Re: Trash-lations

Sorry i usually write from work and i have only a few
seconds to type. what i meant was i am confused about
the word endings for genitive, accusative,
ect..ect..how do i know which endings
(ir,ar,a,ect..))to use on which words? On another
note. the dictionary i got my words from isnt really a
dictionary. its the teach yourself Icelandic book
((shut up i really want to learn! lol)) but you are
right about the dictionary definitions. tehy give
definitions of the words and not what the words are.
like in this book. it would say a sentence in
icelandic and the say that it means "To" do whatever
the definition means. does that mean that when you say
that "phrase" it literally means "to do that" or it
means "your doing that" but i guess thats where the
Endings come in. oh well.

Sorry and Thanx,


--- fjornir <falconsword@...> wrote:

> Hello Keth,
>
> > I think Haukur has a very good point here.
> > As I understand it, he is saying that Americans
> (or others of the
> > English tongue), when the want to find an
> Icelandic Or Old Norse
> > word, simply scan the dictionary
>
> That's not what I was saying :-) Or at least I
> didn't
> mean that those sorts of translations were
> especially
> characteristic of English speakers. The same thing
> can
> happen to speakers of any language with insufficient
> knowledge of the language they are trying to
> translate
> into.
>
> Here's one story.
>
> An Icelander wants to translate "Hver � �ennan
> frakka?"
> (Who has this coat?) into English. He uses the
> dictionary:
>
> hver - hot spring
> � - river
> �essi - this
> frakki - Frenchman
>
> So he gets
>
> "Hot spring river this Frenchman?"
>
> which is not very helpful.
>
> Dictionaries are useful tools but one has to know
> how
> to use them. They are not sufficient for translating
> sentences into languages one doesn't know. There is
> not a
> one-to-one correspondance between the words and
> grammar
> of any two languages.
>
> Kve�ja,
> Haukur
>
>

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