# Icelandic:  Conjugation



## sownbones

Halló allir!  Ég er nýr hér og þetta er fyrsta færslan mín.  Ég er að læra Íslensku og ég tala smá, en ég er að reyna að skilja hvernig á "conjugate verbs."

Basically, my comprehension of the Icelandic language is sufficiently under par and I feel like if I had a better understanding of what nominative, accusative, dative, and genitive are in regards to context and how they effect conjugation, it would kind of click in my mind a bit more as well as what makes verbs strong/weak.  Is it more of a format with each type of verb like Spanish has (with minor exceptions)?  Or is every verb a little different?

I'm sure there's been a thread started a while ago covering all/some of this, but after sifting through several of the 50-something pages in the Nordic Languages portion of the forum, I figured I'd start a new post about it for reference.  (If I should be posting this in a more relevant section, please feel free to let me know.  I don't want to bug anyone, ha).  Any links to said thread/sites would be greatly appreciated.

Jæja, með fyrirfram þökk.  Bless.


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## sindridah

Weak verbs has the ending -aði, -ði -di eða -ti in past tense singular in first person.

For example the verb "_svara_"

Ég svara*ði* símanum í gær ( I answered the phone yesterday )

And the verb "_keyra_"

Ég keyr*ði* börnin í skólann í gær ( I drove the kids in school yesterday )

But strong verbs don't have any endings in past tense singular in first person.

For example the verb "_sofa_"

Ég svaf( *no ending* ) mjög vel í nótt ( I slept really well this night )

And the verb "_drekka_"

Ég drakk ( *no ending* ) of mikið í gærkvöldi ( i had to much to drink last night )

Hope that gave you some insight 

Quote: I feel like if I had a better understanding of what nominative, accusative, dative, and genitive are in regards to context and how they effect conjugation

I just don't have any idea how to answer this question, I can give you some list of most used preposition in Icelandic and tell you what case they control?

*að*: dative
*eftir*: dative
*frá*: dative
*til*: genitive
*um*: accusative
*fyrir*: accusative/dative
*hjá*: dative
*með*: dative
*við*: accusative

Let me know if i'm missing something!


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## kepulauan

sownbones said:


> ...I feel like if I had a better understanding of what nominative, accusative, dative, and genitive are in regards to context and how they effect conjugation, it would kind of click in my mind a bit more as well as what makes verbs strong/weak.



I'm a bit confused. Did you mean to ask about inflection of nouns too? The cases (nom., acc., dat. & gen.) have no effect on verbs, at least not directly.


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## Alxmrphi

Yeah, conjugation usually refers to verbs, while declension usually refers to nouns, though if someone said_ conjugation of nouns_ I'm sure everyone would understand what they meant.

But, as pollodia has pointed out, you're mentioning two different things here. Sindri has explained verb patterns like you asked, but you did then mention _nominative_ / _accusative_ / _dative_ & _genitive_, which don't affect verbs in any way (in conjugations).

However, some verbs take noun complements in different cases that affects the meaning of a word. For example, this is an example I'm taking from the dictionary (pollodia, Sindri, can you please tell me if this is correct or not?)

The verb *að skipa *can take noun complements in the dative or accusative, and each one changes the meaning, for example:

_Ég skipaði þessum manni _(til........)
_I ordered this man_ (to........)

_Ég skipaði þessan mann_
_I nominated / appointed this man_

So this (I think) is an example to show how case after a verb alters its meaning.

If this isn't what you were talking about can you re-write your question in a more detailed sense so we can get a better idea about what it is you are after?


