# Icelandic: milljónir jólakorta



## Alxmrphi

> Pósturinn gerir ráð fyrir að um þrjár milljónir jólakorta verði send fyrir þessi jól. Fyrirtækið bætti við um 200 starfsmönnum á höfuðborgarsvæðinu fyrir jólin til að tryggja að þau kæmust öll til skila.


 
Hi all, I have a few doubts about an article I (tried to) read on RUV news.
The title of the article is "Íslendingar senda 3 miljónir korta", with *kort* in the genitive case. When talking about numbers is it like saying "_Three million of cards_" ?
I can't work out why you would use the genitive here but not when you say something like Ég á þrjá bjór, it wouldn't be Ég á þrjá bjórs, but why does it work this way with bigger numbers, or is it just for *miljón*?

Here's my attempted translation:

The post (office?) is assuming that about three million postcards (could be?) sent this Christmas. The company is taking on about 200 staff in the capital city area for Christmas to guarentee that they will all be sent.

Does *Póstur* mean 'The post office' here?

Can anyone help me with the whens & whys of using the genitive with numbers and when not to?

Thanks!


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## Le Viking islandais

_*"3 milljónir jólakorta"*_ is correct. And you would also say _*"Ég á þrjá bjóra"*_ The word beer is in plural so the declension is like this:

Nf. Bjórar
Þf. Bjóra
Þgf. Bjórum
Ef. Bjóra

The declenson for the word jólakort(christmas cards):

Nf. Jólakort
Þf. Jólakort
Þgf. Jólakortum
Ef. Jólakorta

And in this context Pósturinn means The Post Office.

I don't know if t here is a specific rule considering when and why you use a genetive case with numbers, I can't help you there.


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## Alxmrphi

Takk fyrir skýringuna! Ég vissi ekki það!
Ég hugsaði að þolfallið var notað (því sagnorðsins ‘á’) ekki eignarfallið.

Nú veit ég það!

... á eintölu er réttur að nota nefnifallið (Ég á einn bjór) ?
En á fleirtölu það verður vera á eignarfallið? (Ég á* tvo* *bjóra*)

Hef ég skilið?


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## Le Viking islandais

Yeah, but I think þolfallið is to be used in those situation. Nefnifallið and þolfallið of the word "Bjór"(singular) is the same, so that's just confusing you. This is the declension of the word.

Nf. Bjór
Þf. Bjór
Þgf. Bjór
Ef. Bjórs

*Ég á hest (I have a horse)*

Nf. Hestur
*Þf. Hest*
Þgf. Hesti
Ef. Hests

*Ég á bíl (I have a car)*

Nf. Bíll
*Þf. Bíl*
Þgf. Bíl
Ef. Bíls


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## Alxmrphi

Woops, I meant þolfallið, not nefniallið... it was the fact they are the same I just made a mistake.
So þolfallið (acc.) with a singular, and eignarfallið (gen.) with a plural, gotcha!

The only other doubt I have really is with "kæmust öll til skila.", is "skila" used like in a passive sense in English? I mean, when translating it, should it be passive? 
I just guessed at the meaning because I didn't understand it, just checking.


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## Tazzler

I think it's because _miljón_ isn't treated as a number, but rather as a noun, similar to the Spanish _millión_ where _a million women_ would be _un millión de mujeres _(that is to say, _millión_ isn't a number like _diez_ but a pure noun, so the _of_ necessary to connect both nouns). So you need the genitive case to connect the noun with the noun. That said, I'm not really completely sure; this could just be an oddity of the word.


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## Alxmrphi

It seems to be the same with *þúsund*, and as Le_Viking points out, even with the number '3' you use the genitive (I have 3 _of beers_) so I'm not sure if it's restricted to just 'million'.


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## Tazzler

Well _bjóra_ is both accusative plural and genitive plural and if it were genitive _þrjá_ would be _þriggja_. Even more confusing is when you say _hann er tviggja ára gamall_ with _ár_ in the genitive. Although it makes sense, you wouldn't expect it. 

(And if I may amend my example, I meant to write _millón_ ).


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## Alxmrphi

Ahhh good point, I think we need a confirmation on this!
Bjóra is indeed the form of the accusative plural and genitive plueal...

I got the idea it was genitive singular from post #2, as it's definitely genitive in the word* kort*, and when LVK said "you would also.." it just made me think of the same:

Le_Viking_Islands, can you please help?
Is the form* þolfall* or *eignarfall*. (Ég á þrjá bjóra)

1. Ég á eina miljónir bjóra
2. Ég á eina þúsund hesta (?)

