Every Single Word in Icelandic

Samband

Fri, 17 May 2013 16:24:00 +0100

I have noticed that no human wants to be alone.

This is because of how they are made.

Except for maybe when they are in a bath-room, they always like to be with other humans and do human things with them.

They like to talk with their mouths and ears with them, watch moving pictures with them, and listen to tón-list with them, and take photo-grams of their food for the inter-net with them, and dance with their feet with them, and sometimes kiss them on their mouths with their mouths.

If two humans like dancing together with their feet often, and kissing each other very much with their mouths, they are in a “sam-band”.

This word means they are together, and that they are no longer alone.

Halló, this is Iceland. Because humans are very small and not...

Fri, 23 Nov 2012 18:45:09 +0000

Halló, this is Iceland.

Because humans are very small and not very strong, they invented “rafmagn”. It means “electricity”, but do not be confused. It is not a city.

They use rafmagn to help them do many things.

For example, they use it to light up their streets at night so they do not have to see the stars and feel small.

They also use it to feed their inter-nets, and to talk to their friends on a sími, and to make pönk rokk, and something called a búgalú.

Many humans think rafmagn just comes out of their walls by itself. This is not true. Before the rafmagn can come out of their walls, they first have to make it. They do this with a big machine that can turn waterfalls into rafmagn.

But even though not many humans really understand rafmagn (or even notice it), I have noticed that they all become very angry when their rafmagn stops coming out of their walls.

Bless bless,
- Iceland

Gaur

Tue, 23 Oct 2012 23:19:50 +0000

Halló.

I have noticed that when young humans talk to other young humans, they often call them “gaur”, even though this is usually not their real name.

Like when you say:

“Ég hef aldrei séð aðra eins frysti-kistu, gaur”, or
“Ertu búinn að skila skatta-framtalinu, gaur?”, or
“Gaur, það er kominn tími á að vax-bera þennan Barbour jakka.”

It means “dude”.

There are many different types of gaurar. The people who help me with this internet do not really know all of them, even though they are very clever.

A “klikkaður gaur” is someone who has just done something very interesting with his skate-board or his snow-board.

A “góður gaur” is someone who will buy you a bjór or drive you to töff places in an auto-mobíle.

And “Gaurinn” means “The Dude”.

If you are a young person who likes to say clever things to your friends, this word can be very useful to you.

Vitleysingur

Mon, 08 Oct 2012 21:43:00 +0000

When humans think one of them is very wise, they say that this human is “vitur”. That means they have a lot of “vit” in their head.

And if they are wise enough, they get an award.

But when a human thinks another human does not have any *vit* in their head, they say that this human is a *vitleysingur*.

It means that they are not wise. They are just a “wit-less-person”.

Wit-less humans can also get an award, but they do not get the same award as the wise humans. And sometimes they just get their own “reality tele-visions”.

It is all very confusing.

Auglýsing

Mon, 08 Oct 2012 10:11:00 +0000

I have noticed that many humans have very many feelings about what other humans should do. They think that it would be better if the other humans would do what they are told to do.

“Auglýsing” is an Icelandic word for something that they make if they are very serious about this.

It means “advertisement”, and when they have made it, they put it on your tele-vision, and your inter-net, and even on your shirt. That way, you will see it, and do what they are telling you to do. Especially if the auglýsing is töff.

Many humans are very used to other humans telling them what to do. They think they must always do this, and that this is normal.

Afsakið

Thu, 04 Oct 2012 06:24:00 +0000

I have noticed that one of the differences between a human and a tree or a stone or a mountain is that humans do not sit still very much. They are always running around doing many different and important things. (Like shopping in a súpermarket, or taking little humans to a school where they learn how to be big humans.)

Because they are always running around, humans sometimes bump into each other.

That is why they invented the word “afsakið”.

Afsakið means “excuse me”, and you can also use it if you are trying to get someone to pay attention to you, even if you have never bumped into them. (Or to say you are sorry that you haven’t updated your blog in a very long time.)

Pulsa (or pylsa, if you insist)

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 15:57:00 +0000

“Pulsa” is an Icelandic word for a thing that people like very much to stick into their mouths and eat.

“Pylsa” is another Icelandic word for the same thing.

Both of them mean “hot dog”, and they are both very useful if you visit me in a flying machine, because my people are good at making them. (Hot dogs, not flying machines.)

Now you are probably thinking: “Why are there two words in Icelandic for the same thing, Iceland? Why are your people so silly?”

This a very good question.

The people who say “pylsa” think that the people who say “pulsa” are doing it all wrong. They say “Stop saying pulsa! Start saying pylsa! That is the right way!” They can get very angry about this, even though both pulsa and pylsa taste exactly the same.