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## sindridah

Alxmrphi said:


> Yeah, conjugation usually refers to verbs, while declension usually refers to nouns, though if someone said_ conjugation of nouns_ I'm sure everyone would understand what they meant.
> 
> But, as pollodia has pointed out, you're mentioning two different things here. Sindri has explained verb patterns like you asked, but you did then mention _nominative_ / _accusative_ / _dative_ & _genitive_, which don't affect verbs in any way (in conjugations).
> 
> However, some verbs take noun complements in different cases that affects the meaning of a word. For example, this is an example I'm taking from the dictionary (pollodia, Sindri, can you please tell me if this is correct or not?)
> 
> The verb *að skipa *can take noun complements in the dative or accusative, and each one changes the meaning, for example:
> 
> _Ég skipaði þessum manni _(til........)
> _I ordered this man_ (to........)
> 
> _Ég skipaði þessan mann_ Ég skipaði þennan mann   (  accusative )
> _I nominated / appointed this man_
> 
> So this (I think) is an example to show how case after a verb alters its meaning.
> 
> If this isn't what you were talking about can you re-write your question in a more detailed sense so we can get a better idea about what it is you are after?



I don't know how advanced you have to be to do it, But i use the word *hestur* to help me out.

Hestur is one of the words wich has strong declension so i always put hestur in the right case to see it.

Nominative: Hestur    / þessi
Accusative: Hest      / þennan
Dative: Hesti            / þessum
Genitive: Hests         / þessa

Ég skipaði *hest*( Makes the most sense to me ) mann. 

So hest is in accusative and also is þennan in accusative wich tells me i use *þennan* in this case.

Ég skipaði *þennan* mann.

I guess when you get the feeling of the language then you can use this to your advantage?


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## Alxmrphi

Ok, I gotcha. 
Basically what I was saying was right though?
I just mixed up *þessan* with *þennan.

*Thanks for checking my example!


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## kepulauan

I was heading to bed when I wrote the last post, so here is the rest. I hope I'm sufficiently well read about this.

In Spanish there are two types of verbs: regular (those that behave like all the tense-tables we have learnt) and irregular (those that go their own ways, although many are similar). Icelandic verbs resemble English ones, not Spanish. Both have three types: strong regular, weak regular and irregular.

Weak Icelandic verbs behave like their English counterparts e.g. _say-said-said_ _love-loved-loved_, their stems and endings don't change much. The strong verbs also behave like in English e.g. _sing-sang-sung_, _write-wrote-written_, they often change significantly. Although the strong verbs seem irregular and complicated, they actually behave regularly most of the time, unlike Spanish irregular verbs. Icelandic "true" irregular verbs are rare and you can ignore them for now.

However, there is really no harm in thinking about them as having a "Spanish like format". A given verb is either weak or strong and that never changes. Nothing makes them weak or strong. If you encounter a verb that has both a weak and a strong conjugation, it is almost certainly two different words with the same spelling.


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## Alxmrphi

> Nothing makes them weak or strong. If you encounter a verb that has both  a weak and a strong conjugation, it is almost certainly two different  words with the same spelling.


Or.... (I hope I'm right about this) ... a transitive / intransitive usage of the same verb?

_Skipið sökk _(the ship sank)
** strong* declension of _sökkva_, intransitive usage*

_Herið sökkti skipinu_ (the army sank the ship)
* *weak* declension of _sökkva_, transitive usage*

On a different note to sownbones, within the Icelandic system of strong / weak verbs there are regular classifications of these types of verbs, for example the standard reference books say there are 4 categories of weak verbs and 6 categories of strong verbs (which the common-ancestor Germanic had.... Icelandic has virtually retained the classification system).

Anyway, I wrestled with this classification system for about 9 months, all the info I could find on the net baffled me but now I believe I'm in a good position to help (from a foreigner-perspective) on how best to classify them from the POV of an English speaker.

I'm not sure if you want me to go through the classifications or not, but there are subcategories to the strong / weak declension. I count about 10 separate groupings of Icelandic verbs, but there's often a generalisation or an oddity here and there, and I could one group as the truly irregular grouping, which most have to be learned individually (though you can find common patterns among this group).


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## sindridah

Pollodia ég verð nú bara að koma þessu útur mér en þú ert snillingur í að útskýra hvernig skuli læra tungumálið. Ég gæti aldrei nokkurn tímann komið með svona gagnlegar upplýsingar!

Las yfir þetta aftur og fannst eins og hægt væri að túlka þetta sem kaldhæðni en það er alls ekki þannig


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## kepulauan

Using the kind of categories Alex mentioned can be an advantage. If you only recognize two groups you'll have to learn a few hundred conjugations separately. But if you have ten or more groups you can learn a small selection in detail and then guess how to conjugate the rest more or less correctly.



