Learning Icelandic 3: Between Horses

As I was telling you, the pandemic arrived by the time I finished my Icelandic 3 course, and I had a hiatus until May 4. During that time, I also couldn't go to work as regularly as I had been doing. And then I had a lot of free time. I sin from procrastinating, but this time I wanted to get ahead of what was to come (which fortunately has not yet arrived, but, as usual, when it happens, I will tell you). Therefore, I used those days to refine my precarious Icelandic.

My first step was to complete level 2 of icelandiconline. I must confess that although I recommended this tool as an introduction to the language, I don’t recommend it at all for more advanced levels. It’s extremely tedious and repetitive. It seems to me that those behind the site stopped having a love for art, and regarding the second level, they did it more out of obligation than to create a useful and digestible tool. How overwhelming it is to be trying to memorize equestrian words, because for some reason, the geniuses of pedagogy who designed the site believe that it is essential to know how to distinguish between the gallop of a horse and another type of trot ah! because you have to know that Icelandic horses have a particular gallop. [Eye roll]. Anyway ... having concluded with level 2 of icelandiconline, I decided that the best thing would be to study with another resource.

My next attempt to learn on my own was to download the book Íslenska fyrir alla 4, which is the same one we used in Mímir's courses. My intention was, since the book is very easy to solve on my own, that I could do it and study in advance for the course which I have not yet decided if I will continue. To do this, I had the magnificent idea of ​​torturing A., so he explained to me all the little things and corrected my exercises in the book. Everything was going well. I planned to finish a chapter per day, so in a week, I would be done solving the whole book. It was not until I found the so-called verbs ending with -st. This verb form is what is known as the middle voice or passive voice, but it is also a reflexive form (which falls on the subject), it can change the meaning of a word, it is indirect style, and they STILL have the impudence that with this ending they can form verbs that come from nouns. Everything in just a couple of letters. I threw everything. I gave up. I insulted the four winds and exclaimed "HOW THE #$&% I AM GOING TO LEARN ALL OF THIS!". Once again, the Icelandic invites me to be born again and learn everything from scratch to make it easier for me. [Heavy eye rolling].