# Icelandic: Við fórum burt án fiskjarins.



## Ricro

Im a beginner still with Icelandic and trying to get some grip on the declination structure/patterns ... 

*Genitive:* Við fórum burt án fiskjarins. _(We left without the fish.)

(example taken from _Icelandic Basic Noun Phrase_s of the unilang wiki)

_Is this sentence correct ?! But it´s not really eignafall, is it ?
orðabok.is told me that it would be rather "fisksins" than fisjkarins in the genitive case.

on the other hand I did find this word searching with google. So it does exist.

Can someone please tell me how this phrase would be correct and what "fiskjarins" is a kind of case ?

Thanks up front.


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## sindridah

Guten abend.

No this sentence is not correct cause i'm pretty sure fiskjar isn't the noun fish.
fiskjar is more like verb like fishing. The man went fishing in icelandic : maðurinn réri til fiskjar.

Albeit this is a very old icelandic and i'm pretty young and iv'e never seen this kind of icelandic but i'm pretty sure fiskjar is the verb fishing and not the noun fish.

I hope some other icelander who has better knowledge in this then i can confirm i'm being right.


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## Silver_Biscuit

As far as I can tell, I agree with Sindri. That looks like a mistake to me.

*We left without the fish* would be *Við fórum burt án fisksins (one fish) / fiskanna (more than one fish)*.

*Fiskjarins* returns no results on any of the sites that I use, so I don't think it does exist. There are lots of mistakes that can be found with google, after all. *Fiski* (feminine noun with the genitive indefinite singular form *fiskjar*) means *fishing*. So if you said 'Við fórum burt án fiskjarinnar' that would mean 'We left without the fishing' - which obviously doesn't really make sense.
If it is a mistake as I think it is, it is probably because *fiski* _looks_ like a masculine noun, so people are declining it as if it were masculine rather than feminine. Hence, fiskjar*ins* rather than fiskjar*innar*. Having said that, fiskjarins is still really weird looking. If fiski _were_ masculine then the singular definite genitive would be fiskans. Fiskjarins is like a bizarre mixture of masculine and feminine declension.

Anyway, I am not a native speaker and I'm not fluent, so I could well be completely wrong, but that is what I think.


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## Alxmrphi

> Fiskur sá, sem hertur var í Keflavík á síðustu vertíð, hefir undanfarna daga verið tekinn niður af trönum og fluttur í hús. — Þenna fisk er nú verið að meta til útflutnings. Norðmaður einn metur fiskinn og hefir sér til aðstoðar Ragnar Guðleifsson,er hafði umsjón* með verkun fiskjarins* fyrir Herzlusamlag Keflavíkurhrepps


I found this from the front page of a news article from 1935, which I would tend to value the opinion of more than maybe someone's blog, so I think it might have existed fairly recently.

_Verkun fisks_ = cleaning & gutting of fish (Icelandic Online) so it seems to be a variation here as this is talking about getting fish ready for export, it seems it was synonymous (at least in 1935) with_ fisks(ins)_.

It appears twice more in that article:


> *Flokkað er eftir stærð fiskjarins*, fitu hans og útliti. Ráðunautur fiskimálanefndar, Oskar Totland, hefir verið í Keflavík undanfarið og haft yfirumsjón *með mati fiskjarins*.


"_Flokkað er eftir stærð* fiskjarins*_" - They are classified/arranged according to the size _*of the fish*_.
"_og haft yfirumsjón með mati *fiskjarsins*_" - .. and has assisted with the assessment / valuation *of the fish*.

Then there are quotes from fishing websites in Icelandic that use it, that don't seem that old, but I also say genitive uses of it in various other places.
I don't think it is in common use given its lack of entries in the dictionaries / conjugators, but I don't think it's a mistake, I think it's just archaic.

I'm always coming across nouns that have more than one option in the genitive / plural cases, and dative cases, for example vegur, mökkur to name just two, I can easily imagine many words have swapped over time and become accepted into one category, so I can easily imagine in the past _fiskur_ belonged to the (ar,ir) category of masculine nouns, then was used with the (s,ar) group, resulting in both usage types (like in the words I just linked) and then the (s,ar) group '_won out_' so-to-speak.

