Keth wrote:

>In particular,
>I am always a bit uncertain about "the little words",
>in the above example es/'s and um/umb. I do not always
>know exactly how to translate them. Though I often feel
>I understand their usage, I find it difficult to "pin them
>down" once and for all.

I don't even think it's possible to provide an exact translation between
languages of complements and modifiers, and the worst trouble I've had with
Scandinavian languages is with the prepositions and little daily adverbs -
as far as I can tell, about half the time I want to say in Swedish that
something is "at," "on," "in" or "of" something else, I use "på" - and
you're just supposed to know when to use "på" and when to use "i," "av,"
"vid," "om," or sometimes even "för". When you dock a boat in Icelandic,
you're putting it "undir" the port, bay or island, and the directions when
sailing back and forth between Iceland and Norway in Icelandic are just odd...

but the thing is, all of these make perfect sense within the language, and
I'm sure our use of prepositions have got to be nonsense to anyone else -
it would be much easier if the words weren't related and similar sounding,
as when someone says "undir," "yfir," "við," "eftir," "inn" and "til," I
have a hard time not hearing "under," "over," "with," "after," "in" and
"until"... which is only accurate some of the time - because I sit "at" a
table, not "under" a table.

-Selv

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