Niw Englisch/Level I/Hu hattest þu?



Lesson I.1: Hu hattest þu? (1. Dæl)

This lesson deals with basic conversation topics such as saying hello and goodbye and asking people how they are feeling. This lesson features audio recordings by native speakers to help you with the pronunciation.

Dialogue
Read and listen to the following dialogue between two students: Franz and Greta. You don't have to understand anything! You should rather try to find out how each word is pronounced.

Now try to understand the dialogue with the help of the following list of vocabulary. (A complete translation is given in the answers to the next problems.)

Hellos and Goodbyes
There are many ways of saying hello and goodbye in Niw Englisc; some of them are:

* You will need to know each expression with an asterisk (*) after it. The others, of course, would be useful to know if you are traveling to regions where they are used.

The more formal phrases are goden Morgen, goden Dæȝ, and oþ Eftseen. The less formal ones are wes haal, Dæȝ, servus, and ciao. The others are somewhat neutral on the formal-informal scale.

Mr. and Mrs.
In Niw Englisc, Herr and Frowe are used instead of Mr. and Mrs. before a last name; e.g., Mr. Schwarz – Herr Schwarz.

Frowe is used for married women. You should use Miss – Frœwen in spoken Niw Englisc for an unmarried or younger woman.

Literally, þe Herr means the gentleman and þie Frowe means the lady. If you use these words without a last name after them, you have to use an article before them; e.g., þe Herr or þie Frau. This is actually just like in English. For example:
 * The woman's name is Mrs. Weiß – Þie Frowe hatte Frowe Weiß.

Most often you should use Lafdiȝ and Lafwerd when speaking in general terms and Herr/Frowe when speaking about a specific person.

Note also that the Niw Englisc translation of the man is þe Werr and the lady should be translated to þie Lafdiȝ. Thus, without last names you would rather use these pairs:
 * man and woman – Werr and Weif
 * men and women – Werres and Weife
 * lady and gentleman – Lafdiȝ and Lafwerd; less often: Frowe and Herr
 * ladies and gentlemen – Lafdigen and Lafwerdes; less often: Frowen and Herren

Replies to Hu gæþ't?
There are many ways to reply to the question Hu gæþ't? Here are some of them: * The more formal form is Hu gæþ it þiȝ?

After replying to the question, you could continue with: Or shorter:
 * And how are you? — And hu gæþ it þiȝ?
 * And you? — And þiȝ? (or: And self?)

Test
The test consists of three parts: pronunciation, vocabulary, and translation. As always, you should write down your answers before you check them. (Writing the Niw Englisc words is in fact a great way to practice the spelling of Niw Englisc words.) The vocabulary and translation problems are all from English to Niw Englisc because this is what you have to learn if you want to communicate in Niw Englisc. Once you are able to translate an English word to the corresponding Niw Englisc word, it won't be any problem to translate the Niw Englisc word back to English.