Ahh the forms are the same there as well for hestur, I need a word that differs between accusative plural and genitive plural.

Ég á eina miljónir barna / börn? (I know it doesn't make much sense )



> and if it were genitive _þrjá_ would be _þriggja_


What I meant was accusative in the form of the number but genitive in the noun (like þrjár miljónir korta, which we know is correct).
Argh I'll scour my books and see if there is an explanation about numbers.


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## Tazzler

I am also quite intrigued by this matter. Imagine if you knew such complexity as a native!

Anyway, after some sleuthing on the Internet, we can firstly say that as an "indefinite plural" we use the genitive (_þúsundir manna, miljónir barna_, which easily translate as _thousands of men, millions of children_).

Allow me to make some tentative assertions based on the dictionary and google searches:

First, I think _ein þúsund _is incorrect on the grounds that it's redundant. I believe that in the singular "one" is implicit. And if you had one million, wouldn't _miljón_ be in the singular?

http://bin.arnastofnun.is/leit.php?id=414487: Here you see that the genitive is used with _þúsund_. The first example is notable because it's in the singular, so it literally translates as _a thousand of men_. Examples from google are seemingly contradictory; it seems that native speakers aren't in agreement on what case to use. It also seems that as a subject the genitive is preferred, but I'm not sure. I suggest you ask Le Viking Islandais to translate a few sample English phrases with numbers to see what he would say. 

Ég vona að þetta hjálpi þér. Íslenska er mjög erfitt tungumál.


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## Alxmrphi

Woops, my *'eina miljónir'* is a mistake, I did mean '_miljón_'...
I agree with what you say basically (I always avoid the *athuga* in beygingarlýsing, I should actually read it!) 

However I don't think that you can say something is wrong because it is redundant, maybe 'preferable to not use it' but I don't think it would be considered 'incorrect', languages across the globe are full of redundancies, linguists note these are the languages where mistakes are less likely to be made, however I didn't get a chance to look back at a book I remember reading about these numbers in, I'm sure there were good explanations in there...



> Ég vona að þetta hjálpi þér. Íslenska er mjög erfitt tungumál.


 
Jæja, það er erfiðari því það er ekki margar upplýsingar um tungumálið í netinu !!
Takk fyrir hjálpina


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## Tazzler

það er satt en ég held að sé rangt að segja _eina þúsund_ af því að ég sá í orðabókinni sem við notum þetta: http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cg...EId-idx?type=entry&eid=TH1U1SUND-1&q1=thusund. Og ég gat funduð engin dæmi um töluna _ein_ ásamt orðinu _þúsund. _Og íslensk þýðing titils sagnasafnsins _One Thousand and One Nights_ er _þúsund og ein Nótt_ (sjáðu greinina á Wikipediu). Samt er ég ekki vís. 

Og ég sendi vefsetri spurningu um þetta efni; ég bíð eftir svarinu þeirra og þegar ég fæ það ég sendi þér það.

That took some time!


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## Alxmrphi

Always good to practice, I bet it took me longer to read it! 
Let me know when they reply 

[Edit]: I can see "eina þúsund" isn't well attested on Google, but it seems to exist, I couldn't imagine all 37 uses (lol) are mistakes, but it just occured to me that* þúsund* is also neuter, it's transgender (lol again) and my book (Colloquial Icelandic) confirms this, it only lists the neuter form:



> When counting larger numbers, it is important to realize that the words *hundrað, **þúsund *and *miljón *are nouns which have their own gender. As a result, when you speak of more than one hundred, thousand or million, these nouns have to be in their plural forms, and you need to use the appropriate gender form of 1–4 when using them in combination with these nouns:
> 
> *hundrað *_(n.) _*>hundruð: eitt hundrað -tvö, þrjú, fjögur hundruð*
> *þúsund *_(n.) _*>þúsund: eitt þúsund -tvö, þrjú, fjögur þúsund*
> *miljón *_(f.) _*>miljónir: ein miljón -tvær, þrjái; fjórar miljónir*​


 
This in google returns 33,200 results, so I think it is grammaticaly fine to use.


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## Tazzler

Já, æfing er mjög mikilvæg!

I stand corrected then. It seems that there are many valid options both regards to article, gender, and genitive. Anyway, to add to the confusion, it seems that the genitive isn't well established with femine nouns, only with masculine and neuter.


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## Alxmrphi

Tazzler said:


> Já, æfing er mjög mikilvæg!
> 
> I stand corrected then. It seems that there are many valid options both regards to article, gender, and genitive. Anyway, to add to the confusion, it seems that the genitive isn't well established with femine nouns, only with masculine and neuter.


