You know what I need?
22 Sep 2024 09:27![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
karmicdragonflyWell, there are a lot of things that I need right now. But top of mind this morning is that I would like to have a friend to talk grammar with! Specifically Old English grammar -- anybody who is a language nerd that likes to talk about this stuff would do!
It's pretty hard to find someone who enjoys grammar 🤓
Why do I need that? Well, when I figure out something and suddenly have a breakthrough in understanding, it would be really nice to have someone to share it with!
I originally read Þām wīfe līcaþ sē mete. as "The woman likes (or enjoys) the food."
In that situation, I would have expected "the woman" to be in the nominative as the subject, and "the food" to be in the accusative as the direct object. But I noticed the articles and nouns are not in those cases.
Þām wīfe is Dative = "to the woman" or "for the woman" or "by the woman" -- some phrase like that.
sē mete is Nominative as a subject.
So after I puzzled a bit and looked up the endings to make sure, I realized regardless of the word order, I needed to read this as "The food is enjoyed by the woman." So the food is the subject, and the "by the woman" is the Dative form for that noun.
That makes perfect sense, and I am happy that I noticed the articles and nouns are not in the cases that support the way I originally read the sentence. I mean, even the fact that I noticed means that some of this material is sinking in!
Seriously though, this class is moving fast, and I'm having to spend way more time than I expected on it!
It's pretty hard to find someone who enjoys grammar 🤓
Why do I need that? Well, when I figure out something and suddenly have a breakthrough in understanding, it would be really nice to have someone to share it with!
Example:
I puzzled over this sentence in the flashcards for the current class chapter:
I originally read Þām wīfe līcaþ sē mete. as "The woman likes (or enjoys) the food."
In that situation, I would have expected "the woman" to be in the nominative as the subject, and "the food" to be in the accusative as the direct object. But I noticed the articles and nouns are not in those cases.
Þām wīfe is Dative = "to the woman" or "for the woman" or "by the woman" -- some phrase like that.
sē mete is Nominative as a subject.
So after I puzzled a bit and looked up the endings to make sure, I realized regardless of the word order, I needed to read this as "The food is enjoyed by the woman." So the food is the subject, and the "by the woman" is the Dative form for that noun.
That makes perfect sense, and I am happy that I noticed the articles and nouns are not in the cases that support the way I originally read the sentence. I mean, even the fact that I noticed means that some of this material is sinking in!
Seriously though, this class is moving fast, and I'm having to spend way more time than I expected on it!