But the people who like saying “pulsa” (like this people who help me with this inter-net) just do not listen to this. They think that saying “pylsa” would be like saying “hot canine” instead of “hot dog”.

And that is all.

Your friend,
- Iceland

PS It was Rán who made the pulsa and pylsa in the drawing. She also made this book for you.

Skemmtilegt

Tue, 18 Oct 2011 08:37:00 +0000

My people’s language has many words that change depending on what people are using them to talk about. “Skemmtilegt” is one of these words.

It means “fun”. (But do not confuse it with “fönn”, which means “snow”. I will tell you more about that later.)

It is a word that does not like to stay the same. A human man can be skemmtilegur, but a human woman can be skemmtileg. A human baby is sometimes skemmtilegt. And if you have many men, they can be skemmtilegir, and many women can be skemmtilegar, and many women and men together can be skemmtileg.

Many people who are trying to learn my people’s language think that this is not very skemmtilegt.

Bless bless,
- Iceland

Suggested by my friend Chris Laurel who said “it’s fun to say (at least for an English speaker)”.

Eyja-fjalla-jökull

Thu, 13 Oct 2011 09:39:00 +0000

This is a famous word that many people have heard with their ears. Some of them have even tried to say it with their mouths, even though they do not understand what it means.

But don’t worry, I will explain it now so this does not happen to you.

“Eyjafjallajökull” looks like one word, and it is, but it also has three moving parts in it — eyja, fjalla and jökull.

“Fjall” means “mountain” and “eyja” means “island”. But if you put them together they mean “Eyjafjöll”, which means “Island Mountains”. (My people gave them this name because they could see my Vestmannaeyjar from them.)

And if you put “jökull” at the end it means “The glacier on top of the mountains you can see the islands from”.

Because Eyjafjallajökull is very famous (it has been on your television) you know that it is a volcano. But even if it is a volcano, it doesn’t have the word “volcano” in it.

Many humans find this confusing, but if you think about it with your brain, it is really very clever.

Bless bless,
- Iceland

P.S. This word was suggested by ibreakfortutles who said “coolest word ever”. (The picture comes from Boncherry, via Emma.)

Útlenska

Sun, 02 Oct 2011 16:32:00 +0000

I have noticed that many humans visit me in flying machines to look at my water-falls and my mountains, and maybe climb all over me, and make moving pictures with me in them to put on their Vimeos.

But other humans are not like this.

They just do not “give one shit”* about waterfalls and mountains, and instead they only want to go to töff bars to meet my people, and explain many “awe-some” things to them, and drink many drinks with them, and dance to loud music with their feet with them, and maybe even try to kiss them on their mouths when they are not looking.

If you are a person like this, you will notice that when you first go into the töff bar to meet my people, they will be saying very clever and witty things to each other, and you just will not understand any of them. Maybe you will be confused about this, but do not worry. (You are not “crazy in your brain-house”.)

The reason you do not understand them is that they are speaking “íslenska”, and you just do not know how to do this.

You only speak “útlenska”. It means “a language which is not íslenska.”

Maybe there is a blogg about every single word in útlenska, but this is not it. (This blogg is only about every single word in íslenska.)

Bless bless,
- Iceland

P.S. Do you like the picture of the Icelandic tongue? Rán made it.

*I do not know what humans mean when they say this, but it does not sound very good.

Leturfræði

Sun, 25 Sep 2011 11:18:00 +0000

I have noticed that many of the humans who use this word have black plastic glasses on their faces.

These humans are all very careful. They do not only care about what words mean, but also how the letters in them look.

Letur-fræði means means “typography”, but many of the people who speak Icelandic do not say “leturfræði”. They think it is more töff to say “týpógrafía”.

Because you are probably also a careful person (maybe you have black plastic glasses on your face, too) you have noticed that my people’s language has letters in it that other languages have forgotten. Maybe you have seen them on my inter-nets.

They look like this: Þ, ð, æ and ö.

Maybe you think they all look strange, but Ð is the most töff, because it never appears in words as Ð, only as ð.

Many humans who are busy making letters for other humans to use in news-papers and on inter-nets do not know how to make an “Ð”, because not many people need it. But a few weeks ago they all met in a building that my people built to listen to loud music and talk about important things in. And they talked about it, and now they know all about how to make an Ð.

(If you want to know more about that you can read what a clever human called Ðan Reynolds wrote about it on his inter-net.)

Bless bless,
- Iceland

Sími

Thu, 08 Sep 2011 06:54:00 +0000

A long time ago (for you, not for me), humans who wanted to talk to each other had to look at each other’s faces and talk with their voices. If they were not close to each other, they had to talk very loudly. In a windy place like me, this does not always work.

Because humans were tired of looking at each other or shouting while they were talking, they invented the sími.

It means “tele-phone”.