 
Hey, 
I am not sure I understand what you mean by the genitive not being established in feminine nouns? (Sorry, I'm a bit slow today).
Can you explain please?


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## Pont neuf

Sögnin að senda stýrir þágufalli í íslensku. 

Ég sendi _honum_ jólakort.


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## Alxmrphi

Hæ Pont, ég sé ekki þar sem einhvern hefur skrifað sagnorðið 'sendi' við nefnifalli/þolfalli/eignarfalli?

Ég skil ekki 
Ahh ef till vill þýðir að númerið verður vera í þágufalli ? (Íslendingar senda 3 *miljónum* korta) ??

Excuse my attempt, let me know if it doesn't make any sense.


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## kepulauan

I guess the problem here is that the word _milljónir_ is an object in this case,not a number. This is the same in English I think:

_milljón kort - a million cards
þrjú milljón kort - three million cards
_This tells you that the amount is about equal to 1000000

_milljónir korta - millions of cards
þrjár milljónir korta - three millions of cards
_This could just as well be "bags of cards" or "tons of cards"

Kort therefore becomes genitive, plural but never with an article (unless you are speaking of a particular million of cards that was lost or something). Be careful when reading out numbers though, normal rules about singular and plural apply there e.g. _ein milljón, þrjár milljónir._


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## Silver_Biscuit

pollodia said:


> I guess the problem here is that the word _milljónir_ is an object in this case,not a number.


 
I didn't comment on this thread before, because I thought I might be missing something, but that's what I first thought as well. But then Le Viking Islandais said that you should also say 'Ég á þrjá bjóra' which then would mean 'I have threes of beers'. This is of course incomprehensible in English. Can 'three' really be a noun in Icelandic in the same way as 'thousand'? I suppose the fact that you can say 'þrjár miljónir korta' (three millions of cards) suggests that Icelandic _does_ differ from English in this way, because you can't say 'three millions of cards' in English.


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## kepulauan

Silver_Biscuit said:


> I didn't comment on this thread before, because I thought I might be missing something, but that's what I first thought as well. But then Le Viking Islandais said that you should also say 'Ég á þrjá bjóra' which then would mean 'I have threes of beers'. This is of course incomprehensible in English. Can 'three' really be a noun in Icelandic in the same way as 'thousand'? I suppose the fact that you can say 'þrjár miljónir korta' (three millions of cards) suggests that Icelandic _does_ differ from English in this way, because you can't say 'three millions of cards' in English.



So "_three decks of cards"_ is fine but _"three millions of cards"_ isn't or does it work it like _"three boxes og juice"_/"_three crates of fish"_? I didn't know that.

_Three_ is not a noun, _million_ is.   
_1. þrjú milljón kort [number + number + object]_
_2. þrjár milljónir korta [number + object + object]

_The important thing is to ask what you are counting. Are you counting the cards or are you counting the millions? If you count the cards (a neuter word) as in example 1 then _kort_ is accusative and the number three takes its gender, neuter. If you count the millions (feminine) as in example 2 then _milljón_ is accusative and the preceding number is feminine. The extra object _kort_ takes genetive case because it's "the card*'s* million, kind of", a bit like saying "_one piece cake"_ in extreme upper class way.

In the same way "_[I have] three beers"_ is [number + object] so _beer_ is _accusative_ and the number takes its masculine form: _Ég á þrjá bjóra_. You could also use the other method by saying _"ég á gnægð(acc.) bjóra(gen.) - I have an abundance of beers"._

Furthermore, the translation I gave for [noun(pl.) + noun(pl.)] is not direct. 
_"þrjár milljónir korta"_ translates as "_three millions card's" _where the last word is genetive and the English sentence is not possible.
"_three millions of cards"_ translates as_ "_þrjár milljónir af kortum" where the last word is dative but the icelandic sentenci *is* possible.


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## Alxmrphi

Ah so both are possible!



> _milljón kort - a million cards_
> _þrjú milljón kort - three million cards_
> This tells you that the amount is about equal to 1000000
> 
> _milljónir korta - millions of cards_
> _þrjár milljónir korta - three millions of cards_
> This could just as well be "bags of cards" or "tons of cards"


 
That makes sense, I actually had read this rule but didn't take in exactly what it meant, in one of my books it gives the explanation:



> 1. Both cardinals, denoting definite number, and ordinals, indicating position in a series, are limiting adjectives with the exception of _hundrað_, a neuter noun, and _þúsund_, which is either a feminine or neuter noun <>.
> In _hundrað menn, þúsund menn_, hundred, thousand men, the words are used as adjectives (indeclinable), but they can also be used as substantives: _hundrað manns _or _manna, þúsund(ir) manna_ a hundred, thousand(s) of people.


