# Icelandic: Recognizing the suffix



## Alxmrphi

Ok, I'm a bit stuck, what is my book talking about:



> *6. Words like himinn are made up of a root syllable, a suffix and a case ending, thus: him-in-n. Whenever the case ending begins with a vowel, the vowel of the suffix is dropped, hence nominative plural him-n-ar.*


Ok, I understand the grammar rule (somehow), I'm just not sure how the word is split up, I know what a stem is, and the case ending is just the ending when you are declining a noun, but what is the suffix?
How can I tell what is a suffix or not

Suffix suffix what what suffix I don't know
Is it something to do with the adding of the definite article or something?
Once I know how to determine what is a suffix I can apply this rule and be fine, but I need to know what it is first, ahhh.


Ég skil ekki.


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## jonquiliser

Are you asking what a suffix is? It's a word ending, a particle joined to the word in the end. Or you wonder what part is the suffix? I guess, in _him-in-n, _it must be -in-, because when they drop the vowel, it's i they drop, plus they say the case ending is added after the suffix.


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## Alxmrphi

Ok, in the pure form of the word... which I guess is nominative singular, is it the part that is dropped, how can you tell?
I think it seems it's minus the last letter and then I can recognise the stem, so for now it's just the middle part I guess.


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## Wilma_Sweden

Admittedly, I speak no Icelandic, but having found some declension patterns, I understand what they're on about, and it seems to be a crash course in advanced Icelandic morphology... 

As I understand it, the suffix in this case is an ending which is part of the original word (lexical meaning), not a case ending, but it is considered a suffix added to the root syllable because it is omitted or changed when you start adding case or plural endings. This is of course confusing, because the split between root syllable and suffix is only logical when you look at the declension pattern. Words like hestur are more straightforward, where the stem and the root syllable coincide (hest-). 

I found this wonderful site where you can get full declension patterns for  Icelandic words. Wonderful stuff for the 'declensionally challenged' learner! 
http://iceland.spurl.net/tunga/VO/leit.php?q=himinn

/Wilma


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## Alxmrphi

Ok your post helped a bit, I understand a bit more, great help!

So like you said the lexical meaning, or part of the original word, means like a "dictionary entry" word, in the pure normal form.. which is *himinn*.
However when you decline this word, the word starts to change and what is common is a common stem between all the words, which is *him*-
So that only leaves us with -inn, so we have the stem.

Now we need to work out the suffix and the case ending, but since we know from the book that *-in-* is the suffix and *-n* is the case ending, I will try to look at the declension pattern and see if I can see why.
Ahh ok

Judging from the declension pattern, and what I know about Icelandic declension in the accusative, is the accusative usually has the stem of the word, and that's all.
So even though it looks like it goes a tad irregular in the dative, ahahah that's the rule, those irregular things are exactly what the book is mentioning!! Because the case endings begin with vowels so -in- becomes -n-... wow this is so confusing but I can understand it a little better.

Upon reflection, I think I might have pieced it together

Case endings are only really maximum 2 letters long, most of the time 1.
Stems of words never ever change
But the part of the word that does change... that is not a case ending (and can't be a stem because that can't change) is a suffix.

So a "full" stem has an invariable part called "the stem", and a variable part that changes due to case endings, called "the suffix"..

And we can see this because like I said, the accusative singular usually is just the stem of the word.

So if "himin" is the stem, and my book splits it up like *him-in-n*,
Then him- is the stem that can't change.
Then -n is the case ending (which I knew)
And the "other" part is just the part that is able to be changed and manipulated by case endings, so therefore called a suffix.

I think this post was mainly to clear my head but I really didn't think I'd be able to grasp the concept so soon!

Yay thanks all!


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## trance0

Well, I don`t know Icelandic, but it seems to me you don`t exactly know what this suffix truly stands for. It is in fact *a definite article* put onto the end of the stem. You should read the part about *articles *on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_grammar


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## Alxmrphi

But if you look at what Wilma sent... it shows the word in question with and without the definite article attached, we are only dealing with the one without the article attached, I did think the same but after seeing the website I knew it wasn't that.

I'll check out the website, because maybe I'm wrong again, I'm not totally sure.


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## Alxmrphi

Yep, if you look on the site, I was dealing with row 1 and 3.. titled

án greinis (without article)
The other one is með greini (with article)

So it is something else besides the definite article, so I think it more than likely is my conclusion.


