DISCLAIMER: This is the first text on this topic that I translated to English, so technically is Part 1, however, to avoid any confusion, let's keep it as Part 2. Since I translate directly from the article that I posted in Spanish, this article makes much more sense in my native language. Sorry for the inconvenience!
This text has been rescheduled for multiple reasons. First, because I didn’t know how to structure the things that I wanted to share with you and that were also relevant. I decided to wait for my Icelandic 3 course to finish, to have a conclusion to what I was going through back then. Later the pandemic came, and with it, my next course was postponed. This time I had decided to register myself in the Icelandic Conversation level 3-4 course, since my tongue has not yet come loose, although I already understand better what people say to me. The course kept being delayed and delayed, and while we were in the #SocialDistancing stage, I started to study on my own, with the help of the next course book (from Icelandic 4) and the site icelandiconline.com, for a subject that I hope later write about in the future. During my studies outside the classroom, I came across more and more horrors of Icelandic, which I also wanted to include in this text. So I started rewriting and rewriting. By the time I had already undone the idea of the Frankenstein-like text that I had, everything went back to normal, so I started the aforementioned conversation course where I am currently… SUFFERING LIKE PRECIOUS.
But, let's see. In this latest version I will explore everything that I have noticed during my progress with the language, the things that I have already been able to tame, the many that I haven’t and a little bit of how the experience has been in general. Possibly this text will be very long so it will be divided into three articles.
Icelandic 3 in Mímir
The courses in Mímir are very helpful. Now that I had a different teacher, I have to say that there are certain advantages depending on the teachers, according to what they think is the appropriate dynamics. It is for this reason that I don't know if the Icelandic 3 program itself is as focused on declinations as it was for me, but as a curiosity fact, that was my first big trauma. THE DAMNED DECLINATIONS. Icelandic has four cases: nominative, accusative, dative and genitive. Each of these cases is understood by the ending, according to gender (masculine, feminine, or neutral) and number (singular or plural). And when I say it’s my trauma, is because everything, EVERYTHING is declined according to what you want to say. In Spanish we do not have this type of grammatical inflection, since we use the syntax of the language to imply what Icelanders can with a single word. The problem, at least for me, lies above all in understanding the use of the accusative and the dative, since the first we understand it as the direct complement (the one that answers the question what? ) and the second as the indirect complement (which answer the question: for what? or to whom?).
If you have in mind your elementary Spanish classes, we are probably on the right track. The nominative case is when the word hasn’t been flexed, that is, the neutral form. And the genitive case indicates possession, which is much more similar to English when adding -’s in certain cases. If I am confusing you more it’s because that is the problem. Icelanders use Hér er (here it is), Um (about), Frá (de), Til (for / a), to remember each declension… so there is no doubt.
So if I want to say "I am going to work" I say "ég fer i vinnuna", but if I want to say "I am at work" I say "ég er i vinnunni". And in case you are curious, here is a table of how the word work is declined.
What I can tell you is that learning Icelandic is an excellent memory exercise.
Wassup with Góðan daginn?
From all the texts that I’ve used for learning, they begin with the ways in which one greets, thanks, asks the time ... and all that mishmash of phrases for daily use. And it was not until Icelandic 3 in which a classmate asked the teacher (regarding the declension) that the greeting (yes, the same one we repeat to exhaustion as parrots) is wrong. If the noun is determined, the adjective has a weak declension. So the correct thing to say is "Góðan dag" (a good day) or "góða daginn" (the good day), but what is commonly used is a combination of both.
Another one of the errors that are frequently found in spoken Icelandic is the one that is expressed with the pronouns mér (from me) and mig (about me). There are a number of verbs that are impersonal, for example to want (að langa), which people use in everyday life with the pronoun mér. This is an addendum to my list of “Things that I will surely forget that are an Icelandic rule”.
And to finish off this part, the course ended with an exam that I only remember doing well, but once again, the everyday Icelandic (to call it in some way) let me down. From the sisters of A., I have learned most of the words I know, perhaps due to age, they have more patience to explain to me, in addition to articulating much more than adults. But of course their Icelandic is steeped in idioms and borrowings from other languages. In particular, the word "tjilla" or "chilla" that comes from the English word "chill" and means the same thing: "to relax". And there I am, trying to look it up in the dictionary, since I didn't know how to write it (the c doesn't exist in Icelandic), when I asked the teacher, she laughed and said "where did you get this word from?" She wrote a horrible red cross with the reminder that relaxing is formally called "slappa af".