station." Also, Zoega is Old Norse to English, but
> not English to Old Norse. Zoega does have a search feature, but it
> searches all of the Northvegr site rather than just the dictionary. Yes,
> I could use the Zoega search and go through each hit for "space" and
> look to see if it takes me to a dictionary page or somewhere else, but I
> wanted a more elegant way to do this. Fortunately, though, Google has an
> advanced search feature where you can limit your search to a particular
> page (and all subpages), which I used to limit myself to just Zoega.
> Searching, then, for "space," I found:
>
> <rúm> n - space, room
> <gap> n - empty space, gap
> <hlið> n - space, interval
> <rjóðr> n - open space in a forest
>
> Of the above, I like < rúm> the best, probably because I remembered that
> modern Swedish uses a cognate of this for "space" as in space
> exploration.
>
> Similarly, I did a search for "station" found:
>
> <fiskiver> n – fishing place or station
> <útver> n - outlying fishing station
> <vermaðr> m – fisherman at an outlying station
> <ver> n – station for taking eggs, fishing, etc.
>
> None of the above for "station" gave me a lot of confidence, so I
> thought it worth checking if Modern Icelandic would give me a clue. The
> dictionary I found gave me <geim stöd>, and not seeing any relation to
> the above Old Norse examples, I decided that was a dead end.
>
> One option would be to say "space ship" instead of "space station." If
> so:
>
> Þat er rúmskip.
>
> If I want to try for "space station," the best I can come up with would
> be <rúmver>, so the final translation, right or wrong, would be:
>
>
> Þat er ekki tungl. Þat er rúmver.
>
> If I have missed anything, please let me know.
>
> Rob
>
>
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