Greeting Hails

[Grsartor at AOL.COM]

Well, it looks as if we have a variety of suggestions: stick with "hails"  
in all circumstances, as the expression may have become formulaic; decline 
it  for gender and number in the normal way; or take a look at what Old Norse 
did,  since it has bequeathed us a large body of literature, and the 
language  distinguished genders in both singular and plural. It is a pity we no 
longer  seem to have llama_nom, who could doubtless have informed us about 
this. The  only further comment I can make about Old Norse usage is that in the 
example  Þunragais gave us,
 
verit heilir, konungr
 
the use of a plural verb with plural adjective in a remark addressed to a  
king looks as if it might be a polite use of a plural for a logical singular 
 such as we find in a lot of European tongues, including French and German 
(not  to say English, in which the process has run its course by having the 
singular  "thou/thee" ousted by the plural "ye/you"). Could Þunragais or 
others tell us  more about the Old Norse practice?
 
Gerry T.



In a message dated 31/05/2012 14:30:49 GMT Daylight Time,  
becareful_icanseeyourfuture at hotmail.de writes:


So,  I would say, when greeting a male person it's: Hails. When greeting a 
female  person: haila. When greeting a neuter thing (which is not often): 
Hailata. And  in Plural: Hailai, m; Hailos, f; Haila, n.
Would you agree with that? It  appears logically that the forms are 
declined for persons. 

To:  gothic-l at yahoogroups.com
From: thomas at ruhm.at
Date: Thu, 31 May 2012  11:07:08 +0200
Subject: Re: [gothic-l] Greeting  Hails


























In other languages greetings and other frequently  used expressions with 
not much meaning the singular can be  generalized.














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