Grammar terminology and abbreviations

I believe that in order to learn a language, you don’t need to learn the grammar in detail and to be focused on it too much. The greatest way is to be immersed in the language, preferably to have conversations with native speakers. Unfortunately, I don’t have the chance to be in Iceland right now, neither the opportunity to surround myself with the language, so for the moment, I have decided to treat grammar seriously.

When I see something strange, I would like to know the reason for it. I am also interested in the evolution of a language and I like to observe the changes that have happened in it, its development.

This is why you will see a lot of grammar terminology and abbreviations in my blog, but you can find them all explained below:

Abbreviations

The most common abbreviations that I’ll use refer to gender, number, and cases:

• nf. – nominative case
• þf. – accusative case
• þgf. – dative case
• ef. – genitive case
• kk. – masculine
• kvk. – feminine
• hk. – neuter

Also, eintala = singular, fleirtala = plural.

Grammar terminology

• V-innskot (V-insertion) – а -v is inserted, when -ar ending is added. Example: stöð (place), but stöðVar.

• J-innskot (J-insertion) – a -j is inserted whenever -e, -æ, -ey are followed by an -a or – u ending. The nominative form for an island is ey, but when adding -ar in the genitive case, we have to insert a -j before it (eyjar).

• Brottfall (elision/fraction): loss of a sound in a word or phrase – when adding a vowel to a noun or an adjective with two syllables in the stem, the second stem vowel is lost. For example, veður (weather) loses -u when -i is added – veðri.

• Samdráttur (contraction): a shortened version of the form of the word is created due to the omission of internal letters and sounds.

• Sound shifts: a-hljóðvarp, u-hljóðvarp og i-hljóðvarp. You might have come across them in English like a-shift, u-shift and i-shift. In the Germanic languages, these shifts are called respectively a-umlaut, u-umlaut, i-umlaut or also mutations. A vowel change is triggered by other sound called radio sound. You can see more information about these umlauts on Wikipedia.

U-hljóðvarp (U-umlaut)

The most common one is the u-shift (a→ö/u). A changes into an ö or u in unstressed syllables when followed by u in the next syllable. This u might be either visible or invisible (lost u that is not part of the word anymore, but it has triggered the shift back in timе). If there is an intermediate syllable that separates the two syllables, the shift does not occur.

The shift is very typical for the verbs in the first person plural and the nouns in dative plural due to the -um ending (ég tala → við tölum). The u-shift occurs also in feminine nouns with plural -ur ending and neuter plural nouns with an a in the stem.

It might seem difficult to find u-shift in verslun (store, shop), for example, but in its plural form verslanir, the u-shift is neutralized by the -ir ending and the original -a is returned to the stem. You can think of it like some kind of reverse u-shift and this happens with feminine nouns which have no ending in the singular but do have -ö or -u in the stem (gjöf → gjafir).

I-hljóðvarp (I-umlaut)

This shift is typical for the verbs. There are a lot of vowel stem changes, happening in the first, second and third person singular:

• a, o, ö → e

að fara → ég fer

að koma → ég kem

að slökkva → ég slekk

• jó, jú, ú → ý

að bjóða → ég býð

að ljúga → ég lýg

að búa → ég bý

• á → æ

að fá → ég fæ

að ná → ég næ

• au → ey

að hlaupa → ég hleyp

Do you honestly need to know all of this?

You will see a lot of the abbreviations in dictionaries and textbooks. You will notice all of the changes – shifts, sound losses and so on in the language all of the time. You will be more prepared to predict the u-shift in the nouns and verbs, having in mind when does it occur.

Once the grammar is internalized, all of this information might not be necessary, but at the beginning is good to know it, I think.