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## Wilma_Sweden

Having thought long and hard, I must object violently to your author calling -in in him-in-n a suffix at all, and here's why:

A suffix, according to linguists, is the same as an ending - it's added to the end of an existing word. There are two basic types of suffixes:
1) *Derivational suffixes*: change the lexical meaning of the word, and often also the word class. E.g. adding -ness to the adjective great gives you greatness, a noun, or adding -able to a verb, read, gives you an adjective, readable

2) *Inflectional suffixes (a.k.a. grammatical suffixes)*: do not change the lexical meaning of the word, but do change the role of the word in its context, such as case endings and plural endings for nouns, comparative endings for adjectives, or tense, e.g. girl-s, great-er, walk-ed. 

In your example, him- on its own has no lexical meaning, it's not a complete word, and -in, therefore, should not be called a suffix, strictly speaking. Breaking up himinn into him-in-n and calling -in a suffix just adds to the confusion, because it's neither derivational nor inflectional, and without it, him- has no meaning, and hardly any purpose (other than showing us where certain inflectional suffixes are stacked in this type of noun).

If we move to English, you would never call -f in calf a suffix, as cal- has no lexical meaning, yet it transforms into cal-ves in plural. What we get in this case is a consonant mutation AND an inflectional suffix -es.

The Swedish word for heaven is similar to the Icelandic, and to illustrate my point, I'll add a couple more behaving in a similar manner. They're all in nominative, for the sake of simplicity.

himmel (heaven)
himl-en (the heaven) - elision + inflectional suffix - we dropped -me-
himl-ar (heavens) - elision + inflectional suffix
himl-ar-na (the heavens) - elision + inflectional suffixes

follikel (follicle) 
follikel-n (the follicle) - inflectional suffix only
follikl-ar (follicles) - elision + inflectional suffix - we dropped -e-
follikl-ar-na (the follicles) - elision + inflectional suffixes

apel (apple tree)
apel-n (the apple tree) - inflectional suffix only
apl-ar (apple trees) - elision + inflectional suffix - we dropped -e-
apl-ar-na (the apple trees) - elision + inflectional suffixes

Rather than saying that they consist of some sort of artificial root with no lexical meaning plus a suffix, I would argue that they consist of two or more syllables, the last one being -el. The lexical meaning is carried by all the syllables together in the nominative singular indefinite form, and this is the form we search in a dictionary. For declension purposes, we sometimes need to modify a syllable as well as adding inflectional suffixes, and we are then helped by similar behaviour patterns for similar groups of words.

If we change your rule according to this philosophy, we'd get something like this:

*6. Words like himinn are made up of two syllables and a case ending, thus: him-in-n. Whenever the case ending begins with a vowel, the vowel of the preceding syllable is dropped, hence nominative plural him-n-ar.*

Sorry if this turned out long-winded and theoretical, but now you can forget about your weird 'suffix' -in - call it a syllable! 

/Wilma


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## Alxmrphi

I'm glad you spent a lot of time thinking about it because that truly helped me a lot!
Icelandic's rule is that the stress of every word is on the first syllable, and it's very picky about how words sound so for sound shifts it makes sense to have this rule.

I can just imagine in my head "himin" and how an Icelander would say it, then I think about "himnar", but if I think "don't drop the vowel in the syllable", and imagine them saying "himinar" - it just sounds kinda strange, almost un-Icelandic (then again I'm in absolutely no position to make that statement!).

Really thanks for your help + thought time it probably took you!


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## Alxmrphi

But I do have a question, if they are all nominative then how can you have 4 versions?
I would have thought only "2" (singular and plural)... unless your examples include the definite article?


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## Pteppic

Ok, Wilma beat me to it, so I'll disagree a bit with her  I don't speak Icelandic, either, but I took a morphology class in university.

She is right about there being two types of suffixes (although some languages have three). My claim is that your book is technically correct in its dividing of the word, apart from making it sound like suffix and case ending are two different things.

In himinn, "him-" is the root. It is the only part that the various words with meanings related to the sky or heaven have in common. However, it only carries pure semantic information - that the meaning of the word has something to do with heaven or the sky.

"-in" is a derivational suffix - it tells you which of those sky-related words is intended, in this case the noun. Another derivational suffix might create the verb "himla" (assuming that it means the same as the Norwegian verb "himle", but I'm probably wrong ). I know this seems completely counter-intuitive, but morphology is not concerned with sense, but with logic. In this case, there are several words that have meanings related to the sky or heaven, like himinn, himla and himneskur - and the only part which connects them ("him") must then be the root, and the rest of the stem of the various words is a derivational suffix.

