# Icelandic: Two of my good friends



## Chris Corbyn

I read that you can use the genitive when talking about a number "of" nouns.

Have I got this correct to say "two of my good friends go overseas tomorrow"?

*Tveir góðs vinanna míns fara utanlands á morgun.*

I've put góður, vinurinn and minn in their gentive forms.


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## Tazzler

You could also use the preposition "af" with dative. I think this is the commoner way: "tveir af góðum vinum mínum". May I be corrected if I am wrong.


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## Chris Corbyn

Takk fyrir.  I'll remember that 

I was really just trying to understand what my book was saying about using the genitive in such a way trying to compose a Twitter message to send for practice.  I think I was a bit confused by how to construct the phrase with the adjective and the possessive pronoun, but I assume I got this right


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## Tazzler

Most of what I know comes from experience because it always seems that you'll find someone who seems to disregard what your books tell you. Even though I find it kind of a cheap way to verify things, I ran a Google search to see if it was frequently used. Maybe I had the wrong parameters, but neither of them really gave overwhelming results. I saw more instances with "af" though. I know for sure that the partitive genitive can be used like that, but I don't think it's that common (in other languages with genitives, like Latin or Russian, such a relationship is expressed through prepositions). So in this case "af" is the way to translate "of" in this case. 

I'm also not sure if I should have used the definite article. In that case I assume the adjective would be weak. It sounds better to me without it, but what do I know?


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## Chris Corbyn

Thanks. Yeah I typically try searching for expressions in Google too in order to see if they're commonly used 



Tazzler said:


> I'm also not sure if I should have used the definite article. In that case I assume the adjective would be weak. It sounds better to me without it, but what do I know?



According to two books I've looked at, you can't use possessive pronouns with indefinite nouns, with a few exceptions, such as certain family members.  I'm not sure if that's referring to strict use, or common use.


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## kepulauan

> Tveir góðs vinanna míns


Good job on letting the last three words holding hands through the same case but the should also have the same number and, if applicable, article. If vinir as an article then góðir has a weak inflection (I don't know how to explain why). So:

Tveir góðu vinanna minna (if the friends have previously been mentioned)
Tveir góðu vina minna (the same but emphasizes exclusion of all your lousy friends // and yet, no these two are the same really)
Tveir góðra vina minna (this is getting a bit ceremonial so use the nominative instead)


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## Chris Corbyn

pollodia said:


> Good job on letting the last three words holding hands through the same case but the should also have the same number and, if applicable, article. If vinir as an article then góðir has a weak inflection (I don't know how to explain why). So:
> 
> Tveir góðu vinanna minna (if the friends have previously been mentioned)
> Tveir góðu vina minna (the same but emphasizes exclusion of all your lousy friends // and yet, no these two are the same really)
> Tveir góðra vina minna (this is getting a bit ceremonial so use the nominative instead)



*Facepalm*

I  can't believe I repeatedly put vinur in the plural but failed to put the adjective and the possessive pronoun in the plural.  I definitely need to practice!   Somehow I occasionally subconsciously mix up the singular genitive with the plural (due to the –s), even though I do know the correct declensions.

Thanks so much for the explanations, you've really helped.


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## Tjahzi

Hm, when I was studying Icelandic, I had already studied some Russian (a language which is similar to Icelandic in that it has conserved much more of the grammar of our ancestor language, compared to Swedish and English), I had a hard time coping with that nominative. Since Russian demands genitive (singular after 2-4 and plural for 5-9 ), I always used it in Icelandic as well, since it seemed just like the feature you would expect from such an archaic language. But I was always corrected. But now you are saying it's technically passable, but it sounds overly formal and archaic?

For the record, an adjective is inflected weakly if the noun it's governing is definite. (And of course, if it's indefinite, it follows the pattern for strong declension.)


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## Tazzler

Tjahzi said:


> Hm, when I was studying Icelandic, I had already studied some Russian (a language which is similar to Icelandic in that it has conserved much more of the grammar of our ancestor language, compared to Swedish and English), I had a hard time coping with that nominative. Since Russian demands genitive (singular after 2-4 and plural for 5-9 ), I always used it in Icelandic as well, since it seemed just like the feature you would expect from such an archaic language. But I was always corrected. But now you are saying it's technically passable, but it sounds overly formal and archaic?
> 
> For the record, an adjective is inflected weakly if the noun it's governing is definite. (And of course, if it's indefinite, it follows the pattern for strong declension.)


 
True, but this is "two *of* my good friends", not "two good friends". So it's a partitive genitive where Russian would use a preposition and the genitive instead of just the genitive. But the phenomenon you mention does seem to be present in Icelandic, especially with the word "maður" which for example appears in the genitive singular after numbers instead of the nominative. It's interesting.

And to pollodia, what would you say about using "af" to translate this construction?


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## Tjahzi

Very good point.

Also, very interesting to hear about _maður_. That was news to me.


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## Alxmrphi

Yeah the partitive genitive is something that was used vastly in Old English. 
Any time you used a number or quantity / portion, you used the noun in the genitive to show it belong to it, rather than Modern English's use of '_of <noun (nom)>_'. For example _mannig manna_ (many men) where '_manna_' is the genitive.

You both might like this document, read pages 12-13, it talks about Swedish, Russian, English and Icelandic partitives.
It talks about the FCC (Full Concord Construction) which is another way you can express partititives in Icelandic (but says it's rather rare). The paper also says there is often a replacement in Icelandic with a Prepositional Partitive Construction (PPC), which is the *af* + _noun/dative construction_ alongside the other Genitive Partitive Construction (which is just noun/nom + noun/gen), i.e. what we have been talking about here.

I wasn't actually aware the FCC construction even existed in Icelandic until I read that.
On a closer analysis though I'd have to conclude this was the meaning, but I haven't come across it before, only PPC and GPC.


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## kepulauan

> But now you are saying it's technically passable, but it sounds overly  formal and archaic?


Not exactly formal and archaic but yes, passable if you have already explained that you are talking about your best pals and not some guys at work and if I have been listening attentively.



> what would you say about using "af" to translate this construction?


Good. Better than góðu+vina+genitive. This was only a matter of grammatical possibilities.

Of course the word _þessi_ is normally used to point at subjects, which makes complicated constructions somewhat unneeded.


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