# Icelandic: What are you doing on Tuesday afternoon?



## Alxmrphi

Sæl öl,

Hvernig segur maður "What are you doing on Tuesday afternoon?" á íslensku?
Ég veit það ekki en tilraunin mín er.... hmmm.. "*Hvað ertu að gera á eftirmiðdaginn þriðudags?*".

Það eru margar þýðingar fyrir orðið *afternoon* í orðabókinni, t.d. eftirmiðdagur / síðdegi / sennipartur. Ég er líka með vandamál með þýðinginni af *on* á íslensku. Þetta er auðveld setning en ég veit ekki hvað er rétti hluturinn að segja .

Ef ég vil segja _Monday morning_ í staðinn af Tuesday afternoon, það væri _*á morguninn mánudags?*_

Takk fyrir aðstoðina.


----------



## Silver_Biscuit

Alxmrphi said:


> "*Hvað ertu að gera á eftirmiðdaginn þriðudags?*"


 
Surely? But about your question, this is something I've wondered about as well, looking forward to the answers! Talking about future and past times is definitely one of my weak spots.


----------



## Alxmrphi

Ahh, I'm mixing it up with *fare* (_'*do*' in Italian_), yeah I do mean* gera*.
Thanks for pointing it out.

... We'll await the natives


----------



## Tjahzi

1. _"Hvernig maður segur..." -> __"Hvernig segur __maður__..."  _V2!

2. "_tilrau__i__nin" -> "tilraunin". 

_3. _Gera > Fara?

_4. _"...í orðabókina" -> __"...í orðabókinni"  _Þágufall! 

5. Ég trúi það *on/at *þýðir *á *á íslensku. Þess vegna er það rétt að segja _"á eftirmiðdaginn/__eftirmiðdeginum (_kannski verður það að vera þágufall hér (did you look up accusative of time? )).

6. _"Ef vil  ég segja..." -> "Ef ég vil segja..." _Conjunctions do not trigger V2. 


Ég vona það hvað ég hef sagt ekki er rangt!


----------



## sindridah

Hey Alex!

Hvernig maður segur "What are you doing on Tuesday afternoon?" á íslensku?

I guess it would be like: Hvað ertu að gera seinnipart þriðjudags. But i would prefer to say "Hvað ertu að fara gera seinnipart þriðjudags" 

Monday morning would be "mánudagsmorgunn"

And there is an inadvertently mistake as you can notice when you read it, It's seg*i*r


----------



## Alxmrphi

Thanks Sindri,

I haven't seen verbs like "fara gera" used before in Icelandic.
I presume this is fairly new in the language? Is it slangy?

Seg_*i*_r, ahh!


----------



## sindridah

No it's not slangy. English has this also.

What are you *going to do*, I guess


----------



## Alxmrphi

sindridah said:


> No it's not slangy. English has this also.
> 
> What are you *going to do*, I guess



Ah, but I've seen hvað ertu að fara að gera?, I'm familiar with that.
I'm not familiar with sentences without *að* in between the two verbs.

That'd be like "What are you going do?" which sounds very bad in English.
But maybe it's not the same in Icelandic


----------



## sindridah

Uhh when is it not between two verbs?  I don't understand


----------



## Alxmrphi

sindridah said:


> Uhh when is it not between two verbs?  I don't understand



When *að *is not in between two verbs, that looked new(odd) to me.._
Hvað ertu að fara gera?_

Because I was expecting:_
Hvað ertu að fara *að* gera?_

I didn't think you could have "fara gera" next to each other without having* að *in the middle of them.
But now I know you can (Google has *45,000* results for 'ertu að fara gera'), which is a lot for a fairly large (multiple word) string of Icelandic.


----------



## sindridah

Uhh you're right, It is suppose to be *að* gera. *Að* is always in front of infinitive.


----------



## Alxmrphi

sindridah said:


> Uhh you're right, It is suppose to be *að* gera. *Að* is always in front of infinitive.



Ok! I'll stick with what seems to be more normal to me 
Thanks.

(Though it does seem to be common by what I can see on Google, not having it).


----------



## Tjahzi

I think the issue here is that Icelandic has a distinct infinite, unlike English (but like Swedish ). Hence, whereas English demands the infinitive marker, _to_, since there is simply no other way to distinguish it from the present, Swedish and Icelandic have separate infinitive forms (although the Icelandic one is shared by 3rd. pl.) and hence, the infinitive marker _att/að_ is not mandatory.


----------



## Alxmrphi

Tjahzi said:


> I think the issue here is that Icelandic has a distinct infinite, unlike English (but like Swedish ). Hence, whereas English demands the infinitive marker, _to_, since there is simply no other way to distinguish it from the present, Swedish and Icelandic have separate infinitive forms (although the Icelandic one is shared by 3rd. pl.) and hence, the infinitive marker _att/að_ is not mandatory.



I thought about that, but then Sindri said:


> It is supposed to be *að* gera. *Að* is always in front of infinitive.



Oh I don't know, I give up, I'm getting a headache now


----------



## sindridah

sindridah said:


> Hey Alex!
> 
> Hvernig maður segur "What are you doing on Tuesday afternoon?" á íslensku?
> 
> I guess it would be like: Hvað ertu að gera seinnipart þriðjudags. But i would prefer to say "Hvað ertu að fara gera seinnipart þriðjudags"
> 
> Monday morning would be "mánudagsmorgunn"
> 
> And there is an inadvertently mistake as you can notice when you read it, It's seg*i*r



I thought i made an error, Was it this that was confusing you Alex? It's ofcourse suppose to be *Að* in front of gera. 