However, this is pretty technical morphology (it made me go "huh?" the first time it was explained to me), and it seems somewhat excessive to give this kind of information in a learner's book - it seems more like it should be an example in an Icelandic morphology book. It's a bit like the definition of a tomato as a fruit and not a vegetable, i.e. technically correct, rather unnecessary and only ever interesting in a scientific context. So go with Wilma's explanation.


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## Alxmrphi

Oh this is no beginners book, I got so annoyed at not being able to progress in a learners book as, I needed to know some parts of the nitty gritty to help me understand it, not just by memorising words and using them in sentences, I need to be able to create new sentences and read grammar rules, so that's why I got the more complicated book!

Anyway, I'm a bit happier in my understanding now, I might look at some morphology websites/tutorials to maybe help me understand the next parts of my book better, do you think that will help? (Do you have any good websites?)

Thanks.


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## Magb

Pteppic said:


> "-in" is a derivational suffix - it tells you which of those sky-related words is intended, in this case the noun. Another derivational suffix might create the verb "himla" (assuming that it means the same as the Norwegian verb "himle", but I'm probably wrong ). I know this seems completely counter-intuitive, but morphology is not concerned with sense, but with logic. In this case, there are several words that have meanings related to the sky or heaven, like himinn, himla and himneskur - and the only part which connects them ("him") must then be the root, and the rest of the stem of the various words is a derivational suffix.



Well, there's no Icelandic word _himla_ as far as I know. The Old Norse word for "heaven" was _himin(n)_. The /l/ in the Scandinavian languages is a result of borrowing from German, but Icelandic has few such loanwords. Maybe I'm missing something, but I see no reason not to assume that the root of the word is /himin/. The missing /i/ in _himneskur_ can be explained with the same vowel syncope rule that would be used to explain the nom.pl. _himnar_. I see no need for positing a suffix here -- neither diachronically nor synchronically.

Incidentally, even if there were a word such as _himla_ that wouldn't necessarily mean that the stem would have to be /him/. For instance you could argue that the word with the /l/ is a borrowing, or even that there's a rule that changes n > l for some reason. Hell, it could be the other way around. The root of the word could be /himl/ with a rule changing l > n and a vowel insertion rule. Not to say that any of these hypothetical suggestions are good explanations (they're not), but it's not the case that just because related words start out the same way but then deviate, the stem of the word must be all the sounds from the start of both up to and including the final sound that they both have in common. Like Wilma mentioned somewhere up there, that would force us to conclude that the stem of the English words "hoof" and "hooves" is actually /hu/, even though it's pretty clear that the stem is /huf/ and the plural form is just the result of a voicing rule.


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## Alxmrphi

> The missing /i/ in _himneskur_ can be explained with the same vowel syncope rule that would be used to explain the nom.pl. _himnar_. I see no need for positing a suffix here -- neither diachronically nor synchronically.


Yeah but that's exactly the rule I posted, right?

-eskur- case ending begins with a vowel so the I in the "second syllable" (I think we're now calling it, but for others 'middle-part') so the vowel in that part goes.
And the same for (himnar) the -ar makes the _*-i-*_ in "_*-in-*_" disappear.

Right?


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## Magb

Alex_Murphy said:


> Yeah but that's exactly the rule I posted, right?
> 
> -eskur- case ending begins with a vowel so the I in the "second syllable" (I think we're now calling it, but for others 'middle-part') so the vowel in that part goes.
> And the same for (himnar) the -ar makes the _*-i-*_ in "_*-in-*_" disappear.
> 
> Right?



Yep, you're exactly right. Short, stem-final vowels are deleted when followed by a suffix starting with a vowel. In the fancy-pants language of phonology this could be stated as something like V[-long] > Ø / VC0_CV. (I have shamelessly stolen this from "Introducing Phonology" by David Odden, which uses this exact same Icelandic example.)

Not to be too nitpicky, but -eskur isn't just a case ending. -ur is the masculine singular nominative case marker, but -esk is an adjectivizer, which makes the noun himin- into an adjective himnesk-. So _himneskur_ is underlyingly /himin+esk+ur/ (the + symbols mark the boundaries between the separate "morphemes", i.e. the separate components that make up the word). I think you've got a pretty good understanding of this now, but at least for me when dealing with stuff like this I find it helps to make sure I have all the details straight.


