Ijslenzkt maal

At 15:05 -0400 1.8.1999, Padraic Brown wrote:
>>
>> Jeg haldadi ad J. sje kvenmadur.  Hvernig getir h'un thaa vera berf'otUR?
>> Audveitad "berf'otur" er lysingarord! :)
>
>Hon er kona, heitr Jennifer. Ek gat til fyrsts "berf'otur".  Hvat er
>"audveitad" ok "lysingarord"? Ek gat "berr-fotr" thvi at "fotr" er
>madhrligt ordh (maskulin ?); ok eigi vissa at konu namn mun vera konaligt
>(feminin ?) ordh.
What!  Don't you know that Old and Modern Icelandic is The Same Language?
Shame on you! ;-)

"audveitad": without doubt, surely.
"lysingarord": adjective.  (Yes, m. "bef'otur" f. "berf'ot" n. "berf'ot"!).
masculine: "karlkynlegur" (in grammar, I don't remember the general sense
word); masc. word: "karlkynsord".
feminine: "kvenkynlegur" (grammar, else "kvenlegur"); "kvenkynsord".

Also I waver between transcriptions when not using 8-bit.  Putting an
apostrophe before the vowel looks more like an accent, but I am fond of the
"Rijmabook" kind of spelling with "aa, je, ij, oo, u/w, yy" -- except the
Rijmabaekur of course used "ie" and "je" indiscriminately -- because it
looks ultra-cool.  Some modern writers, e.g. Laxness, use "je" rather than
"'e" consistently.
      In both cases I rely on the fact that eth and d are in complementary
distribution in modern Icel.  Thorn and eth are too, of course!

Names indeed need not agree in gender with their referent.  E.g. Sturla is
a men's name, but is grammatically feminine, and in the old days even took
feminine pronouns!  Feels weird tho.  I stumbled on this fact all the time
when reading Sturlunga Saga.  There are at least three Sturlur in it...

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  B.Philip Jonsson  <bpj@...> <melroch@...>

        Solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant!
                                            (Tacitus)