Reykjavík Grapevine - 25.07.2003, Blaðsíða 12

- the reykjavík grapevine -12 july 25th - august 7th, 2003 - the reykjavík grapevine - 13july 25th - august 7th, 2003
C O L U M N S
“HEYRÐU!” - “HA?”
FUNDAMENTALS OF THE
ICELANDIC LANGUAGE
URBAN MENACE
Just the other day I listened to two
Radio X presenters (einasta radióið sem
rokkar, in case you have forgotten) as
they spent considerable time pondering
over the variety of ways people greet
each other in different languages.
They seemed to enjoy particularly the
French ‘Ca va?’ - ‘Ca va.’, with its mere
exchange of punctuation marks, and
the impossibility of battling the ultimate
full stop of ‘Iamfinethankyouhowareyou.
’, a sentence which might pretend to be
a question, although neither the person
asking nor the person asked is likely to
give a damn.
I remember quite distinctly my
first encounter with the Icelandic ‘how
are you’. I was an autodidact who had
started learning the language because
I liked the funny Icelandic characters
my computer had such a hard time
coping with, no matter what encoding
I used. At that point I had never in my
life been to Iceland or even near it, so
the first time a genuine Icelander asked
me ‘Hvað segir þú?’ [How are you,
translated literally: What do you say],
I was totally confused and thought he
was either deaf or not very clever, and
in all my innocence I answered ‘Ég segir
ekki neitt’ [I am not saying anything]. It
was his turn then to wonder which of us
was dumb.
Icelanders are secretly proud of their
complicated language. Textbooks of
Icelandic will of course brag about
the four cases and weak and strong
declensions on their opening pages,
to scare students of a less masochistic
nature off. Nowhere in
the books, however,
will you find the few
words that are the true
foundation stones of
spoken Icelandic.
The very first thing
you have to do if you
want to conquer the
language is to take some
breathing exercises. In
Icelandic, it is not enough
to say ‘yes’: you have to
take a deep breath at the
same time. The result
is a ‘yaah’ which to an
unsuspecting ear sounds
like a futile attempt to
gasp for air, as if you
were choking on cocoa
powder, drowning, or
had just gotten the shock
of your life, catching your macho
boyfriend wearing your bra.
Having mastered the physical
aspect of Icelandic, you may proceed
to vocabulary building. By far the
most frequent Icelandic word seems
to be ‘heyrðu’. Quite flexible in its
application, translating sometimes as
‘listen’ corresponding to ‘well’ but often
has the weight of ‘now thou shalt listen
(for there is a great idea coming)’. When
addressed with ‘heyrðu’, you must not
only turn to the speaker and await
further instructions; you are also to
establish audial contact, and you can
do so with number two in the Icelandic
corpus, the popular ‘ha?’ [What?]. The
word will prove particularly useful at the
beginning of your studies, when you will
need each Icelandic sentence repeated
three to four times then eventually
translated into English.
‘Heyrðu’ and ‘ha’ will see you
through 99% of all your Icelandic
communication. They seem to be
expressions unique to Iceland; I can
only think of one equivalent outside
Icelandic and it is a crying shame the
two syllables of ‘heyrðu’ prevent the
word from appearing where it belongs,
especially when other languages have
to make do with lame substitutes such
as ‘Hear! or ‘Lo!’. I therefore strongly
recommend that, metric constraints or
not, the Icelandic translation of Beowulf
open the way it does in Old English:
‘Heyrðu!’
Beata
Being the mild mannered type, who
would rather join a ladies league than
gun a man down, there are not many
subjects the discussion of which can
significantly raise my blood pressure.
A most definite exception is Icelandic
drivers.
First I have to lay my cards on the
table and confess a natural bias in this
area. A) I don’t possess a vehicle of
any kind, B) I don’t have a full or even
a provisional licence and C) I don’t even
know how to drive. Well, if pressed,
I could probably transfer a car from
point A to point B but, I assure you, it
would not be pretty. Car culture rivals
the United States in its intensity here on
this modest island. In fact, both A and B
of the above are deeply frowned upon
while C, I should imagine, is probably
a criminal offence. The number of
cars per head of population exceeds
most European countries despite high
prices.
Practical necessity is undoubtedly a
factor. In the countryside, in particular,
people learn to drive from a very
early age. Indeed, my rural in-laws
reacted with astonishment when they
discovered that I had not been motoring
since the age of four. Astonishment
turned to stupefaction when I unwisely
revealed that at the age of 29, I still
had not mastered the simplest of motor
vehicles.
Ever aside from the practicalities
of life here, Icelanders are very much
in love with their cars. Even massive
improvement and expansion of the
public transport system would not
tempt Icelanders from behind the wheel.
This is bad news for the city authorities
as concern grows over increased
congestion and rising pollution in the
capital. Take a stroll down the main
street any day of the week to witness
a contributing factor; an endless
procession of slow moving cars
populated by a single individual. While
other countries have devised innovative
strategies to improve the car-to-human
ratio, such vocabulary has yet to reach
these shores. To an Icelander, a car
pool is the place you can take your
vehicle for a refreshing dip. Reykjavik
was obviously a city planned by drivers
for drivers, judging by the absence of
unimportant details like footpaths and
pedestrian crossings in some less
salubrious parts of town. It seems that
the slamming of the car door unleashes
the beast in the breast of the normally
docile Icelander, and then it’s every man
for himself.
As you attempt to make an
undesignated but unavoidable crossing
the oncoming traffic appears to make
a quick time cost analysis; is it quicker
to run you over or let you pass? Most
drivers remain in two minds as they
graze your toecaps whizzing by. And
that’s just the summertime.
As the autumn light fades so
does hope as we, the undriven, resign
ourselves to that inevitable equation of
winter. Big car + large dirty puddle ×
bad driver = one very wet pedestrian.
John Boyce
It was never actually determined who got there first.
Photo: Aldís
When I was first asked “Hvað segirðu,”
I though the person was deaf.
Many newcomers have sustained injuries during
premature attempts at pronounciation, but so far
fatalities have not occured.
To an Icelander, a car pool is the place
where you can take your vehicle for a
refreshing dip.