Tag Archives: Icelandic lessons
Whose child are you? Posted by hulda on Jul 7, 2016
“From which family are you?” The question shook me awake from my afternoon slumber on the bus on my way home. It wasn’t addressed to me, but it’s such a rare thing to hear nowadays that it managed to find its way to my consciousness (and after a workday spent on my feet very few things…
Iceland-compass. Posted by hulda on Mar 10, 2016
Compass, what a wonderful, helpful tool… or so you would think until you come to Iceland and realize that the Icelandic idea of what’s in which direction and what it should be called differ somewhat from the rest of the world’s idea of directions. For example, West Iceland. That would be from Westfjords to Reykjanes…
Top ten Icelandic posts! Posted by hulda on Dec 17, 2015
The year is drawing to an end and Christmas is nearing, so now is the best time to look back a bit and see which posts of this blog have proved most popular! 1) Staving off a Disaster – Magical Tattoos Remember when it was really popular to have tattoos done in kanji with very…
When women are men and men women. Posted by hulda on Oct 8, 2015
Recently I found a question about feminine nouns in Icelandic: the person asking had found many masculine and neuter nouns that could apply to either gender, but no feminine ones that would have worked for non-females. Do they even exist? The short answer would be yes, they do exist and there’s plenty of them! The…
Soon landing in Reykjavík! Posted by hulda on Sep 17, 2015
The ravens have returned to the villages and towns. In Iceland ravens are a seasonal sight, living the spring and summer in the countryside but spending the dark, cold season among humans. During the summer seagulls take over but come autumn they make way for the true kings who return to take their thrones atop…
Reciting Icelandic poetry. Posted by hulda on Aug 27, 2015
If I had to describe Icelandic as a language, one word would come to mind immediately: poetic. For most of their existence Icelanders have always valued poets highly, so highly in fact that an important person was practically assumed to be a skilled poet and even the poorest farmer could (and often would) show off…
Filling in your Icelandic. Posted by hulda on Jul 21, 2015
The one big difference between written and spoken Icelandic it would probably be this: spoken Icelandic has more words. Well – non-words, actually, more like fillers and exclamations of various types. Some are used for the typical purpose of a filler word, to patch a pause in conversation while the speaker is thinking of how to…