The Icelandic Canadian - 01.04.2001, Page 28

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THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
Vol. 56 #2
twice in class, and would follow that with an
exercise to demonstrate how the concept
worked. I laboriously read the textbook, writ-
ten in Icelandic. Then I did exercises associat-
ed with the concept. And then I went over it
once or twice with my study group. How
could it be so hard, I asked myself. How could
it take so much time. Because even after all
that, I didn't necessarily retain it permanently!
I reminded myself that my study mates, who
seemed so much more knowledgeable than I,
had in fact covered the material before, some
of them twice. And that they were young
enough to be my children. I asked one of the
whiz kids in class how he remembered words.
He replied breezily that he made a practice of
using a new word every day. I could feel my
brain screaming, resisting. A new word every
day. On the one hand, that is just too hard. On
the other, the language will never come one
word a day. I will be dead before I have any
vocabulary built up.
I grilled my relatives on how to use
words. When do I use stekja as opposed to na
as opposed to fa—they all mean to get, obtain.
Or the word til—how is it used. It seems to
be used for everything—bua til—to make
something, taka til—to tidy the house, hlakka
til—to look forward to something, ekki til—
it’s not. Let alone using it just as the preposi-
tion "to." I asked them how to say things that
I said all the time in English, like "amazing."
Otrulegt they suggested.
Phrases were delightful but seemed to
have no relationship to the meaning of the
individual words in the phrase. When I saw
the movie As Good as It Gets subtitled in
English, the phrase Hva3 er ad? finally sunk
in. "What's the matter?" To me "ad" doesn’t
signify "matter," but that doesn't matter. What
is matter anyway. There are many many many
phrases that just don't compute if you attempt
to translate. Some phrases I heard used over
and over and couldn't figure them out. Hlytur
a3 vera—must be; Jra3 skiptir rnali—that's
important; fara a faetur—get up (out of bed),
and I wondered how I could make these
phrases part of me, since if I was just translat-
ing, I would never get them. Never. Fara a
faetur means literally "go to feet."
Icelandic is what is called a transparent
language—you can see how words are made
up—as in vandamal, which means difficulty.
If you take the word apart vanda means bad
and one of the meanings of mill is matter. Bad
matter = difficulty. The language program at
the university puts a lot of emphasis on iden-
tifying the elements of words, because that
makes it possible to discern the meaning of a
word, even though it may require looking up
several words in the dictionary to get at the
meaning of one word. I faithfully purchased
the Morgunbla3i3, the daily newspaper, a few
times a week, and attempted to read it. The
vocabulary seemed so very difficult—great
long words—true examples of the transparent
language, words put together to create new
words to suit the changing times.
One of my classmates kept telling me
how similar Icelandic was to English, how
many words have the same root. When we
were learning the words hinga3 and J^angaS,
he said "We have the same words in English.
What would they be?" I drew a blank. "Hither
and thither" he said triumphantly. "Yes," I
replied sarcastically, "And I say hither and
thither every day." But he is in fact right.
Many words do have the same root in English
as in Icelandic. For some reason I did not find
this a helpful approach.
One difference from English that
intrigued me is the way that the Icelandic lan-
guage distances the expression of feelings.
You don't say "I long" for something, you say
"Mig langar" (Me longs) making the speaker
the object rather than the subject of the verb.
There is a long list of verbs, many of which
have to do with feelings, which are treated
this way. "I feel" translates to "Mer finnst"
taking the "I" all the way to its dative form,
three steps removed from the subject. (My
comparing classmate said this was equivalent
to the English "Methinks.") If you talk about
time passing you say "Timinn li3ur" exactly
as we would in English, but if you want to
respond to a question about how life is going
for you , it is "Mer lf3ur." Icelanders have the
reputation of being reserved, except when
they drink. This kind of sentence construction
seems to confirm that reserve.
From the beginning I listened carefully
when people spoke. I found certain words
stood out - einmitt said with emphasis after
someone said something. Exactly. Skog.
Placed almost anywhere in a sentence. A
word to stop the speaking, to give the speaker