> Or.... (I hope I'm right about this) ... a transitive / intransitive  usage of the same verb?


I didn't know about that. I guess some of the words I was thinking about work that way (I just don't remember what they were). Anyway, one can think of them as two separate words if they have different meanings.



> Pollodia ég verð nú bara að koma þessu útur mér en þú ert snillingur í  að útskýra hvernig skuli læra tungumálið


 Spænska er til margra hluta nytsamleg.


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## sownbones

Thank you all so much for your insight, I really do appreciate that.  I think it's something I'm going to have to just continue to read/write/etc and integrate it into my routine long enough to get the swing of it.  It's nice to get some feed back from people in Iceland or places near.   

I was looking into this older grammar text book by Stefán Einarsson.  It appears to be fairly resourceful in the reviews and there seem to be a good amount of tables showing the verb conjugation structure.  I'm not sure if anyone knows the book that I'm referring to but if you have used/heard of it and think it's any good maybe I'll order a copy.  I figure it can't hurt to try.

I'm sure I'll be frequenting this forum more as this first entry one has been so helpful and encouraging.


Takk endalaust!


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## Alxmrphi

> I was looking into this older grammar text book by Stefán Einarsson.  It  appears to be fairly resourceful in the reviews and there seem to be a  good amount of tables showing the verb conjugation structure.  I'm not  sure if anyone knows the book that I'm referring to but if you have  used/heard of it and think it's any good maybe I'll order a copy.  I  figure it can't hurt to try


 It's about 30cm away from my foot right now, lol.
It's quite a hard read, it's not something I would recommend for a beginner, I think I will still be going back to it for years to come, it's absolutely packed with information but it's not something to read through and learn.

It's pretty much a reference book, to go back to, to look up some rules / tables / classifications but it's not something I'd think any newbie would appreciate. I had high hopes it'd be quite easy to read but it's really really not.

The best introductory books are these three:

Teach Yourself Icelandic.
Colloquial Icelandic: The Complete Course for Beginners.
Beginners Icelandic.

This is also another book (Complete Icelandic), that was released 5 days ago, I'm going to order it soon so I'll post back if it's any good. It's always good to go over basic info in as many different formats as possible to get the basics.

If you're going to buy any book, I'd recommend the first one I linked to, if you're going to buy any 2, it'd be the first and second (the second goes into lengthy dialogues from the get-go, so it gets quite hard after a while, whereas the first one is short and sweet).

But yeah, come back here if you have questions and I'm sure we can find a way to explain the answer.
There is one warning that I think I should give though, while the other book I tried to put you off buying lays everything out 'the way it is', that is a good aspect, because these introductory books really try to make Icelandic seem more simple than it actually is, so when you come across oddities, you'll be tearing your hair out (like I did) just constantly asking yourself WHY WHY WHY??? So when you are looking into the information, be aware that they're trying not to scare people off by making them think it's too complicated. The unfortunate thing is, is that they're doing something worse by ending up with a situation where what the learner comes across, seems to go against a lot of the explanations, leaving the learner feeling stupid and frustrated because it doesn't fit into_ how they explained it_.

I haven't come across a book that's _in the middle_, but that's what surely is needed, something that doesn't gloss over the fact there are a lot of separate patterns to memorise, but also isn't literally separated by massive chapters that explain EVERYTHING. So just be aware of that fact as well.


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## sownbones

Haha, awesome!  I think I'll probably look into ordering it a little bit later on just for referencing then.  Thank you for the links as well.  I'm checking out the Colloquial one currently.  I'll probably give them all a go in my spare time, kind of like you said, it's just helpful to get information from a few different angles/locations.  I wouldn't yet say I've got quite a grasp on everything but I've had an interest in Iceland and Icelandic in almost every facet since I was about 11 so I feel like I've at least got the right mentality going into it.  Once again, I sincerely appreciate everyone's responses and help, you all are great!


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## Alxmrphi

Gangi þér vel


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