Re: Beauty of Old Norse (was Re New to the list)

>From: BP Jonsson <bpj@...>
>Subject: Re: Beauty of Old Norse (was Re New to the list)
>Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2000 21:39:49 +0200
>
>True, but to a 13th century Icelander modern Swedish would sound like
>familiar words with *no* grammar -- baby-talk, essentially.
But how familiar would all the German for-, be-, an-, gen-, etc words be? I
think they're less common than in Danish, but the amount is still
considerable. Not mentioning all the Greco-Latin, French, and English
loan-words.
  The Swede might ask "Forstaar du meg inte?"; Snorri might reply "Hvat?
Nei, nu' skilk ei hvat þu' seigir." The Swede would conclude that he's some
obscure hillbillie from an isolated valley in Norway ;)

Oskar
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