Nordic Languages Thread

[Armchair Survivalist]

Why is there no Danish language group here? Could it be because of this?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-mOy8VUEBk

[Fimbulvarg]

Why is there no Danish language group here? Could it be because of this?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-mOy8VUEBk

I suspected it was going to be this clip before I clicked the link. It's an amazing skit.

[Laufey]

Today I found out that one of our choir songs that I really love has a rather gruesome history.

:iceland:
Hættu að gráta hringaná
Heyrðu ræðu mína
Ég skal gefa þér gull í tá
Þó Grímur taki þína

Hættu að gráta hringaná
Huggun er það meiri
Ég skal gefa þér gull í tá
Þó Grímur taki fleiri

Hættu að gráta hringaná
Huggun má það kalla
Ég skal gefa þér gull í tá
Þó Grímur taki þær allar

:uk:
Don't cry, sweet maiden
Hear my words
I will give you gold for a toe
Though Grímur takes yours

Don't cry, sweet maiden
There's more consolation
I will give you gold for a toe
Though Grímur takes more.

Don't cry, sweet maiden
It may be called consolation
I will give you gold for a toe
Though Grímur takes them all.

What I learned was that the Grímur in question was Grímur Magnússon, a self-learned doctor, who once amputated a servant lady's frost bitten toes with a chisel and that this poem was written to comfort the woman for the loss of her toes. 

The song's a bit tricky to translate so apologies for my word choices... f.ex. hættu að gráta would directly translate as "stop crying" but that doesn't convey the actual meaning, which is more along the lines of "please don't cry". Hringaná is another one with no good, exact translation: it's a kenning for a young woman. Hring = ring, hringa = rings' (genitive plural) and ná = Gná, the name of a servant girl of Frigg's. Using the translation "Frigg's servant lady of many rings" felt a bit cumbersome so I opted for "sweet maiden" instead.

[Solovei]

http://gizmodo.com/icelandic-has-the-best-words-for-technology-1702697272 This article talks about Iceland's "language purism" and seemed like something you guys might want to read/discuss~

[Laufey]

http://gizmodo.com/icelandic-has-the-best-words-for-technology-1702697272 This article talks about Iceland's "language purism" and seemed like something you guys might want to read/discuss~

Heh, regardless of which word becomes the most used one there usually is an Icelandic variant in existence. Kaffi is such an old loan word that it has no other names, but the official, Icelandic name for banana is actually bjúgaldin (= bendy-fruit). Banani is easier to use though so it's become the word people most often use.
Oooo can I start a little guessing game? Guess what the following things are:

Loðber (= hairy-berry)
Súraldin (= sour-fruit)
Flatbaka (= flat-bake)

[Fimbulvarg]

http://gizmodo.com/icelandic-has-the-best-words-for-technology-1702697272 This article talks about Iceland's "language purism" and seemed like something you guys might want to read/discuss~

The Icelandic language purism is kind of notorious. Their word for computer is basically an amalgamation of "number" and "prophetess".

Loðber (= hairy-berry)
Súraldin (= sour-fruit)
Flatbaka (= flat-bake)

Raspberry?
Lemon?
Pancake?

[Solovei]

Oooo can I start a little guessing game? Guess what the following things are:

Loðber (= hairy-berry)
Súraldin (= sour-fruit)
Flatbaka (= flat-bake)

Kiwi
Lemon
Flatbread/pita?

[Laufey]

One guessed right so far! Hairy-berry is indeed a kiwi, usually called kíví in Icelandic. Lemon is a really close guess for sour-fruit but not quite correct.

The Icelandic language purism is kind of notorious. Their word for computer is basically an amalgamation of "number" and "prophetess".

Still better than Finnish tietokone = knowledge machine...

[Fimbulvarg]

Still better than Finnish tietokone = knowledge machine...

Lime then for sour fruit?

It sounds like it could be an appropriate cultural difference thing if the Swedes in year 90 called computers "knowledge machines", the Icelanders "number prophetesses" and the Norwegians "Electric Boogaloos".

[Laufey]

Lime is indeed correct. And I can give flatbaka/flat-bake because it's a bit more on the difficult side: it's a pizza.

"Electric Boogaloos".

...wat.

[JoB]

Still better than Finnish tietokone = knowledge machine...

Sounds like the Finns read themselves some Vannevar Bush quite early on ...

[viola]

Hi! To those of you learning Icelandic, I have a website that I found a few years ago that might help. It gives the conjugations of verbs and the declensions of nouns and adjectives. It also does numbers and people's names.

http://bin.arnastofnun.is/DMII/

It only shows the main page in English, so some of you might need this link to understand the names for all the different parts of speech: http://bin.arnastofnun.is/DMII/frame/

[Laufey]

A few warnings regarding the page Beygingarlýsing íslensks nútímamáls (BÍN) although it's a really good tool for any Icelandic learner: you have to write the word in exactly with all accents in place and - if needed - with Icelandic letters. Else the search function won't work, or worse, gives you the wrong answer because one accent can entirely change the meaning of the word.

If the word you're searching is not in basic form tick the little box that says "Leita að beygingarmynd".

Finally, because Icelandic declensions can occasionally be identical to other words or their declensions, you may end up with a list of words instead of just one. Sadly BÍN does not give you the meanings of the words so from there you'll have to rely on a dictionary.

Example of the above could be f.ex. the sentence Árni á Á á á á á (= Árni from the place Á has sheep by a river), if you use BÍN to look up á and tick the box I mentioned above you'll get five results.

[Solovei]

A few warnings regarding the page Beygingarlýsing íslensks nútímamáls (BÍN) although it's a really good tool for any Icelandic learner: you have to write the word in exactly with all accents in place and - if needed - with Icelandic letters. Else the search function won't work, or worse, gives you the wrong answer because one accent can entirely change the meaning of the word.

If the word you're searching is not in basic form tick the little box that says "Leita að beygingarmynd".

Finally, because Icelandic declensions can occasionally be identical to other words or their declensions, you may end up with a list of words instead of just one. Sadly BÍN does not give you the meanings of the words so from there you'll have to rely on a dictionary.

Example of the above could be f.ex. the sentence Árni á Á á á á á (= Árni from the place Á has sheep by a river), if you use BÍN to look up á and tick the box I mentioned above you'll get five results.

XD so now we know what Reynir was shouting!

[Divra]

XD so now we know what Reynir was shouting!

Congratulations. Have a cookie, you just won the Internet.