 
This makes perfect sense now thanks to this thread.
Edit: I thought it did but I just saw the previous post, it confused me a little.

Because only the Icelandic words for hundred, thousand, million are can be nouns or numbers, we can make this distinction only in these words, in numbers 1,2,3,4, they are not nouns so they always have to take the gender of the words they are associated with?

So in the "3 beers" example, 'beer' has to be in accusative form only (after *eiga*) and not in genitive.
That is unless you talk about it with a noun form like million / thousand etc?

So:

_Ég á þrjá bjóra_.
I have three beers. (A)

You could also say:
_Ég á þrjár milljónir bjóra_. (here '_bjóra'_ is genitive and not accusative, right?) (B)
I have three million(s) of beers (C) (sentence is ok in Icelandic but not in English; here the 'millions' are being counted, not the individual beers) (D)

But if you wanted to say "I have 2 million beers", then _million_ is an adjective and is therefore indeclinable, so the number of beers takes the masculine form of beer, rather than of million (E).

_Ég á tvo milljón bjóra._ (F)

*Please can somebody quote my post and where I've put (A) , (B) , (C), can you put a  or a  just so I know where I am right / wrong when understanding these points, I'd love 6 ticks but I'm not sure I'll get them!*


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## Silver_Biscuit

pollodia said:


> So "_three decks of cards"_ is fine but _"three millions of cards"_ isn't or does it work it like _"three boxes og juice"_/"_three crates of fish"_? I didn't know that.


In English only non-specific amounts (thousands) or special 'collective nouns' (pack) can be used in this way - nouns of nouns, where the first 'nouns' gives an idea of how many there are. If there were 3,000,000 cards, then that would be a specific number. There's no difference grammatically between 'There are four cards' and 'There are three million cards'. You would never say 'three million*s*', because such a specific value must be a number and not a noun.
I think I may slightly have misunderstood the sentence 'Ég á þrjá bjóra' - are you saying that _bjóra_ is the _accusative plural_ and not the _genitive plural_ in this case? If it's in the accusative then it makes perfect sense to me. If I understand it correctly, then, I could NOT say 'Það eru þrír *bjóra*' to mean 'there are three of beers'? I would have to say 'Það eru þrír bjórar' to mean 'there are three beers', just like in English?


> _Three is not a noun, million is. _
> _... _
> _The important thing is to ask what you are counting. Are you counting the cards or are you counting the millions? _


Yes, this is exactly how it works in English. The only thing that was muddling me was the sentence 'Ég á þrjá bjóra' - I thought Le Viking Islandais was saying that it was the same as 'miljónir korta' in that the noun was in the genitive to produce the meaning 'of noun'. Three of beers just sounded odd to me because it makes 'three' into a noun. But if 'þrjá bjóra' is just 'three beers', with both words simply in the accusative, as directed by eiga, then I completely understand.


> Furthermore, the translation I gave for [noun(pl.) + noun(pl.)] is not direct.
> _"þrjár milljónir korta"_ translates as "_three millions card's" _where the last word is genetive and the English sentence is not possible.


I think that using the genitive form of Icelandic nouns quite regularly translates to English as 'of noun', actually. Not literally using the same structure and the preposition 'of', but it's the exact same meaning. Just as in English it is grammatically correct (although very unusual) to say 'the house of John' rather than 'John's house' - the 'noun of noun' form and the possessive form overlap in meaning.


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## kepulauan

I'm just gonna say a big YES to the previous two posts, I don't see any false statements or examples. But of course I have never learnt any reasons to do any of this, I just say it, keep that in mind. And yes I realised that deck of cards are just two parts of the same term, it was a bad example. I also remember now that I have learnt to say e.g. _three million quid_ many times, I just keep disregarding it.

Anyway it turns out _kort_ can take any case at all, with slight difference in meaning:
Þrjú milljón kort eru send af Íslendingum
Íslendingar senda þrjú milljón kort
Íslendingar senda þrjár milljónir af kortum
Íslendingar senda þrjár milljónir korta
...or something like that, I'm not wide awake right now.

Gee I don't know how you guys bother! All this work for a tiny fraction of the world's population. I think I'll concentrate on Mandarin from now on, isolating and populous.


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## Alxmrphi

> I'm just gonna say a big YES to the previous two posts, I don't see any false statements or examples.


 
 Thanks.



> Gee I don't know how you guys bother! All this work for a tiny fraction of the world's population


 
We have our reasons!


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