on 10/30/02 2:27 PM, Douglas Barbour at [log in to unmask] wrote:
> Dear Årni
>>
>> But no such luck with Icelandic.
>>
>> I honestly don't know where to begin! The two letters we use regardless
>> of what English speaking peoples are aware of are ª º and ? ?. The former
>> produces the same sound as the 'th' in an English 'thorough'. The latter
>> produces the same sound as 'th' as heard in an English 'this'. And then
>> there are Æ æ and Ö ö. Basically your ae, and ö is like the vowe sound in
>> an American word such as 'nerd'.
>>
>> Speaking the language we always stress the first syllable, no matter how
>> long the word is. If it's a compound word, which there are a lot of, each
>> new addition to the first word in the combination has a slighter stress.
>> Thus 'sparisjó?ur' [savings bank] stresses the 'spa' of the first
>> compound, i.e. 'spari', while there's a slighter stress on the 'sjó' in
>> 'sjó?ur'.
>>
>> The alphabet has no c . And it ends with: x y z º æ ö .
>>
>> 'Gó?an dag' means literally 'good day', which you would properly
>> translate as 'good morning'. And when saying good-bye we say 'bless',
>> which is a short form of 'You be blessed'. I'll stop now in the hope that
>> this is of some use. Ask me some more, so I can be of further help with
>> this. 'Já' means 'yes' and 'nei' means 'no'. I'll be happy to elaborate.
>
> Did your e-mail come back to you looking like this, or does it only happen
> to some of us? At any rate, as a method of definititively hiding the
> secrets of Icelandic, it certainly works.
Not sure here, Doug. Looking like what? I know the special Icelandic letters
tend to get scrambled enroute via e-mail to other countries, but your
message back to me has nothing scrambled!
Yes, a fair bit of fun, this!
Best
Árni
--
Árni Ibsen
Stekkjarkinn 19,
220 Hafnarfjördur,
Iceland
tel.: +354-555-3991
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
http://www.centrum.is/~aibsen/
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