OE/Icelandic fun

I was reading some verbs today and was delighted to find some fun things between Icelandic and OE as well as Icelandic and Modern English. I shall share now.

The word for "bitten" is bitinn (pronounced the same) - hehehehe!!!
The word for "eaten" is etinn (pronounced like eight-in)
The word for "fallen" is fallinn (pronounced the same)

Verbs with past participles ending in -en in English are known as strong verbs. In OE almost all verbs were strong, and most of them became weak over time (weak pps end in -ed). There is one that is currently in the process of changing, but I don't remember which. I'll have to think about it.

Another piece of info: in linguistics, especially OE, when studying verbs there is a thing called "principal parts." they usually give you certain forms of the verb that are different from each other, so that you know how to inflect it. For instance, for this Icelandic one (bera): ber bar bárum borinn, ber is the present indicative first person singular, bar is, I think, third person singular preterite indicative, bárum is first person plural something or other, and borinn is the past participle. They'll give you 4 if they're all different and 3 if they are less different.

So I was looking at the principal parts for that one I just listed, and noticed it was practically the same as OE. Observe.

Icel: bera (bear) - ber borinn
OE: beran - bær boren (I could not find the rest of them)

Note: þ is a "th" sound and ð is as well.
Icel: þola (suffer) - þoldi þolað
OE: þolian - þolie þoled (couldn't find the rest of those either)
That word was used like a million times in Beowulf. I know it well and laughed when I saw the Icel. one.

þykja (think) - þyki þótti þótt
þencan - þenc þohte þoht

See the similarities? I was shocked. They really are similar in a lot of ways. It's like Icelandic and OE were the same up until like 1000AD and then OE drastically changed, while Icel. stayed basically the same. It's weird, because it's largely unpredictable and uncontrollable. I'm guessing that Iceland is isolated and small enough so that there really wasn't anything coming in that made it change. They don't really have dialects there and no large group of immigrants or settlers have ever been there. So, no reason to change. English, on the other hand, has had innumerable reasons to change.

There's your linguistics lesson for this evening. Hope you enjoyed it.