Do you know how hard it is to translate English phrases into a foreign language that you don’t speak? You think… oh, I’m just going to look up “You” “are” “dealing” “with” “deceitful” “giants” and then stick the words together! I have an Old Norse (now shortened to ON) dictionary. Easy.

I look up the words. “Dealing” implies “with” in Norse; no one will be confused that we’re handing out deceitful giants. Scratch one word from the list I have to look up. The rest is easy.

And then I remember that I have to conjugate the verb. OK. So I find the, like ONE source online that actually gives lessons in ON (which, after looking up this website the last 15 times I’ve used it, I finally bookmarked this time). Read the introduction (’cause… it’s not procrastinating if you’re learning?) and realize that this is Icelandic ON from the 13th century, and my character is from 9th century (what is currently called) Norway. But since nobody in 9th century Norway wrote anything, we have no idea how different 13th century Icelandic Norse and 9th century Norwegian Norse are, but at least they’re both Western ON, as opposed to if I’d made my character Swedish or Danish or something, at which point there would be distinct differences (we know this, because somebody wrote something in East ON during the 12th century (or something)).

You know what? My 9th century Norwegian is going to speak 13th century Icelandic. Anybody out there who actually knows 9th century Norwegian is welcome to contact me about corrections.

I read the note saying “are dealing” and “deal” are the same thing in ON. So I conjugate my verb. “moeta” (where the oe is one letter, but my only complaint with Chrome so far is that I can’t copy things into wordpress, so you don’t get the cool letter). I read the note that says I don’t need “You” since the “You” is implied in the conjugation. Erase the m and capitalize it. “Moeta” Four words down, and I only wrote one. I’m clearly a translator of epic worth for my efficiency.

Then I start thinking about sentence order, because there’s an adjective in there, and does that go in front of the noun or after? And really, some languages don’t do subject+verb+object like we do, so I start looking up word order. And learn that ON is declined.

And I thought I’d left those pesky nouns-altered-by-part-of-speech behind with my Latin days. No. Declinsions haunt you forever. It’s like a linguistic plague (that does, however, allow for much more flexibility in word order, which does have its merits, one of which is not ease of translation). However, I know that I should’ve already realized this because German is declined. Makes sense ON would be, too. OK. I can do this.

Here I get distracted by a discussion of definite vs. indefinite articles in ON (I’m fascinated by how different languages deal with them; I think the use or lack thereof says a lot about a culture; ON, btw, sticks -inn suffix onto a noun to give it the definite article “the,” otherwise you assume indefinite article “a”; this makes sense to me; clearly my viking heritage is showing through). And then I keep reading and then translate the first set of ON lesson exercises on the website. Olafr konungr a brand. (King Olaf owns a sword). Ulfrinn vegr hauk. (The wolf kills a hawk.) Again, clearly it’s not procrastinating if I’m learning this valuable stuff. I feel closer to my character already.

Back to translating. I know the word for giant – jotunn – and it’s the object of the verb, so I just gotta figure out how to decline in the accusative case. Apparently you drop the ‘r’. (Looking at jotunn again). There’s no ‘r’. Hm. Must think on that. I’ll let it percolate.

Usually adjectives decline with the noun the describe. I check to see if that’s true in ON. Yup. OK. “Deceitful” is “flara,” according to the ON dictionary I keep on my Windows desktop (yes… I do…). I learn to decline flara in the accusative. Well, crap, this other dictionary says the word is flaratha (where ‘th’ = that funktastic letter that looks kinda like a ‘d’ but you pronounce like ‘th’ in “there”; again, *sigh* Chrome). I go with flaratha ’cause I like the funky ‘d’. (And I check one more dictionary, and two out of three have “flaratha,” so I am justified in my funk-d love) (hey, maybe my desktop dictionary is in East OD…).

Oh, wait, before I can decline it, I have to know the gender of the noun so I can match the adjective to the noun. I look up gender in ON. They have three, masculine, feminine, and neuter. Jotunn is masculine (I think… I’m actually not totally sure on that still, but I did really try).  OK. So I find a chart.  ”Flaratha” in the masculine accusative declines to “flarath”. Really? I now have Moeta ______ flarath.

I look at ON sentences around the declining adjectives section. I have no idea why I treated ON more like Spanish than English, seeing as it’s a heckuva lot closer to English. Moeta flarath _______.

Oh, wait, I want giants, as in plural. I look up the masculine plural accusative. “Flaratha in the mpa is… “flaratha.” That was anti-climactic. OK. Moeta flaratha _______.

Time to battle “jotunn.” (And I’m sorta hoping it’s not jotunna, ’cause… yeah… (now I’m drinking pumpkin ale and singing “Oh Yo-Tuna!!!” Things are devolving quickly.)) Jotunn is an important word to the Norse peeps, so surely this series of lessons will teach it to me soon. I click on each lesson individually and scroll through the vocabulary list at the end. Seven lessons in I give up. Something else is nagging at me… something I’m afraid I got wrong in the work I’ve done so far, but I can’t… quite… nail down what it is…

This leads to reading of passages from various lessons at random for maybe half an hour.

Finally I go back to the list of lessons and read their synopses. One says it teaches “Bisyllabic stems.” Hmm… This would be Lesson 8, the one I stopped right before getting to. I click on it. Jotunn is there. Along with how to decline nouns like it. Jotuna is not correct, thank heavens. Jotin. Moeta flaratha Jotin.

Wait, ears perk for trouble. Masculine accusitive “jotunn” ends in “in” and “flaratha” in ‘a’? Plural! I need a plural! (Look it up again). Moeta flaratha Jotna.

Did I do it?? Am I a translating genius??? Maybe. But I decide the character wouldn’t say “You deal with deceitful giants,” but “Lars deals with deceitful giants.” I look up the 3rd singular conjugation. Lars moetr flaratha Jotna. That was startlingly easy. Clearly I have some other challenge at hand.

Oh yes, I do. That niggling sensation from earlier? Yeah. Hits. “Moetr” might imply “with”, but it probably still doesn’t take an accusative. Accusative means you did something to someone, not with them. It’s probably one of those verbs that take a dative. Or maybe a genitive. Latin was alway slinging genitives at me. How do I even look this up?

More random mess of lookups. By sheer luck I hit upon a sentence in one of the examples that uses moeta. Sure enough, it takes a dative (I pat myself on the back that (a) I thought of this and (b) I knew it was probably dative).

*Sigh big time* At least now I know where to look for everything. I re-re-re-decline “flaratha” to “flarathum” and “jotna” to “jotnum”. I now have this sentence:

Lars moetr flarathum Jotnum.

All because I wanted my character to say something in his native language. Take a moment to feel smarter with me.

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OK. Now we’re done. Back to writing.