# Icelandic: shared idioms with English



## AatM

Hi there guys!

I have come across during the brief time that I have been studying Icelandic several idioms which are virtually identical to English, which I assume have all come from the Old Norse elements in the two languages (in Icelandic's case the near identical resemblance). Such turns of phrase include *"að setja sig á háan hest"*,*"hingað og þangað*", and *"til og frá* (with English equivalents "put yourself on your high horse", "here and there"/"hither and thither" and "to and fro"). Now I was wondering whether there are many other common idioms in Icelandic which are the same as in English? I would very much appreciate any suggestions you may have.

Takk kærlega,
AatM


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## Alxmrphi

I can't think of many, but one sprang to mind: _að vera úlfur í sauðargæru _(to be a wolf in sheep's clothing).
Oh and then there's also: _að seljast eins og heitar lummur _(to sell like hotcakes).

Not good at remembering these things on the spot.


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## AatM

Ah, thank you very much Alxmrphi! I'm sorry about the open-endedness of the question, that won't have helped! That's interesting though to see that several of our animal-related idioms are shared with Icelandic.


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## Silver_Biscuit

There are loads. Some of them probably came into Icelandic from English, or other foreign languages.

hvorki fugl né fiskur - neither fish nor fowl
að grafa sína eigin gröf - to dig one's own grave
eins og fiskur á þurru landi - like a fish out of water
með köldu blóði - in cold blood
að troða einhverjum um tær - to step on someone's toes
skrautfjöður í hatt einhvers - a feather in someone's cap
að hafa mörg járn í eldinum - to have many irons in the fire
koma í ljós - come to light


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## Gavril

I wonder if there is a tendency among Icelandic speakers to avoid foreign idioms, in the same way that they tend to avoid using individual foreign words? For example, the widespread expression "a picture is worth a thousand words" (which most European languages translate word-for-word, as far as I know) has the equivalent _mynd segir meira en mörg orð _in Icelandic. Several of the idioms that Silver_Biscuit and Alxmrphi mentioned seem subtly different from their English equivalents: e.g., _með köldu blóði _literally means "*with* cold blood", not "in cold blood".

If this reflects a general pattern, it would mean that there'd be relatively few shared idioms between English and  Icelandic, or at least few that were adopted in recent centuries.


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## AatM

Hmm, that's an interesting point Gavril. Though when it does come to idioms, phenomenal speakers of foreign languages as Icelanders are, sometimes because idiom can be such a complex area of another language they won't necessarily be familiar with that phrase, and hence may not know whether an idiom has been borrowed from another tongue, whereas with word-borrowings the word could well look inherently "un-Icelandic".

 Would anyone happen to know additionally whether there is an Icelandic equivalent of "to bury the hatchet"? It's always been one of my favourite turns of phrase... And thank you for all of yours Silver_Biscuit!

EDIT: Reading through your post again, I saw that you didn't mean quite what I thought you did - apologies! I think that one might consider a few of these virtually identical due to them both having the same kind of imagery - if the wording has changed down the centuries I still think it might be fair to state that it is not unreasonable to consider two such idioms one and the same.


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## Gavril

AatM said:


> Hmm, that's an interesting point Gavril. Though when it does come to idioms, phenomenal speakers of foreign languages as Icelanders are, sometimes because idiom can be such a complex area of another language they won't necessarily be familiar with that phrase, and hence may not know whether an idiom has been borrowed from another tongue, whereas with word-borrowings the word could well look inherently "un-Icelandic".



True. I think the people responsible for "rejecting" idioms that are based on foreign models (to the extent that such rejection occurs) would often be the language authorities in Iceland, e.g. the committees that decide what to include in Icelandic dictionaries. These groups of people are relatively well-equipped to recognize whether a word or idiom has been copied from a foreign source or not.



> Would anyone happen to know additionally whether there is an Icelandic  equivalent of "to bury the hatchet"?