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## Alxmrphi

Oh I suspected it, but it didn't really matter to me, I thought -eskur was like a humaniser-adjective or something, but yeah it's the -ur that is the "masculine singular case marker", a perfect label if I might add, I will use that from now on

Now just the rest of the book
Hopefully whenever I skim through and hope to god I can understand what's going on in the book whenever I see changes instead of me thinking "oh my god why!?!?" I could, and maybe some of the time see exactly why.

I think it's always the hardest and most frustrating to make your first breakthrough in a complicated grammar, and after you know you've done one, you can do another and you know you are a step/2 forward, wheras not understanding anything still feels impossible.

So I do feel quite accomplished now, but I couldn't have done it without all your help in this thread, so a big thanks to everyone!


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## Hilde

hi!

What does this word himinn mean?
It is some kind of derivated word, made out of him (which means?) and the derivational suffix 'in', isnt it?

Its an interesseting tread this, but it sems to me unecessary complicated, so I just wanted to ask for the meaning of the word in question


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## Alxmrphi

Haha, it's the book I'm using that's unecessarily complicated, trying to figure that out was the hard part!

Himinn means "sky / the heavens"


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## Hilde

And the problem was figuring out that - in- is a suffix?


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## Hilde

I guess they use the suffix description ( in stead of syllable) because there are several words with this suffix and they all behave the same way when followed by a vowel. (And because it IS a suffix, of course ...)

And when the book says how the word is split up (him-in-n) and that in is a suffix, then I dont see the problem ... but ok


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## Alxmrphi

Consider you speak Norwegian and have a similar grammar structure and morphology of words, to be hit with explanations like that for me is an incredibly difficult thing to understand so please don't be condescending.


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## Hilde

Sorry, I didnt mean to. 
I was just trying to grasp the problem, understand your question, ok?

But Ok, I se the problem now: As a foreigner you can not see which parts of of a word is a suffix - especially not the derivational ones, as they are part of the lexical word. We usually know and recognize the inflectional suffixes in a foregn language we are trying to learn, but not so often the derivational, as they often no longer are productive - we learn the word as a whole.

For words where the structure is not stated clearly (as himinn is in the book (him.inn.in)) it can be a problem, and as far as a can see you asked how to figure out what reresents a suffix in other words than himinn?

I wuld think that these words are better to learn by heart than appling the rule everytime you use it...


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## Alxmrphi

Yeah it's fine, it's just you kinda made it seem so simple it didn't even need to be asked, that was all, it's frustrating trying to grasp all these new things, and of course if it's like your own language, it has to be easy to understand, I just wasn't sure how a "suffix/syllable" became seperate and needed to be talked about in a different way to the stem, and now it does seem simple to me, because that part can change depending on what is added on afterwords (a vowel or not)

But for me it was like saying:

Study the regular pattern of these simple noun declensions:

Frtujs
Fruuajhajrf
Frtujaaajf
Fks
Fksdkrrtkrkrt
Brjkrrj2390ffj

.... Just looking at and going "what on the earth.....?" is exactly how I felt, but once you know something (like I do now) it does seem simple, but it's important to understand (maybe it's harder for you because it's naturally simpler for you) from an "English" point of view not having studied any Germanic languages before, that this is probably one of the most confusing things I've ever tried to contemplate, besides programming languages (of course)


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## Hilde

Norwegain is not that similar to icelandic

But, you do have phenomenas like this in english too don\t you?
cant think of any at the moment, but I am sure you have

good luck, by the way


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## Alxmrphi

Extremely limited I believe, like calf->calves, but it's only from singular to plural and we only have an extremely low amount, and that is just second nature to me, the extent of it being similar to Icelandic is like 0.0000001%.

Wheras the structure of stems and cases and the whole matter of "declension" is very much at the core of the scandinavian languages, it is not "that" similar, when comparing just those two, but let's take Italian, Thai, English, Icelandic and Norwegian.

if Icelandic is 1.... Thai is 10..... English is 4...Italian is maybe 5/6... and Norwegian is 2.

In that kinda comparison it is quite similar, in grammar structure and basic "inner workings" if you get what I mean.
Anyway, time to move on to the next issue I guess!

Thanks.


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## Wilma_Sweden

Just a final note: I don't know any websites on morphology in general apart from those referenced in the relevant Wikipedia articles. My current course book on Linguistics explains the theory of morphology and other linguistic matters in some detail, and is, at least partly, viewable online on sites such as Amazon or Google books:

Fromkin et al: _Linguistics: An Introduction to Linguistic Theory_

There are plenty of examples from English and other languages, although very little from Icelandic.



