Today, I would like to offer you the word brjá: to sparkle, flicker, gleam.
In today's world of Twi-hards, I figured it might come in handy.
Putting this word in a sentence of modern or old Icelandic poses some difficulties for me, because um -- to my greatest shame I still haven't figured out verb conjugations outside of "to be." Sooo.
How about if I just offer you a second word instead? In keeping with the love of all things Thor, brúsi: a buck or he-goat.
In a modern Icelandic sentence: Tanngrisnir og Tanngnjostr eru brúsa.*** (Tanngrisnir and Tanngnjostr are bucks.)
This sentence in Old Icelandic/Old Norse: ... just replace og with ok, and you're good to go.
So there you have it! Your second lesson in Old Icelandic! Or um. Something.
Related: Lessons in Old Icelandic (I)
*el husband and I hosted with one of my sisters and I have never in my life hosted any kind of big holiday so it was kind of scary and there was a lot of cleaning to be done leading up to it, in order to get my still-unpacked-boxes out of the way for the big day.
**Read: I haven't been doing my homework and my research has lapsed a bit, but in my defense, I am WRITING a novella involving some Norse deities. Trust me when I say this counts as research, even if it is not as focused as one might wish.
*** Honestly, I am not 100% sure I got the plural form right. BUT I am reasonably confident. Um. There is just one problem -- brúsi is in fact Old Norse for he-goat, but brúsi in modern Icelandic means "can" or "bottle" soo. Yeah. Context counts?
How would brja be pronounced? Slurred together or two syllables?
ReplyDeleteI can really only speculate based on modern Icelandic, but the rs are rolled and the "já" sounds like yow. So bryow -- and I'd guess one syllable, rather than two, since Icelandic, to my ear, slurs more than not. When I hear it spoken, I feel like I'm completely missing at least a whole syllable in every other word.
DeleteNo matter how you pronounce it, it's a fun word.
ReplyDelete