# Icelandic: I am so sad I could spring



## lawnmower

Hi all,

I hope you can help me out with this one that has been sitting at the back of my brain for 10 years now!

I remember from my days in Iceland a funny story about a famous and important man (possibly a politician but I am not sure) that after an official dinner tranlated into English a typical Icelandic sentence meaning 'I am so full I could explode' that came out as: 'I am so sad I could spring' really puzzling everyone!

What is the Icelandinc for this sentence? I only kindof remember the start of it: ég er so sattur....

Takk!


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## butra

Ég er svo saddur að ég gæti sprungið.    masculine.
Ég er svo södd    að ég gæti sprungið.    feminine.


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## lawnmower

thanks Butra.


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## Alxmrphi

butra said:


> Ég er svo saddur að ég gæti sprungið.    masculine.
> Ég er svo södd    að ég gæti sprungið.    feminine.



Hæ!
Why would there be a difference between masculine and feminine.
Icelandic is something that I started to learn but put on pause while I got better at Germanic languages, and then want to slowly go back to and my goal is in within 7-8 years I will be able to speak it to some sort of "ok" degree.

But I've never come across something that could just be said in two different forms like masculine and feminine like this.
This isn't anything to do with what person says it, surely?


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## Daley

Hæ there, 

There is indeed a great difference between adjectives attached to masculine or feminine nouns in icelandic. 
And lets not forget the neuter gender : barnið er svo *satt* að það gæti sprungið. 

The radical (stem) of nouns, adjectives and even of proper names often changes when we conjugate (Örn, Örn, Erni, Arnar is the same proper name depending on which preposition is in use…)


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## Alxmrphi

Hey Daley *(**Velkominn)

*What I meantto say wasthat this is just one sentence, and for it to have two different meanings dependent on masculine and feminine, then an adjective would have to have two genders, and as I don't think this is true, surely with the sentence then there should be only one way to say it.

Or is this just two different ways to say it if a woman said it or if a man said it, or is it actually dependent on "adjectives attached to masculine or feminine nouns in Icelandic"like Daley said.I don't have access to any books or dictionaries like I do at home but I thought "svo" meant "then" in Icelandic, is this true, but this is another usage or am I just totally wrong?

Takk


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## lawnmower

Hi,
adjectives change depending to the gender of the person or of the object these are referred to.
*Ég er svo saddur að ég gæti sprungið* if a man is speaking
*Ég er svo södd að ég gæti sprungið* if a woman is speaking
And 
*Einar er saddur *
*Inga er södd *
*Barnið er satt*

Icelanders can you please confirm?
Takk!


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## Daley

Halló aftur, 
And thanks for welcoming me – this seems like a nice place to be and get informations

Lawnmower: This is correct! And here are some others forms if you want to practice  like: saddir, saddrar, söddum.... 

the meaning is always the same – the form only depends on who is speaking *or *about whom he is speaking 

"Svo" can mean "then" but also "so" like "so happy"

bless


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## Sepia

Alex_Murphy said:


> Hey Daley *(**Velkominn)
> 
> *What I meantto say wasthat this is just one sentence, and for it to have two different meanings dependent on masculine and feminine, then an adjective would have to have two genders, and as I don't think this is true, surely with the sentence then there should be only one way to say it.
> 
> Or is this just two different ways to say it if a woman said it or if a man said it, or is it actually dependent on "adjectives attached to masculine or feminine nouns in Icelandic"like Daley said.I don't have access to any books or dictionaries like I do at home but I thought "svo" meant "then" in Icelandic, is this true, but this is another usage or am I just totally wrong?
> 
> Takk



The key point here is the verb equivalent of "to be" in connection with a subject which can be a noun as well as a pronoun. Even though I don't speak Icelandic I can tell this for sure, because this is the way it works in a  number of Germanic and Romance languages.
It is just that English, is NOT one of them, I suppose.

He is Canadian - here the adjective would be masculine in many languages because "is" tell us that the adjective gives us info about the subject "He".
I am Canadian - here it is the same thing, but you don't know who I am. Especially when I write in English you don't know my gender. If I write in French

Je suis canadienne 

you'd know by now that I am a woman because otherwise I'd write

Je suis canadien

It works like that in lots of languages. There are even languages where "I" may have a gender.


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