book meme

[dragonlady7]

from fileg

book meme


1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 23.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal...along with these instructions.

Gunnlaug takka han vèl og vart verande der ei stutt tid, og fòr derifrå til Orknøyane.

i've no idea what that means. Actually it was equidistant from me with the Norwegian dictionary-that-is-the-wrong-dialect, but dictionaries don't have sentences.

Comments

[applegnat.livejournal.com]

Hey, cool. WHat is that?

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

the Icelandic Soga Om Gunnlaug Ormstunge.
My cousin Andreas, hearing that I was interested in Norse history, brought it with him when he came to visit this summer, and gave it to me.
He was obviously under the impression, based no doubt on my ability (when last I visited them in 1997) to say in Norwegian "We are holding your underpants hostage"** and "I have been bitten by a dog"***, that I am a far better linguist than I am.

I bought a Norwegian-English dictionary to help me, but lo! the Norwegian-English dictionary is modern, intended for travellers; the Soga is composed in Old Norse, and contains a great deal of poetic language similar to Old English kennings.

My translation attempts so far have wound up with numerous sentences along the lines of "My hovercraft is full of eels." But it sounds like it'd be really cool. If only I could figure out more than every fifth word.



(**Vi hår underbuksene dine søm gissel.

*** Jaeg har(?) blitt bitt en hund.
Note that I was never able to pronounce "Happy New Year" even though it was the new year:
Gødt Nått År! Man alive, I still couldn't tell you what to do with those freaking vowels.)

[applegnat.livejournal.com]

The only one I've ever heard of is Njall's Saga. I'm amazed at your ability to use keyboard shortcuts to make those freaking vowels at all. I was proud when I managed the French accents at all.

o.O

Vi har underbuksene dine sam gissel./i>

Thank you. You're fulfilling my aim to be able to name 'underwear' in every language there is. In exchange, I shall tell you that in Hindi, underpants are chuddies.

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

Oh, I gots no keyboard shortcut skillz. Those are hard-coded HTML Special Characters (http://webmonkey.wired.com/webmonkey/reference/special_characters/). That's the only reliable way I know to do accents.

It can be a real pain if you're reading in a non-HTML environment, which is why when composing stories, characters never get their accents put in until the final, final draft. Because who can deal with names like Gúthwinë?


But I am glad to know how to say underpants in Hindi. I had a roommate who taught herself Hindi in two weeks, but as she already spoke Tamail (sp?) and like three other Indian languages it... well, I was still jealous.