User:JasperBarrmál

Hello,

I am interested in Old Norse (ON) Philology and frequently use Wiktionary as a dictionary and etymological guide, especially when I'm not at home and can use my smartphone–rather than carrying around several large books and furiously flipping through them. This is a phenomenal resource for language study and simple linguistic mapping (e.i. what a word means, where it comes from, what its variations are, what its parent and descendent forms are, what its parent and descendent languages are, etc.). As I learn more and more about Old Norse and the (history of) Germanic languages, I am noticing more and more gaps in WIktionary's entry and reference information and the corresponding need for new entries and entry connectivity. Thus, I've decided to finally learn how to edit and contribute to Wiktionary and do my part!

Many of the ON entries look similar to those of reconstructed photo-languages, yet ON is a highly attested language. For simplicities sake, ON entries should not necessary mirror modern language pages (e.g. expansive entries for English words), but can certainly be expanded relative to the myriad original texts and centuries of published scholarship. Though there are extensive sources pertaining to ON language, history, and study online, a majority of those which are the most interesting and in-depth are so buried that the search for answers becomes digital archeology. Clearly, extensive effort has been put into the Old Norse, Old English, Proto-Germanic, etc. entries here; I'm very interested in helping convert this buried information into being (extraordinarily) easy to access–all in one, interconnected, location. My vision is to help improve and create entries which are useful for any (English-reading) viewer and for novice and expert researchers alike–meaning straightforward, consistent, and uncluttered as well as substantive, reliable, and comprehensive.

I'm just learning the ropes (script), but striving to acheive stylistic consistency and community norms, so if you see something, say something! A number of the formatting and template processes I see being used are highly confusing to me at this stage and also appear not to be in consistent use throughout the site–I suppose this is in keeping with the much more lax policies relative to Wikipedia.

My initial project is to work to improve and expand the Old Norse entries for the words considered by contemporary scholars to be the most frequently used in the sagas and other ON literature. The goal is to identify those words which are not at the same high standard of many existing ON entries and to raise them up as best I can. I'll also devote some time mapping out some fascinating oddities (s and the like) from literature. '''American English is my first and primary language. I have studied Spanish and am currently studying Ojibwe, Swedish, and Old Norse.'''

Takk!


 * Þá vil ek  þér skipit, ef þú vill þiggja.
 * Then I wish to give you the ship, if you wish to accept it.