I apologize, When i'm writing to my Icelandic friends we all are not really doing it with care ,I guess it's just a habit of mine to write incorrect i guess , Wont happen again! ( I hope )


----------



## Tjahzi

Yes, technically, it's always there, but due to reasons mentioned above, it can (obviously ) be omitted. I think Sindri knows that _að_ is the infinitive marker, however, that doesn't mean it can't be omitted (in certain contexts). What he is saying is basically that it is ("it is supposed to be (read)") "_að fara að gera" _(because those two are obviously infinitive forms), but that it can be realized as _"að fara gera"_.

Or, at least that would be my conclusion. (On a side note, Swedish actually doesn't omit the infinite marker, but reduces it in speech.)

EDIT: I beg your pardon Sindri, but if such a construction appears natural to you, why would it then be incorrect? Does it sound that horribly incorrect? I'm quite sure that I've seen this construction before (that is, two infinitives following each other without an _að _in between).


----------



## Alxmrphi

sindridah said:


> I thought i made an error, Was it this that was confusing you Alex? It's ofcourse suppose to be *Að* in front of gera.
> 
> I apologize, When i'm writing to my Icelandic friends we all are not really doing it with care ,I guess it's just a habit of mine to write incorrect i guess , Wont happen again! ( I hope )



Yeah, that's what was confusing me.
Thanks for clearing it up!

I do the same when I write in English to friends, so can completely understand, but I always pay attention when it's a foreign language!


----------



## sindridah

Alex it's really simple in Icelandic, When the verb ends with an *a* then it's always *að* in front of that verb.


----------



## Alxmrphi

sindridah said:


> Alex it's really simple in Icelandic, When the verb ends with an *a* then it's always *að* in front of that verb.


I know  
My last post was telling you that I understood it now, not that I was still confused.

Anyway, time for a drink


----------



## Tjahzi

Uhh, I don' want to be the troublemaker here, but I must object!

Firstly:


sindridah said:


> Alex it's really simple in Icelandic, When the verb ends with an *a* then it's always *að* in front of that verb.



Þeir segja það...
Þeir að segja það...

Right? 

And also, even if the construction in question is an alternative used in only a minority of cases (722k vs 38k on google), it is reasonable to believe that it is more common in the spoken language, and that it is constantly spreading. As such, I find it to be a bit harsh just to rule it off as incorrect and forget it. 


On a side note, was my first post in this thread so good there was nothing to say about it, or so bad that you didn't know where to start?


----------



## sindridah

Yes it's very common to say "Þeir segja það" in Icelandic. But it is wrong Icelandic.

I guess you want to put it in present tense. If you expostulate with Icelandic then you should say

Þeir eru að segja það.

And in past tense Þeir sögðu það.

Icelandic is developing into ridicoulos language, And so high percentage of Icelandic people talk incorrect Icelandic. Icelandic professors always complaining about it and it's almost common thing that small part of Icelandic newspapers contains article with Icelandic corrections. And teaching people the right Icelandic


----------



## Silver_Biscuit

Huh? Now I'm confused. Pretty much all third-person plural present tense verbs are the same as the infinitive. Doesn't mean they _are_ the infinitive. I don't want to sound presumptuous here, but I'm _sure_ it isn't incorrect to say 'Þeir segja það' to mean 'They say it' (Þeir eru að segja það = They are saying it). 

Þeir fara til Íslands.
Þær geta ekki gert þetta.
Þau syngja söng.


----------



## sindridah

Hi

I made an error or i was kind of little mis-understanding. I do want to make a note that i don't know everything about how Icelandic grammar and syntax works. I often need some references to work with to help me with many questions here. And i do sometimes make mistake and i hope thats acceptable here on this forum and for the Icelandic learners here.

But you're right Silver_Biscuit and Thjazi. There is nothing wrong with saying:

Þeir segja það

Þeir fara til Íslands and so on. 

But then it's about indicative mode. Third-person plural present tense verbs are the same as infinitive and are ofcourse not infinitive, well they are 3p. ft. nt. þeir/þær/þau. ( Direct claims )

And sorry Thjazi, I forgot you. Due to shame i guess! 

But yeah this "Að" infinitive marker is omitted in some cases. I don't know exactly wich one. And i don't remember if there was any other notes from you 

And don't worry Alex, Your sentence is still suppose to be "Hvað ertu *að* fara *að* gera seinnipart þriðjudags"


----------



## Tjahzi

Thank you for the proper examples, Silver Biscuit! 

But no worries Sindri, at all. This is what makes languages so interesting, the process of exploring them! You are native, you know _how_ it is, but you don't know _why_, which is completely normal! Making a mistake is just fine, as long as we are having this discussion, I'm certain that we will arrive at a correct conclusion anyway.

They say that you should _learn from your mistakes_, but most recently, I've (re)started learning Icelandic from Alex' mistakes!


----------



## Silver_Biscuit

Just another quick follow-up question. Sindri, could we also say 'Hvað ætlarðu að gera seinnipart þriðjudags?'?


----------



## sindridah

Yes you could. But it's more of a "friendship" talk. 

Hvað ætlaru að gera í kvöld?

Hvað ætlaru að gera á morgun?

Hvað ætlaru að gera seinnipart þriðjudags.


----------

