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Iceland from the air. Posted by on Jun 14, 2012

For the last couple of weeks I’ve been on a bit of a vacation and while it was most fun and relaxing it also feels good to be back. I have to admit that when I first moved to Iceland it was out of necessity rather than any real wish of living here. I had…

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Dogs Posted by on Jun 12, 2012

Reykjavík-ians (Reykvíkingar – often towns and small areas have a special name for their inhabitants, although I think it only shows up in Icelandic about as much as in English) have a strange thing with dogs. It’s said that in the past, dogs were completely banned from the capital and you couldn’t even own one…

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Ordering from a Bookstore Posted by on May 12, 2012

The other day I ordered some books from this used bookstore, and I remembered how confusing some online shopping terms might be (doing this particular one I learned a new term too). I chose to show you this bookstore because unlike a lot of sites, while this one does openly ship outside of Iceland and…

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Pronunciation of vowels. Posted by on May 10, 2012

Or: how to avoid saying “penis” or something equally embarrassing by accident. While it’s ok to have an accent it’s still crucial to learn to pronounce as correctly as possible and the reason for this is that words easily change their meaning in Icelandic. Before we go on I feel like apologizing for the chosen topic…

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We all have an accent. Posted by on Apr 14, 2012

Here’s a small example set of different kinds of accents from my class. Try to hear which countries they say they’re from for a small language practice. (Note the man who walks past the camera – we all saw him but he doesn’t show up in the video. I’m suspecting he may be one of…

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English cognates and slang in Icelandic Posted by on Apr 14, 2012

There’s lots of English slang in spoken Icelandic, and a bit less in written. (EDIT: Please see Alex’s comment for notes about “cognates” and “false friends”, etc. as well as good examples!) In person Icelanders, when chatting with friends, might use straight English words for things that may not exist in Icelandic, that have a…

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Easter proverbs Posted by on Apr 9, 2012

Here are the sayings I have from this year’s chocolate Easter eggs, as described in Hulda’s previous post. Some of them are clear just by looking up the individual words, but some, as she mentioned, might not make sense even to a native speaker. There might be some errors in typing them up, I noticed…

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