When the dead wash buses. Posted by hulda on Jan 21, 2015
The funniest traps that the declensions of Icelandic create are the words with different meanings that have a few identical forms. You’ll no doubt see this when you use the BÍN because often when you look up a word you’ll get a long list of different options that all apply, only they rarely mean the same. It’s then…
Dative in Icelandic: throw that ball! Posted by hulda on Jan 14, 2015
Genitive was covered in Holy genitive case in Icelandic, Batman! and I touched upon accusative in Prepositions + accusative, so let’s now look at the third one, the dative. Before we go on, one warning: Icelandic dative does not work exactly as dative is described to. For the most part þágufall closely resembles dative but…
Keeping that Icelandic-learning resolution. Posted by hulda on Jan 7, 2015
Hello again, dear readers, and welcome to the year 2015! It’s time to make some resolutions for the year – or maybe you’ve already made some? Any language learning -related ones? Anyone up to studying a rare Nordic language that’s about as close to Old Norse as can get? 😉 A new year’s resolution, nýársheit…
Elves, fire, explosions: New Year in Iceland Posted by hulda on Dec 30, 2014
New Year is fast approaching. For Icelanders it begins tomorrow, or perhaps right after Christmas, depending on whether you use the official definition or the start of the partying. Officially we’re beginning tomorrow, however, the party is already on. We’ve had fireworks every day, some quite flashy since that’s the way the fireworks sellers here…
Christmas is almost here. Posted by hulda on Dec 19, 2014
Iceland is expecting Christmas completely decked in white. We had even more snow yesterday and cars were stuck throughout the country, so in case you saw people clad in red pushing them out of the banks (link) those were not Jólasveinar but Björgunarsveitinn, the voluntary rescue units. They don’t give you presents but I bet…
Icelandic Christmas calendar Posted by hulda on Dec 11, 2014
Welcome to count the days with the Icelandic blog, dear readers – I’m going to follow the Icelandic tradition of Christmas calendar in which the count-down does not begin on the 1st Dec but the night before the 12th. There will be a new part added to this post every day, so stay tuned! Today it’s… Kertasníkir (= Candle-Stealer)…
Jólin að koma! Posted by hulda on Dec 4, 2014
Christmas is on its way! Without further ado, let’s get into the spirit of Icelandic Christmas 2014 – but first some sad news. The present that was blown away “Góður hluti af efri hluta trésins brotnaði af og stjarnan hékk í miðju trénu.” (= A large part of the lower part of the tree was broken off…