I found two translations at Snara.is : 

_grafa stríðsöxina _
and 
_semja_ _frið_



> EDIT: Reading through your post again, I saw that you didn't mean quite what I thought you did - apologies! I think that one might consider a few of these virtually identical due to them both having the same kind of imagery - if the wording has changed down the centuries I still think it might be fair to state that it is not unreasonable to consider two such idioms one and the same.



I think that if a phrase is copied exactly across most languages (i.e., translated word-for-word), but Icelandic translates this phrase in a unique way, there's reason to think that the Icelandic phrase is intentionally innovative. But, I'm not sure if this is the case for the phrases mentioned on this thread; I haven't done a thorough survey of how they are rendered in different languages.


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## Silver_Biscuit

There are really a lot of idioms that have been adopted in Icelandic as direct translations of idioms used in Danish, English or other languages. If you check out _Mergur málsins_ on Snara you can find dozens of these. Although a preposition might be different here or there, there is definitely not a tendency among Icelandic speakers to avoid foreign idioms.

að vera óskrifað blað - to be a blank page
að setja öll egg sín í sömu körfu - to put all your eggs in the same basket
að kasta steinum úr glerhúsi - to throw stones in glass houses (yes, I can see that this is literally "from a glass house", but you must admit that the image is identical)
að sjá ekki skóginn fyrir trjánum - to not see the forest for the trees
að lifa frá hendinni til munnsins - to live from hand to mouth
að pissa upp í vindinn - to piss into the wind
að leggja spilin á borðið - to put one's cards on the table

On the other hand, there are lots of wonderful all-Icelandic idioms. One of my favourites is _að brynna músum_, to cry, literally _to water the mice_. Or _að lepja dauðann úr__ skel_, to scrape by, to live in poverty, literally _to lap death from a shell_.

Edit: Gavril, I think you're imagining the "authorities" to be a lot more of _hreinstefnumenn_ than they are. This is not France we're talking about - if something has legitimately become part of the Icelandic language, it'll make it into the dictionaries, regardless of whether it has a foreign source. Most people in Iceland have quite realistic attitudes towards neologisms and influence from other languages. Icelandic and the Icelanders are actually very good at assimilating foreign words and phrases.


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## NorwegianNYC

Because the Germanic languages are so new, many idioms are shared throughout the Germanic cultural sphere, and not necessarily borrowed by the one or other language. Old English and Norse were inter-intelligible only a thousand years ago, and very many of these expression were probably in use as idioms back then as well.


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## Silver_Biscuit

Icelandic is somewhat different from the mainland Scandinavian languages, German and English in that it was so isolated for so long. Some of these expressions may well share a common Germanic origin, but I think the majority entered the Icelandic language later via other languages. All those that I mentioned in my last post came into Icelandic in the 19th or 20th centuries, and are "erlent að uppruna" as Snara puts it, all either from Danish or English I think. 

"A wolf in sheep's clothing" is taken from the Bible, so I suppose similar phrases would have been known in Northern Europe post-Christianisation. 
"að seljast eins og heitar lummar" is directly from the English, entered Icelandic in the 20th century. 
"hvorki fiskur né fugl" is from the 20th century and came probably from Danish. 

I don't feel like looking them all up, but I think the idioms that existed in Icelandic before the language started coming into serious contact with Danish and other languages are in the minority amongst those that correspond with the English. Icelandic is however rich in idioms that _do not_ correspond with English, and maybe these are shared by other Germanic languages - I would not know about them.


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## AatM

Perhaps it is indeed the unique and quirky idioms which are the best then!

 Incidentally, does Icelandic have a similar image to the English *"raining cats and dogs"*, which I understood comes from Norse mythology?

EDIT: The Bible-related nature of "wolf in sheep's clothing" raises an interesting point about English idioms and then hence the original source for the Icelandic forms. Because so much of English, including such idiomatic phrases, comes from a wide variety of languages, are the Icelandic idioms which would appear initially to have come from English in fact drawn from a different source? Maybe some of the apparently "English" majority of borrowings indeed have come from other languages to which Icelandic was exposed through literature etc.?


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## NorwegianNYC

AatM said:


> *"raining cats and dogs"*, which I understood comes from Norse mythology?


