Tag Archives: Icelandic lessons
A hot dog for Mr. Clinton. Posted by hulda on Jul 9, 2012
Today I put together a short grammar lesson with some easy rules on the use of hjá, við and með, three prepositions that can all be translated as “with”. The difficulty lies in the different nuances and usage of all three, and getting them mixed up will hardly ever work in a grammatical sense. And…
Months and Dates Posted by sequoia on Jun 26, 2012
Month names are easier to remember than the days of the week because they’re so similar to English. Month names aren’t capitalized, unless another capitalization rule overrides it (such as when they’re at the beginning of a sentence). This post is more useful in conjunction with the posts about days of the week, number post…
Is this person a drusla, a slut? Posted by hulda on Jun 24, 2012
You may be wondering why on earth am I so keen on teaching you rude words of Icelandic today with such a provocative image attached, but I have an excuse, I swear! The annual Drusluganga (SlutWalk) parade crowded up the downtown area yesterday and by a lucky accident I happened to walk right into it. The answer…
When the free dictionary is wrong Posted by sequoia on Jun 19, 2012
This is about when you can’t find the meaning of a word because the free dictionary doesn’t have it or is wrong. This will happen more and more as you read in Icelandic. Part of it is because English is a much more specific language, like how we have many words with very similar meanings…
Days of the Week Posted by sequoia on Jun 16, 2012
Here are the days of the week. Names of the months and how to write dates will come in a later post. sunnudagur – Sunday (sun-day) mánudagur – Monday (moon-day) þriðjudagur – Tuesday (third-day) miðvikudagur – Wednesday (mid-week day) fimmtudagur (sometimes spelled as “fimtu”, especially in older texts) – Thursday (fifth-day) föstudagur – Friday (fasting-day)…
Misc. Gender Rules Posted by sequoia on Jun 5, 2012
Here are a few random notes about rules to do with genders. When writing to a mixed group, you can use a slash mark to alternate genders (similar to our “If your student wishes for a bought lunch, he/she can…”). Example: Mig langar til að biðja þig að vera svo góð/ur að svara eftirfarandi könnun…
Prefix and Suffix Meanings Posted by sequoia on Jun 2, 2012
Some affixes add a meaning to the word (such as the prefix ó) and some don’t. There are a few that you can easily look up the meaning of, but many of them don’t exist on their own in the dictionary so here I’m listing mostly ones that you can’t look up. All of these…