# Icelandic: Martin Luther King speech



## ShakeyX

"Ég á mér draum um að sá tími komi er þjóðin rís upp með þessa játningu á vörunum: Sá sannleikur er okkur auðsær að allir menn eru skapaðir jafnir."

Okay just wanted help with this sentence as it is pretty crazy.

-Ég á mér draum.... what does the mér add here, to "I have a dream", why is it neccessary/used and what does it add.

-sá tími / sá sannleikur... why not just the definite article, what caused the use of Sá and how does it translate differently

- komi er þjóðin... okay, i assume komi is grammatically linked to Tími.. as in... The time comes... then.. er þjóðin... is the nation? 

- er okkur auðsær? is "to us" clear. Is this simply a stylistic swap, as surely it should be sá sannleikur okkur er auðsær?

Thanks in advance.


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## Alxmrphi

> What does the mér add here, to "I have a dream", why is it neccessary/used and what does it add.


This is quite common in a lot of European languages as a way to add a bit of intensity to a statement. It adds more expressiveness and I'd say a personal connection to the statement. It's kind of like when we say in English, "I'm gonna get myself a nice ice cream from the shop," or, "When I move into my house, I'm gonna have myself a nice painting on the wall," or something like that. It's not exact but it's a similar phenomenon. I don't think I've heard the dream thing without _mér_, actually.


> -sá tími / sá sannleikur... why not just the definite article, what caused the use of Sá and how does it translate differently.


That time / that truth .... if you use the definite article it just means 'the time' and 'the truth' - different meaning.


> - komi er þjóðin... okay, i assume komi is grammatically linked to Tími.. as in... The time comes... then.. er þjóðin... is the nation?


This, I can imagine, is understandably quite difficult to get one's head around at first. First of all komi is from koma and is the subjunctive because what is being talked about is a dream, a non-real reality, a personal interpretation (exactly when you need to use the subjunctive). _*Er*_ here, importantly, is not from the verb 'to be'. It doesn't mean 'is' but rather '_*when*_'. It's quite formal/archaic.


> - er okkur auðsær? is "to us" clear. Is this simply a stylistic swap, as surely it should be sá sannleikur okkur er auðsær?


Not quite because you need verb in the second position.
1. sá sannleikur
2. er
3. okkur
4. auðsær

You could move around the order of auðsær and okkur though, but preceding the adjective is quite normal even in pretty colloquial Icelandic (except when adding extra emphasis). 

Ég á mér draum um að [I have (myself) a dream that] sá tími komi [that time comes] er þjóðin rís upp [when the nation rises up] með þessa játningu á vörunum [with this admission/acknowledgement on its lips].


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## Hjalti

> -Ég á mér draum.... what does the mér add here, to "I have a dream", why is it neccessary/used and what does it add.


"Ég á draum" is wrong. After a short search on timarit.is I found these examples

"Ég á mér uppáhaldsbúðir..."

"Ég á mér leyndarmál..."

"Ég á mér eina ósk á þessum nýjársdegi..."

"ég á mér margar ljúfar endurminningar þaðan"

Favourite stores, wishes, secrets, recollections. Sounds like it's used for immaterial "possessions"



> -sá tími / sá sannleikur... why not just the definite article, what caused the use of Sá and how does it translate differently


Not sure how to answer this. Maybe some other Icelander here can be more helpful.  



> - komi er þjóðin... okay, i assume komi is grammatically linked to Tími.. as in... The time comes... then.. er þjóðin... is the nation?


Be careful! "er" is also the same as "þegar" (rarely used, and formal)



> - er okkur auðsær? is "to us" clear. Is this simply a stylistic swap, as surely it should be sá sannleikur okkur er auðsær?


Nope.


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## Kadabrium

_sá_ as an intensive to render ''that specific kind of...''

_er_ is an archaic relative particle (both for things, time and place I believe), 'that, when'

_er okkur auðsær_, I'm not sure if this er here is the be-verb or the aforementioned relative particle (_sá sannleikur_ corresponding to _játning_) , but I believe the particle _er_ often causes such an inversion (td. e_r eg annan fann, er kallaðr var höttr, __er honum þykkja til þess fallnir_ etc) although I can't induce a rule when exactly to apply this inversion. 
When I read the sentence for the first time I thought without doubt _er_ is the particle, but maybe I have just been reading to much Latin these days.


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## Hjalti

Kadabrium said:


> _er okkur auðsær_, I'm not sure if this er here is the be-verb or the aforementioned relative particle (_sá sannleikur_ corresponding to _játning_) ,


It's the be-verb.

Maybe the sentence is clearer if you guys imagine that "að allir menn eru skapaðir jafnir" is the "sannleikur". I.e. if I say something like "Sannleikurinn er okkur auðsær." (The truth is clear to us.) This sentence merely just qualifies the truth in question: Sá sannleikur, að allir menn eru skapaðir jafnir, er okkur auðsær.


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## ShakeyX

I know er here is just a conjugation of vera, im more just asking about how the sentence was formed... Sá sannleikur er okkur auðsær... 

I'm clued in on what it means.. The truth (that something something something ) is to us clear. Was just curious about the word order. An english to icelandic literal rendition would be "The truth is clear to us" Sá sannleikur er auðsær okkur. Not trying to compare english with icelandic just wondering about the rules which aligned the sentence in this way, as I haven't come across anything like it yet. Are sentences using something auðsær to someone always "vera - dative - auðsær"?


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## Alxmrphi

ShakeyX said:


> Are sentences using something auðsær to someone always "vera - dative - auðsær"?


It's not just restricted to auðsær, it's the default for nearly all adjectives when personal pronouns are used.


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## ShakeyX

Could you give an example without the complication of sá. Maybe just a simple sentence such as... "She is beautiful, to me"? maybe


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## Alxmrphi

Ég tek hann mér til fyrirmyndar.
Það er ekki hægt að vera honum reiður.
Það er okkur til gagns.
Þetta er mér mikilvægt.
Var ykkur kunnugt um þetta?
Það var öllum ljóst að hann gerði þetta.
Það gerði þeim kleift að....
Kannski verður það þér til glöggvunar.
Það reyndist henni til góðs.
Þetta er honum í blóðið borið.
Það er ekki mér að kenna.

It's way beyond just adjectives as you can see.
It's a really, really, really productive aspect of Icelandic word order.
Personal pronoun in the dative and connected adjectives go in that exact order, generally the opposite to what English does.
This also goes for verbs and preposition phrases (especially ones starting with 'til'...)

_Er okkur auðsær _is just this pattern once again.


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## ShakeyX

This has just clicked a massive part of Icelandic for me. I was always saying Ég er þér sammála and being told you should say "ég er sammála þér" as I sounded wierd. I guess what I was saying was the proper way and the other is the colloquial way.

So realising that sammála is an adjective kindof links with auðsær. So would people normally say (on the streets) það er auðsær mér... or something, but to be proper it should be "það er mér auðsær"?


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## Alxmrphi

Oddly enough, they're right. It doesn't work so well for *sammála*.
What you're saying about on the streets saying mér auðsær is also kind of weird. Remember we're talking about a translated famous speech from the 1960s, not something colloquial. I doubt you'd find that used colloquially. If you had that sort of ordering in your head, good. It's sammála you need to remember behaves a bit differently, outside of the regular pattern. You do find both versions though, the one with dative preceding it is more formal and not so colloquial. There's not much choice with the general pattern though, dative has to precede.


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