 Actually no - that is a myth. It simply means it rains a lot. The idea was that dogs (wolves, actually) were associated with Odin and cats with witches (which is not Norse, but perhaps Celtic). The mythological interpretation is fanciful, and not correct.


> Maybe some of the apparently "English" majority of borrowings indeed have come from other languages to which Icelandic was exposed through literature etc.?


 I agree. We should not rule out borrowings, but I think more often than not, I think they have a common origin, rather than being actually borrowed.


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## AatM

Oh ok! Well thank you for that - just goes to show you cannot believe everything you read!


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## Silver_Biscuit

NorwegianNYC said:


> I agree. We should not rule out borrowings, but I think more often than not, I think they have a common origin, rather than being actually borrowed.



In which instance do you mean? Do you have any reason to doubt the information from _Mergur málsins_? This is an academic work about idioms in Icelandic that can be accessed through the website Snara.is. I agree that borrowings between Danish and English, for example, are probably unlikely. Icelandic, however, is a different story.

AatM - There is indeed a lot more in Icelandic that can be traced to Danish, rather than English, influence. Iceland was a Danish colony until 1944 after all, Icelanders still learn Danish in school - back when Iceland was part of the Danish Empire some well-to-do families would only speak Danish on Sundays. It was very much a prestige language in Iceland, and that is reflected by the huge amount that Icelandic took from Danish. For more modern additions to the language (mid 20th century onwards), English is a more likely source.


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## NorwegianNYC

Silver_Biscuit said:


> In which instance do you mean? Do you have any reason to doubt the information from _Mergur málsins_? This is an academic work about idioms in Icelandic that can be accessed through the website Snara.is. I agree that borrowings between Danish and English, for example, are probably unlikely. Icelandic, however, is a different story.


My point is - in case you have missed it - that while Icelandic is a run-of-the-mill, card-carrying Germanic language, with a Germanic grammar and a Germanic vocabulary, it is also likely that very many Icelandic expressions are also shared by other members of the Germanic cultural sphere. To claim they have all been borrowed (the unique Icelandic ones excluded) is doing Icelandic a great disservice. If Danish, Swedish, Norwegian etc. have a number of shared idioms and expressions with e.g. English and German, it does not mean they were too lazy to invent their own and they had to borrow them. It most like is the case of a common source.


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## Silver_Biscuit

Erm, I am not quite sure where we are disagreeing here... 

I do not claim that all Icelandic expressions that seem the same as English ones have been borrowed. I said that I thought it likely that majority had been, and the small sample that I checked confirmed this. Not necessarily borrowed from English; indeed, borrowings from Danish are probably more common.

I am not saying the same about any other language. I 100% agree that in most cases where idioms that seem the same can be found within Danish, Swedish, German, Norwegian and English a common origin is the most likely explanation. These languages developed in a completely different context to Icelandic, which has been largely linguistically isolated for much of its history. My point is that Icelandic is _not_ a run-of-the-mill Germanic language in terms of language development and the way it has interacted with other European languages.

Nobody said anything about laziness, I am not offering any moral judgement on this. I am not doing Icelandic "a disservice", I am commenting on its unique position amongst Germanic languages. As I said, Icelandic is rich in idioms and metaphorical language, there is plenty that they "invented" themselves and did not borrow. This is pure conjecture, but there are also probably lots of idioms in Icelandic that were known throughout Scandinavia but have only survived in Icelandic, due to the language's historical slow rate of change and isolation from outside influence. It's certainly much closer to Old Norse in a variety of ways, probably including turns of phrase.


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## NorwegianNYC

Excellent retort! We seem to be very much on the same page then. My apologies.


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## AatM

This is very true what you say - after all, Iceland was under Danish rule for an extremely long time and English really was much less of a lingua franca. Now I am no expert on Icelandic history, but I can hardly imagine that there was a great deal of English presence in Iceland at any point before the turn of the 19th century, and hence that is why such idioms as "it's raining cats and dogs" (I looked it up NorweiganNYC ), which is first recorded cerca mid-1700s are not found in Icelandic, because there was little contact between the two languages.


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