“Sími” is much older than a sími. It used to mean “thread”, but my people “re-cycled” it. (They like to do that with old words.)

The man on the picture is using a “snjall-sími”, which means “a smart phone”, but I have noticed that not all humans who use snjall-símar are snjall-humans.

Many humans like talking on their sími, even if they are in restaurants. The people who help me with this inter-net do not like this very much.

Bless bless,
- Iceland

P.S. The picture is made by a snjall-man called “Breiðholt”. I will tell you later what this means.

Fiðrildi

Sun, 28 Aug 2011 07:00:05 +0000

This is an Icelandic word that sounds like what it means.

Andvari

Sat, 27 Aug 2011 10:23:00 +0000

My people’s language has very many words for wind. This is not because my people are very windy people, but because I have a lot of wind blowing on me, sometimes.

(Maybe you have noticed this if you have visited me in a flying machine.)

Because I have many different kinds of wind blowing on me, there are many different words for it. Andvari means “a nice, often warm, breeze”.

I do not have andvari often, but I have noticed that when I do, the humans become glad.

Bless bless,
- Iceland

(This word was suggested by Rúna Vala. Do you have a favourite Icelandic word? You can tell me about it.)

Rokk

Sat, 30 Jul 2011 13:00:00 +0100

Halló, this is Iceland.

I have noticed that humans use this word from my people’s language to talk about a kind of tónlist that is often made by young humans who have many long hairs on their heads, and who like to drink brennivín, and do not take many showers.

It means “rock”, and you say it almost in the same way. (And if you want to say “rock and roll”, it is very simple. You just say “rokk og ról”.)

The woman in the picture was called Sigríður. I do not know if she invented rokk, but I would not be surprised. When she was a young woman many young men liked her, and wrote songs and naughty poems about her.

Like many of the women who live on me, Sigríður had very strong opinions about how things should be. She built the house she is sitting in on this photo, and started a school for women in it.

And one hundred years later, the polite and well dressed people in FM Belfast, who also like to play music, and have very strong opinions about how things should be, played in a concert next door, that you can see here.

Bless bless,
- Iceland

The photo-graph of Sigríður is from the Reykjavík Museum of Photography.

Óvegur

Thu, 16 Jun 2011 15:55:00 +0100

Humans often use the words in their languages to describe things. The word “vegur” is one of those words. (It means “road”.)

But sometimes they use words to describe things that are not really things.

“Ó-vegur” is one of those words. It means “un-road.”

I have many of those.

Your friend,
- Iceland

P.S. The photo of this óvegur over my Kjölur was taken by a friendly human called Inga.

Skyr

Sun, 12 Jun 2011 15:38:00 +0100

Some of the words in my people’s language describe things that other languages do not need to describe.

“Skyr” is one of these words. It just means “skyr” and nothing else.

Because most people do not have skyr in their countries they also do not need to have it in their languages. Until they visit me.

But because “skyr” is hard to say, they sometimes call it “yógurt”, even though it is not yógurt. (It is just skyr.)

Bless bless,
- Iceland

P.S. (It was my friend patopaez who took this photo on his insta-gram, and said “Icelandic yogurt is great.”)

Tuttugu

Sat, 14 May 2011 10:59:31 +0100

Many humans think this is a very useful word. They can use it to talk about how many minutes they will be late to a meeting, or how how old their new sports-car makes them feel.

It means “twenty”, and it’s bigger than sex.

It was suggested by a friend, who said:

For me the funniest Icelandic word is “tuttugu”. Cheers me up every time I hear it. For me it sounds like the person who says it is about to croon a tune. It makes handball matches more fun on TV after one team has scored tuttugu.

Tuttugu even has its own Inter-net.

Sex

Sat, 07 May 2011 15:18:00 +0100

This word from my people’s language makes many humans very confused.

For example, if you work in a restaurant, and one day the tele-phone rings, and a person asks you if you have “a table for sex”, you will probably not know what to say.

(Unless you live in a famous city called New York. I have heard that humans who live there always know what to say.)

If this happens to you, please do not hang up and call the pó-lice.

It is probably just one of my people, who wants to have good food in your restaurant with five of his or her friends.

Because in my people’s language sex means “six”.

Your friend,
- Iceland

Tónlist

Thu, 28 Apr 2011 09:31:00 +0100

This is a very good word, made from two parts. First you take tón (it means “tone”) and then you add list (it means “art”).

When you take tón and list, and join them together, you get good things like this.

It means “music”.

(This tónlist was made by a man called Kolbeinn, who wrote the words seven hundred years ago, and another man called Þorkell, who is not as old as you think.)

Maybe you know that many of my people like to make tónlist for you to listen to with your ears, and dance to with your feet. If you want to know more about that, you can klikk hér.