Icelandic Language Blog
Menu
Search

Tag Archives: grammar

Subjunctive mood; it can be easy to use! Posted by on Apr 8, 2013

Wouldn’t it be awesome if there was a way of telling when to use this form of verbs in Icelandic? Something that would always, or almost always work for you, and that the exceptions would be easy to tell apart? Here’s the good news – there are such rules! Here’s the bad news – it…

Continue Reading

Subjunctive mood and how it’s used, part 1. Posted by on Feb 28, 2013

Viðtengingarháttur, the subjunctive mood, is an often used verb form in Icelandic as it not only shows the typical subjunctive mood unreality – wishes, hopes, suspicions, plans, possibilities etc. – but is necessary for the most common polite phrases. Viðtengingarháttur -forms exist in both present and past tense. The word itself is a compound word…

Continue Reading

A naked tourist on the Prime Minister’s lawn. Posted by on Jan 31, 2013

One of our current classes is now focusing on what makes written text difficult to read. The most obvious causes are very topic specific vocabulary (that can make the text hard even for the locals), proverbs and idioms that are impossible to understand unless you already know what they mean etc. Then there’s the word…

Continue Reading

Personal pronouns, or how polite can be rude. Posted by on Jan 23, 2013

Personal pronouns – something that should be among the easiest things to learn in almost any new language – take a surprising amount of time to learn when it comes to Icelandic. This is partially because of the many declensions they have, but also because there are two different sets of them in use depending…

Continue Reading

Forsetningarliðir + þolfall, prepositions + accusative Posted by on Aug 25, 2012

Fréttin barst um allt landið. (= The news spread around the country.) It’s often difficult to tell exactly which case should be used in which context. At times Icelandic students face having to learn huge chunks of case-related grammar by heart, or gamble between two or more choices depending on the situation. Therefore it’s lucky…

Continue Reading

Is your neighbour an elf? Posted by on Jun 22, 2012

Happy Midsummer/Solstice everyone! Unlike many European countries, this time of the year is not celebrated very much in Iceland, at least in comparison. There’s Þórláksmessa (the summer version of it – one is held on 20th June and another on 23rd December) held in the memory of Þórlák hinn helga Þórláksson, the patron saint of…

Continue Reading

Affixes and Compounds Posted by on May 19, 2012

This is a companion to the post about compound words that I made earlier. Sometimes Icelandic words are often made of more than one stem/root words at once, along with suffixes, infixes (like a suffix or prefix but in the middle of words), et cetera. This means they’re compound words but not necessarily compounds that…

Continue Reading

Older posts
Newer posts