Tag Archives: grammar
Subjunctive mood; it can be easy to use! Posted by hulda 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…
Subjunctive mood and how it’s used, part 1. Posted by hulda 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…
A naked tourist on the Prime Minister’s lawn. Posted by hulda 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…
Personal pronouns, or how polite can be rude. Posted by hulda 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…
Forsetningarliðir + þolfall, prepositions + accusative Posted by hulda 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…
Is your neighbour an elf? Posted by hulda 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…
Affixes and Compounds Posted by sequoia 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…