NORN KJOKL

Sorry folks, I posted elsewhere, not having seen this thread for introductions.

My name is Àdhamh Ó Broin (Adam) and my mother's people were all from Caithness, while my father's are all Irish. I feel culturally very Scottish however and speak the first revitalised moribund Scottish Gaelic dialect, that of Cowal, with my four children. We speak no English whatsoever (although my wife does!) amongst ourselves.

I would like to pick up as much Nynorn as I can whenever I have time. I have retained most of what I learnt last night at least!

I speak Cowal Gaelic and English fluently, as well as a tolerable level of German which I grew up speaking and was once much better....

If there is any help I can offer, it is probably just in the comparitive sense of how I went about things with Cowal Gaelic, although as I said in the other thread, I had a lot to work with, as well as Nils Holmer's unpublished papers from his fieldwork in Mid-Argyll. My biggest challenge is a bit of a luxury in terms of Nynorn, and that's idiom! I am interviewing speakers of neighbouring dialects to glean what I can about Cowal and weeding out the responses which contain obviously non-Cowal forms.

I would like to ask about idiom though, with Nynorn. How extensively have the oldest surviving Shetlandic speakers of today been interviewed to examine their speech for Norn influence?

Comparitives, for example. In Gaelic you would say: cho geal ris an t-sneachd 'as white as the snow' as you would say in English. It would be interesting to find out if in Shetlandic, they had different objects which were used in this exemplary fashion to illustrate the quality of something else in the comparitive sense.

I noticed mention of the word 'nationlism' earlier and wanted to chip in my share. I think people get somewhat confused with this. You can't be a nationalist when you already have a state. It's impossible. People who call themselves nationalists when they already belong to a nation with a state are not nationalists, they are fascists. I do not think it is fair to group all of what people believe are 'nationalists' together, as those people are giving the rest of us a very bad name indeed. I will be a nationalist until Scotland is independent of Britain. After that, I will no longer be a nationalist because there will be no purpose for it!

There is nothing more irritating than this misconception, for a genuine nationalist who harbours no ill-will of any kind to anyone else because of where they, their parents or their ancestors came from! It is an entirely functional thing for me and when that function is served, it will naturally cease to be....

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www.facebook.com/droitseach

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www.facebook.com/droitseach

I have been a member of this forum since Feb. 03, 2011. My main involvement has been with developing the English- Nynorn dictionary with assistance from Hnolt and Ljun. The following is my attempt to communicate in Nynorn.
Min veruli navn er Gary.
Eg er ur Kanada.
Eg er pensionerad.
Min gamla yrke var plante patolog.
Eg bur i Tucson, Arizona, USA um Veter.
Eg bur i Winnipeg, Manitoba, Kanada um Sommer.

That'll do nicely!

My Nynorn study has been interrupted by a colleague being very ill at the moment and running around like a blue-arsed fly for the last fornight to cover his work. I hate when something has to give, especially something I had started to really enjoy. Getting back to it today though and my colleague is doing much better thankfully

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www.facebook.com/droitseach

Greetings!!

My name is Arial Burnz and I'm an author of Paranormal and Fantasy fiction with strong romantic elements (and hot erotic sex). Most of my stories have an historical backdrop.

I've come to this site for a specific purpose: I've chosen to set Book 4 of my vampire series in the Shetland Islands in 1734, mainly due to the location and its Norse history. The majority of the characters in this book will be...hold onto your Shetland ponies...Norse wolf shapeshifting pirates! I'm deriving my lore from the mythology of Mani and Manegarm, how Manegarm the wolf swallows Mani the moon god and that's why we have a lunar eclipse. My Norse shapeshifters are descendants of Manegarm. He is the son of a giant witch in the Ironwood forest east of Midgard (a realm in Norse mythology), so all my Norse shapeshifters will be considered "short" at six-feet tall.

I know NOTHING of the Shetlands or the Norn language and I want to do their history justice and honor their language. As such, I will probably have a slew of questions about terminology and where an ideal setting for the book could take place on the Islands. I'm actually creating a fictional port town that will have a large population of supernatural creatures.

Anyone game for answering my questions? Or are you all going to tell me to get lost. Hee hee...*gulp* Anyone who contributes will be mentioned in my acknowledgements of the book and I'll also mention the website.

If you're interested in taking a look at my website to check me out, I encourage you to follow the many links below in my signature.

Thank you in advance for any assistance anyone can lend.

With highest hopes,
Arial ;)

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Arial Burnz
That’s “Arial” like the font…NOT “Ariel” like the mermaid. : \
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Hi Arial,

Welcome to our forum! That's a really great idea for a novel, Shetland with its Atlantic weather must suit ideally to stories like that.
We'll be glad to help you with anything that has to do with Norn. As for cultural things, I also recommend you to check out Shetlink, a general forum about all things Shetland, especially its threads on the islands' culture and history, which might be even more useful to you (as our forum mainly concentrates on linguistic things):

http://www.shetlink.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=17
http://www.shetlink.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1157 (an old topic about 'wulver'=werewolf)

I hope that our knowledge of Norn will be of help to you.

Oh wonderful! I will start a new topic so questions can be answered and conversations back and forth will all be in one spot. Let me know if that's the proper way to handle this OR get back with me on what I should do.

Thank you!!!!! *Does the Snoopy dance*

Arial

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Arial Burnz
That’s “Arial” like the font…NOT “Ariel” like the mermaid. : \
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Hi there.
My name is Fabrizio, and I write from northern Italy.

I'm 22 years old and I work as a tokførari (train driver, in Faroese).
I'm learning Faroese on my own, even though work is going slowly because of my job.
I discovered Norn for the first time through Faroese, because when I started looking at it, I read about the history of the so-called Insular Norse languages that - at a given time - became Faroese, Icelandic and Norn. I have to be honest, I never thought that was possible to revive such a language, but this Nynorn project seems so convincing, that I'm actually sure it can lead to something really good.

As per language studying and linguism, I never studied those at school - I wanted to study Icelandic but the nearest University that held such courses is in Genoa, while I live a few hundred kilometers northeastern than that town - and, instead, decided to follow the main interest of mine (trains) that eventually turned out to be the job I'm doing right now.

I'm an enthusiastic of purism movements regarding languages (take a look, for example, to Høgnorsk in Norway) and I hope I can give a little help - if needed - to this project.

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en so mykid j Hiatlande ad segs skillingar ok XL hrentadi leigan a huerium tolf manadum... ok þar til oll ol gogn sidan fyrir vttan kannur ok diska ok potta ok onnur elld gogn er hon mintisk ei huorsu morg voru (Húsavíkarbrøvini, 1403)