Tag Archives: grammar
Fyrir, or four uses for ‘for’. Posted by hulda on Apr 2, 2015
I’ve recently received two comments regarding the use of the preposition fyrir and since the topic needs quite a bit of elaborating I decided to write a whole blog entry for it. Fyrir is one of those sneaky words that look deceptively easy to use. It’s like the English “for”, right? Yes – and no – and then…
Non-binary pronouns in Icelandic. Posted by hulda on Feb 26, 2015
Icelandic grammar offers a gender neutral option for personal pronouns. Does that therefore mean that referring to non-binary people is easy and straight-forward? Alas, no. Icelandic gender structure is very strict and merciless and the local non-binary folk have had to give this matter a great deal of thought. When the whole world of Icelandic…
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…
Icelandic horses for courses and… courses. Posted by hulda on Jul 17, 2014
Question and answer time! During the last month you’ve asked the Icelandic blog, via both the e-mail and the comments section, a couple of interesting questions that I’ll try to answer today. First a question was about horses: what are all the different words that mean horse in Icelandic? The most obvious one is hestur of…
With with, with or with? Posted by hulda on Apr 11, 2014
“Mig langar að tala við þig, hjá þér, og þá langar mig að tala með þér upp á sviði.” Put this sentence in an online translator and you get “I want to talk to with you and allow me to speak with you on stage” as a translation. Icelandic prepositions are endlessly confusing and here…