# Icelandic: margt athyglisvert



## Alxmrphi

Christof: Hvað er helst að sjá í miðbænum?
Björn...: Það er margt athyglisvert að sjá í miðbænum.

Hi all, not sure if you'll be able to help me with this but...
Ok, if the dictionary form for *margt *is "*margur*" for "many / a lot", and "*athyglisverður*" for "interesting / notable / remarkable"...

So, my first question, the translation in English is:
"There are many interesting things"... (Það er margt athyglisvert...)

There doesn't seem to be a noun in here to mean "things", in fact the only obvious noun I can see is *miðbær* (city centre).

The second question is, as a lot of things revolve around nouns, in the second sentence the "margt athyglisvert" is put into the neuter form, but why I don't know? There is no (that I can see) neuter noun in there and I've checked the *orðabók* and can't find anything.

Can anyone tell me what I've missed, maybe these adjectives are nouns but the dictionary doesn't show it, but with my English translations the words match up and don't have one for the "things", maybe in Icelandic they just use adjectives for something like this I really don't know.

Any hjálp er athyglisverða

[Edit] I realised my questions are badly put together, so in summary:

1) margt + athyglisvert, why are they in a neuter form with no neuter noun, what is causing there change from the dictionary form?
2) Is there a word in there than translates "things" or is that just not used in Icelandic?*
*


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## modus.irrealis

I don't know if this is true of Icelandic, but in many heavily inflected languages you can use adjectives as nouns (or, from another perspective, with a noun implied) and usually the masculine means "man" or "person", the feminine means "woman", and the neuter means "thing." For example in Latin, from the adjective _bonus_ 'good' you can have _bonus_ 'good man', _bona_ 'good woman', and _bonum_ 'good thing.' (It's somewhat similar to constructions in English like "the wise" or "the meek" but in English it can only refer to people.) That's probably what's going on here.


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## Alxmrphi

Very interesting!! It sounds like it might be right, now I just need a confirmation!!

Thanks for the tip!


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## butra

Björn...: Það er margt athyglisvert að sjá í miðbænum.

 Can you say in English: There isn´t much interesting to see there!?


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## Alxmrphi

No, it would have to be "things", and "many" as well, but judging by your answer you expected that you can, which I suppose confirms that in Icelandic it differs by just using adjectives so I guess I found my answer.

But could you explain about the neuter declension? Um beyginduna á hvorugkyni? (not sure if that's correct lol)..

Anyway... the sentence says "there are many interesting things.." right, not "There is*n't*..." with the negative, right?


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## butra

but judging by your answer you expected that you can, 

In fact I thought that was not correct English but you can hear people talk like that and you can google sentences like that by native English speakers. 
If the answer had been yes I would have argued as follows:
Then you can say: There is much interesting to see there. 
And then: There is much interesting to see in the city centre. 
And that is the same structure but not correct English.
Modus. Irrealis´s answer is what you are looking for I guess.


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## Alxmrphi

We do say "There is much *of* interest", but it's quite formal.
So would this sentence be correct...

í miðbænum minn það er ekki margt athyglisvert, það eru bara kaffihús og knæpur.
In my city centre there aren't a lot of interesting things, there are only cafés and pubs.

?


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## butra

í miðbænum mínum (dative) þar er ekki margt athyglisvert, þar eru bara kaffihús og knæpur.


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## Hilde

Its a noun phrase without a head. We call them "coreless contructions" in Norwegian. the head of the phrase is implied and left out.


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## Alxmrphi

butra said:


> í miðbænum mínum (dative) þar er ekki margt athyglisvert, þar eru bara kaffihús og knæpur.



Yay I wasn't totally out!
I forgot about þágufallið


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## polyglot_wannabe

I can confirm that the sentence "Það er margt athyglisvert að sjá í miðbænum." would be considered natural and not formal by native speakers. The _things_ part of "There are many interesting things to see" is dropped in the translation (in a way). Saying "Það er marga athyglisverða hluti að sjá..." would probably be considered more unnatural or more formal. 


The thing is that the adjective _margur_ is not the dictionary form of _margt_ in this case, i.e. _margt_ has it's own (sub)entry in my dictionary: 

margt HK 
- notað sérstætt um mörg atriði, ýmislegt

(i.e. neuter noun used on it's own for many things, similar to what ýmislegt is to ýmislegur)

Another example of the use of _margt_ is the idiom "Margt er líkt með skyldum" where you can see that _margt_ is clearly the subject of the phrase.


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## Alxmrphi

Takk you! 

That made everything click in my head, all is fine now


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