On the Old Norse Linguist
Dive into Old Norse and the sagas
In reality, the Old Norse Linguist would be better called Learn Old Norse like a machine. Because we aren’t true Old Norse linguists (at least not accredited ones), yet we are experts at a craft we are the sole measure of: learning languages like a machine. We keep the old title out of an affectionate sympathy for our earlier creative attempts.
We have no regrets about these essays; they document our practical philosophy on the matter exemplarily. From their earlier edition, we revised them slightly to emphasize their genuine purpose: not an exhaustive course in Old Norse the school way, but the substantiation, by way of Old Norse, of our general approach to learning languages like a machine, whose foundations we present here, and of which Learn Finnish like a machine is the most recent illustration.
We attempted to typologize the numerous Old Norse Linguist essays into different rubrics. But, ultimately, it’s all about practicing language learning the machine way. We will be happy to further expand the series over time, although we must admit that we are nowadays busy with our other Far North affairs.
Galois is convinced that languages, both ancient and modern, are learned through tireless and repeated exposure to textual data and their translation. Not just by having them run before your eyes, but by working with them, understanding them, and replaying them over and over again. Here, learning an ancient language is akin to learning a modern one: you forget, you relearn, until you’re exhausted.
In the Read Old Norse like a machine rubric, we try to convey how we practice that core exercise of ours.
Machines learn in exactly the same way: through exposure to massive textual data, bilingual data from which they are trained to identify correspondences, word block by word block, at different scales.
But we are no machine. We don't reach the realms of the very, very large numbers that allow for straightforward inference of all things grammar, lexicon or syntax. Therefore we would do well to integrate, at a certain point in the learning process, the one-time reading of a grammar book. And to endeavor to pay attention, in the course of our extensive readings, to the grammar at work.
Essays in the Grammar dive rubric dispense Old Norse grammar in bite-sized chunks, based on the great texts. Here, we map out and make accessible to the international reader some fundamental bits of Old Norse grammar as they are explained in excellent Old Norse grammar textbooks available in Scandinavian languages.
In a Multilingual affairs rubric, we indulge in our favorite exercise: the comparison, the game of Spot the difference, between Old Norse and other closely related languages, ancient and modern. It’s about translations studies and comparative linguistics, from Old Norse to modern Scandinavian (North Germanic) languages: Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Feroen, Icelandic; but also modern West Germanic languages: German, Dutch, English; and some of their ancestors: Old Icelandic, Old English. Here we discuss language history and geography, language sociology, idioms and dialects. We talk about archaisms and modernisms, and bridge the gap between the old and the new.
Some essays ponder broader Linguistics topics. We marvel for example at how the future tense makes its way into grammar in different languages.
Finally, further essays talk about miscellaneous topics. Centuries of philological work have sought to shed light on the great sagas' manuscripts: eminently, John Megaard traces the authorship of the works and the circumstances of their creation. Or, the future of the work of mind in the age of intelligent machines.
Be regular, and above all, make good use of your time.