# Icelandic: yfir einn metri



## Alxmrphi

> Gögn sem safnað hefur verið bæði í mönnuðum og ómönnuðum tunglferðumgefa gefa til kynna að gígar á yfirborði tunglsins,* yfir einn metri* í  þvermál, nemi þremur billjónum að tölu (3.000.000.000.000). Stærstu gígar tunglsins nema hundruðum kílómetra  að þvermáli. Flestir  gígarnir hafa orðið til við árekstur loftsteina við tunglið, aðrir kunna  að vera til komnir af eldvirkni en það er þó óvíst.





> The data which has been collected both from manned and unmanned trips to the moon _gefa til kynna _that craters on the surface of the moon, over 1 metre in diameter, amount to three billion (3,000,000,000,000). The largest craters on the moon are hundreds of kilometers in diameter. Most craters have been the result of collisions with meteorites that have collided with the moon, others could have been created by volcanic activity, but that is still uncertain.


Hi all,

I'm having trouble understanding what the part in blue means.
Can anyone explain what it means or give a translation, I know it's something to do with _giving to research_, but that just sounds awful in English.
*How come it's not yfir einum metrum? Yfir (over) takes dative when it means 'over', right? Not sure.
* 
Thanks
Alex


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## Tjahzi

Hm. Another qualified guess:

Swedish has a verb/expression that goes _giva sig till känna_ (that is, the very same as the above Icelandic one, but reflexive) that means _to reveal oneself_. As such, it seems reasonable to believe that _gefa til kynna_ is a set expression that simply means something along the lines of _reveal_, which would indeed make perfect sense in this context. 

_Yfir _can be used with both accusative and dative, and as a general rule, languages with these cases use accusative for all kinds of measurements (from time, to length, to weight etc).


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## Alxmrphi

> Swedish has a verb/expression that goes _giva sig till känna_ (that is, the very same as the above Icelandic one, but reflexive) that means _to reveal oneself_. As such, it seems reasonable to believe that _gefa til kynna_ is a set expression that simply means something along the lines of _reveal_, which would indeed make perfect sense in this context.



Yeah that'd fit very nicely (...trips to the moon have revealed that....) 


> _Yfir _can be used with both accusative and dative, and as a  general rule, languages with these cases use accusative for all kinds of  measurements (from time, to length, to weight etc).



Yeah but it's nominative here, hence my question.


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## Tjahzi

Ops, sorry, didn't notice. No clue then.


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## Alxmrphi

Tjahzi said:


> Ops, sorry, didn't notice. No clue then.


We can wait and find out together


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## Silver_Biscuit

Yfir takes dative when it means over as in when you're talking about the positions of things. I'm not sure I would expect it to when you mean 'over' as in 'more than'. 

If you said 'meira en einn metri', of course 'one metre' stays in the nominative. I think it's just like that, isn't it?


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## Alxmrphi

> If you said 'meira en einn metri', of course 'one metre' stays in the nominative. I think it's just like that, isn't it?


Yeah if it was just like that, but it's directly after *yfir *here and for some reason stays in the nominative, but I'm not sure why.
There's no indication that the '_more than_' version behaves any differently, at least not from I can see.

A Google search for *+"yfir einn"* actually brings up more results (21,000) than* +"yfir einum" *(17,500).


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## Tjahzi

Well, just keep in mind that _yfir einn_ could be both accusative and nominative...


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## Alxmrphi

Tjahzi said:


> Well, just keep in mind that _yfir einn_ could be both accusative and nominative...



Ah, I wasn't sure if in an attributive way it'd be like an adjective and therefore like _einan_ or not. Either way, best to try with the feminine which has no duplicate forms..

Yfir ein - *13,000*
Yfir eina - 39,200
Yfir einni - 7,620
Yfir einnar - 102

So something's going on with the nominative here.


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## Silver_Biscuit

Alxmrphi said:


> Yeah if it was just like that, but it's directly after *yfir *here and for some reason stays in the nominative, but I'm not sure why.
> There's no indication that the '_more than_' version behaves any differently, at least not from I can see.
> 
> A Google search for *+"yfir einn"* actually brings up more results (21,000) than* +"yfir einum" *(17,500).



Nah, what I meant was that in your example *yfir *is just the same as *meira en*. If *meira en* is followed by the nominative, why shouldn't *yfir* be, when used in this sense? 

Surely your google search results _are_ an indication that the 'more than' version behaves differently?

Oh well, I make sense to myself.


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## Alxmrphi

> Nah, what I meant was that in your example *yfir *is just the same as *meira en*. If *meira en* is followed by the nominative, why shouldn't *yfir* be, when used in this sense?


I see.
Yeah I've worked it out, the use of _over _like you mentioned is as a preposition, which governs case, the_ meira en _usage is as an adverb, which doesn't govern any case.

Thanks


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