(but I'm also subject to non-native wrongness factor )


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## Silver_Biscuit

Those are good points, Alex. I googled it and the results that came up did look like respectable sites that wouldn't make grammatical errors. I think now you're probably right - some sort of archaism or peculiarity specific to the fishing industry, rather than fish in general? 
Icelandic is haaard


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## Ricro

How great! Thanks a lot to everyone !!! I didn´t expect such a quick and substantial answer. 

So, it´s indeed always good to check twice and not simply trust some wiki-language-page. I say this, because as Im not studying Icelandic at the university, Id be more interested to learn first the commonly used forms than the archaic stuff.

Although I must say, I found your reflections, examples and explanations really interesting, Alex !! Thumbs up. 

I might return with another question as soon as I´m stuck again, which might be in short time. ;-)


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## sindridah

well im at school and i asked my icelandic teacher and he said fiskja is an old genitive of fish in icelandic. without article fiskja and with an article fiskjarins.

as alex said it's archiac and most of the icelandic people you would say fiskja to would just say, what a hell are you talking about ?.

fiskur    fiskurinn
fisk      fiskinn
fiski    fiskinum   
fiskja ( old )   fiskjarins ( old )


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## Alxmrphi

Hi Ricro,
You'll soon see how often we all consult each other when we're not sure!
Thanks Abi as well for your nod of approval on my estimations 

It just reminded me of some stuff I had read about the history of English, verbs behaved in the same way, there were once strong verbs which were normal, then in comes a weak form, they co-exist for a few hundred years and then one of them wins general acceptance and the other is seen as a "Barbaric mistake" now, even though it was there first and has more history, i.e. _ache -> oke_ (normal), then _ached _came along, lived together for a few hundred years, and _ached_ lives on today, and _oke_ wasn't anymore.

Sindri, is it fiskja without article and fiskja-rins with it?
I thought it would be fiskjar without and fiskjar-ins with it? (because -ins is always masculine genitive singular) and many verbs in that _(ar, ir)_ category have a genitive singular in -ar, like kattar-ins / munar-ins / réttar-ins / hlutar-ins.

So I just thought it was like that?

In any case... it's *fisks-ins* now!


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## Ricro

*Nefnifall/Nominative:* Fiskurinn (noun: _fiskur_) var veiddur í gær. _(The fish was caught yesterday.)_ 
*þolfall/Accusative:* Við veiddum fiskinn í gær. _(We caught the fish yesterday.)_ 
*þágufall/Dative:* Við tókum mynd af fiskinum. _(We took a picture of the fish.)_ 

*Eignarfall/Genitive:* Við fórum burt án fisksins. _(We left without the fish.)_


So this would be than the final outcome (up there, underlined), right ?! ;-)



I try to control this stuff because Im about to make myself mp3s for the purpose to memorize the endings. So Im trying to use complete phrases, but sometimes its hard to find good examples.


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## Silver_Biscuit

Ricro said:


> *Eignarfall/Genitive:* Við fórum burt án fisksins. _(We left without the fish.)_
> 
> 
> So this would be than the final outcome (up there, underlined), right ?! ;-)


 
Yep, as long as it's only one fish that you left without!


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## Ricro

Yes! ;-) I know that this might not sound like a usual phrase to hear. I´ll keep this in mind. As I said, I want to use these phrases as grammatical example phrases.


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## sindridah

Alxmrphi said:


> Sindri, is it fiskja without article and fiskja-rins with it?
> I thought it would be fiskjar without and fiskjar-ins with it? (because -ins is always masculine genitive singular) and many verbs in that _(ar, ir)_ category have a genitive singular in -ar, like kattar-ins / munar-ins / réttar-ins / hlutar-ins.
> 
> So I just thought it was like that?
> 
> In any case... it's *fisks-ins* now!


 
well alex i have no idea , it may be i'm not used to this fiskjar thing i'm only sure about fisks without and fiskins with article


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## Alxmrphi

sindridah said:


> well alex i have no idea , it may be i'm not used to this fiskjar thing i'm only sure about fisks without and fiskins with article



That's the only thing that matters!
Thanks for checking / telling us what your teacher said!


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## Ricro

Yes, indeed! Thanks for having asked your teacher, Sindridah !


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