Archive for July, 2017
Passive Part III: Strong and Weak Past Participles Posted by Meg on Jul 31, 2017
Welcome to part III of our passive voice lesson. Today, we’ll take a look at constructing the past participle and using –st verbs to convey passive voice. It’ll all lead into a future lesson on lýsingarháttur þátíðar, where we’ll go into even more detail (horray!) on the various uses of past participles. Unfortunately, I underestimated…
Passive Voice Part II: Dative v. Accusative/Additional Cases Mingling With Passive Posted by Meg on Jul 27, 2017
Last time, we went over the basics of the passive voice. That concept – when the object of the sentence becomes the subject of the sentence and takes the nominative case– is called nefnifallsþolmynd. As the name implies, it is the “nominative” passive. Today, we’ll take it a step farther. Then, in my next blog, we’ll…
The Passive Voice: As Straightforward As It Seems? Posted by Meg on Jul 18, 2017
That’s a resounding nei, but you can get used to it. You can’t be passive if you want to learn to use the passive voice (þolmynd) in Icelandic. From the beginning of my education in English grammar, my teachers taught me to avoid the passive voice at all costs. In university lectures, the passive was reserved…