Alex_Murphy said:


> But I do have a question, if they are all nominative then how can you have 4 versions?
> I would have thought only "2" (singular and plural)... unless your examples include the definite article?


Yes, my Swedish nouns were listed with the indefinite form followed by definite form as suggested by the translated words in parentesis, although admittedly I didn't make it very clear. 2 forms for singular and 2 for plural = 4. 

I understand completely your frustration about Icelandic nouns and the hurdles they represent in getting the grammar right. Taking Icelandic on at all is a heroic deed, indeed! 

/Wilma


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## Hilde

Alex_Murphy said:


> unless your examples include the definite article?


 
Remember: what you call definite article her, is not an article, its a suffix.
The def. article is something else! The difference is that the article is a word by itself, while the suffix is a word ending (inflection). For scandinavian languages, containing both, its an important terminological difference


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## Wilma_Sweden

Hilde said:


> Remember: what you call definite article her, is not an article, its a suffix.
> The def. article is something else! The difference is that the article is a word by itself, while the suffix is a word ending (inflection). For scandinavian languages, containing both, its an important terminological difference


Hilde, as you know very well, in linguistic terms, the definite article can be expressed as a separate morpheme, such as English 'the' or Spanish 'el/la' OR - as is the case with the Scandinavian languages - as an inflectional suffix attached to a noun, also known as a bound morpheme. It doesn't matter what shape it is as long as its function is the same, which helps when comparing or analysing different languages.

As stated earlier, unless a syllable has a clear derivational or grammatical function, it is just a syllable, such as final -el in Swedish nouns: it has no derivational or grammatical function, but it behaves predictably when inflectional suffixes are attached to such nouns (the -e- goes missing).

The ability to break down Icelandic nouns into lexical or other components may seem unnecessary to you, but you clearly haven't understood what the OP is asking about, and you are not being helpful.

/Wilma


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## Hilde

I am sorry if i am being taken for being condecentent and unhelpful, but it was never my intention!

I just wanted Murphy to be aware of the difference between an article and a suffix. You dont use the word article when you are talking about a suffix. the definite is either expressed by an article or by inflections.

It was ment to be helpful, as we have both article and suffix in scand. languages, it is an important distinction. 

I understand that it can be difficult to see which part is the suffix. But as I said earlier, I was just trying to understand what he was asking about, as I didnt find the question clearly expressed.

I dont consider the ability to break down lexical items unecessary, I just found the explanations unecessary complicated.


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## MathiasSWE

I don't think you can say that Swedish (and maybe Icelandic) make use of the definite article. As Hilde points out, there is a difference between a definite article and suffixes, since a suffix can denote definiteness, plural, derivations etc, whereas a definite article ONLY denotes definiteness. And in Swedish we use suffixes, amongst other things, to denote definiteness. So I don't really get where the definite article comes in, because we already have a way of denoting definiteness, so we don't need an article.

Or am I completely wrong?


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## Alxmrphi

Ok, before I comment I need to be 1000% sure about what you mean by a suffix replacing the definite article..

How, do you express the idea of "the", through a suffix, without using the definite article?


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## trance0

I believe that is the case. At least as far as I understand it. You have two options, one with the definite article in front of a verb and one with the so called "definite suffix".


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## Södertjej

Alex_Murphy said:


> Ok, before I comment I need to be 1000% sure about what you mean by a suffix replacing the definite article..
> 
> How, do you express the idea of "the", through a suffix, without using the definite article?


I think the problem is we were assuming you knew the basics and maybe you don't. Wilma's explanation was perfect yet not detailed (again I suppose she was assuming you knew this)

A car - en bil (this is called indefinite FORM)
A red car - en röd bil
The car -bilen (this is called definite FORM)
The red car -den röda bilen

A table - ett bord
A big table -ett stort bord
The table -bordet
The big table -det stora bordet

And in some special cases you could use just the article without the suffix:

He's bought the car I wanted - Han har köpt den bil som jag ville (no suffix here as it's the subject to a secondary clause... kind of)

That's what Hilde meant: the suffix -en (or et) provides the same meaning as the definite article in English but it isn't exactly an article (meaning a separate word) but a suffix: it is called definite form. And then we have an article that we also use but not just like in English. I suppose she also guessed from your words (just like I did) that you didn't know this and she tried to clarify it.

So you don't always use an article but you do if you add an adjective. 

This applies for Swedish, no idea how it is like in Icelandic.


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## Magb

Södertjej said:


> This applies for Swedish, no idea how it is like in Icelandic.



