Tag Archives: Icelandic lessons
When Icelanders fail Icelandic. Posted by hulda on Jul 2, 2015
I’ve often addressed the various problems a language learner might come across when learning the language, but sometimes it seems that Icelandic is not easy for the natives either. Despite all the efforts at preserving the language it just tries to change itself anyway, resulting in f.ex. þágufallssýki – the dative illness – where people will attempt…
From hand-leg to leg-throat. Posted by hulda on May 7, 2015
Broadening your vocabulary is best started with themes, and I’m going to suggest body parts as a good first option! This is especially because you’ll find some dangers therein and some fairly interesting words as well, words that really make you wonder why and how do they even exist. Did the Icelanders of old just…
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…
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…
Angry, angry Icelanders. Posted by hulda on Nov 30, 2014
After a whole month of talking about fighting in the Medieval era I felt it’s time to see if anything’s changed in one thousand years. Are Icelanders still solving their problems by hacking parts off of their enemies? Should you carry an axe around just in case when visiting the country? Perhaps not, because one…
Smoky vikings of Smoky Bay. Posted by hulda on Jul 31, 2014
As I was browsing through my notes about hljóðbreyting (= metathesis) for another entry that I currently have in the works I found something interesting that I thought might amuse you while not being quite as heavy as learning the theory of different sound changes. I understand many of you, dear readers, have recently suffered…