I'm a bit out of my depth here (is there no one who actually speaks Icelandic here?), but I think in Icelandic you would normally say _rauði bíllinn_ for "the red car". _Hinn rauði bíll_ would be characteristic of literary language and is rarely used in everyday speech. There's also a strong/weak adjective distinction (_rauði bíllinn_ vs. _rauður bíllinn_) going on, which I don't know how works exactly.


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## Alxmrphi

Ok... whether the definite article is before or after the word... attached to the word or dancing on top of it, it's still a definite article, calling it a suffix, ok, yeah I suppose it is, but it's still "the definite article" (the concept of "the") ..[to me].

So I think that's where a lot of the confusion came from.

Bíll - (a car)
Bíllinn (as Magb said) ... the car

Hesturinn (the horse) .... Dagurinn (the day) .... hundurinn ... (the dog) .... konan (the woman) .... landið (the land) .... morgunmaðurinn (the breakfast) 

This is the only way to express "the", by adding it to the end of the noun and making sure it's in the correct case, ok yeah it maybe a suffix, but it's still the definite article..

Now can we all stop squabbling over tiny interpretations that don't actually matter, and concentrate on the concepts that do? Not try to trip other people up by pointing out some words/ways they've used aren't "exactly" correct, cos that's just pedantic and confusing.


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## Södertjej

Alex_Murphy said:


> Ok... whether the definite article is before or after the word... attached to the word or dancing on top of it, it's still a definite article, calling it a suffix, ok, yeah I suppose it is, but it's still "the definite article" (the concept of "the") ..[to me].


I suppose we (native speakers) have a different concept. To us -en is not just the same as den. That's what we were trying to point out. That's the approach we were taught and probably the one you'll find in most grammar books. They just don't say -en=den.




Alex_Murphy said:


> This is the only way to express "the", by adding it to the end of the noun and making sure it's in the correct case, ok yeah it maybe a suffix, but it's still the definite article..


Well Magb says you could find the other form in writing so there seems to be not just one way.



Alex_Murphy said:


> Now can we all stop squabbling over tiny interpretations that don't actually matter, and concentrate on the concepts that do? Not try to trip other people up by pointing out some words/ways they've used aren't "exactly" correct, cos that's just pedantic and confusing.


Maybe what you call pedantic and confusing was just people doing their best to help by explaining the basics of other Scandinavian languages so that you'd get a clear idea that it doesn't work exactly the same way as English articles. 

Good luck.


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## Alxmrphi

I know it doesn't work like English articles... that's quite obvious but this also isn't abotu Swedish either, I did get a little annoyed with the bickering about arguing with different names.

I don't even remember how we got onto the definite article, it has nothing to do with this thread, I was asking about why a "suffix/syllable" was changing trying to understand the rule.

I don't even know what is going on now, ok you add something to the end of a word to make it definite, and there is another word... they're not the same in Swedish, but mainly in Icelandic you add something to the end of the world to make the English equivalent "the".... I just don't see why we're talking about this or what use it is?

Sorry if that comment appeared rash, but my poor delicate mind can only take in so much information at a time and it's at breaking point, so I need to avoid a lot of stuff that isn't relevant. Here it's beginning to get like that so I hope everyone understands.


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## Wilma_Sweden

OK, people, cease and desist! This thread has moved WAY off-topic, we have not had any posts from native Icelandic speakers, and poor Alex is pretty frustrated already. I vote for some mod locking this thread once and for all. 

I'm not going to repeat anything, as I've said all I wanted on the original topic already and can't make myself any clearer than I already have. The linguistic theory and terminology I've used comes from this book: Fromkin et. al.: _Linguistics: An Introduction to Linguistic Theory. _

Good night!

/Wilma


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## trance0

That`s what I`ve been saying from the beginning. For all practical purposes and simply put it seems to be nothing else but the definite article connected to the end of the noun it determines. We should wait for a native speaker to clarify this matter fully.


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## Hilde

You really dont need to be from iceland to know that there is a difference between a definite article and a definite suffix ... 

A definite article is not "expressed" - a definite article is an expression (a structure) in itself.

What you express is definite *content *(definiteness) And you either express it by a *suffix* or an *article* (or even by word order in some languages).

In languages with both articles and suffixes this really makes a difference, and thats my point earlier. 

have a good night everybody


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## Lemminkäinen

This thread has moved far off topic. I'm closing it for now; I might prune it and reopen it later. Any questions or concerns, please PM me.


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