#8: Að Gleyma

Thus far, most of the words that I have featured have been nouns. That's no coincidence-- in our own language, over 50% of all words are nouns. Adjectives account for only about 25% of the total, and  verbs make up just 14% or so; other parts of speech are even rarer. Although the data is hard to come by, my experiences with other European languages leads me to believe that this general trend extends far beyond English. I suppose that we humans just really like things. Icelandic is no expection; in fact, its heavy reliance on idioms to describe actions means that it may have an even more skewed noun:verb ratio. But, I want to learn all the words-- this isn't Daglegt Nafnorð (the "Daily Noun")-- so today I have chosen a nice sagnorð (verb) to talk about: að gleyma.

Að gleyma means "to forget," and it governs the dative case. So, if you want to say, "I forgot my buffalo at home" (it happens to the best of us), you'd say Ég gleymdi bufflinum mínum heima.

Oops.

If this word sounds a lot like the noun glaumur ("merry noise" or "the sound of partying") to you, there's a good reason for that. The two words share a common origin. In fact, the original Old Norse verb að gleyma meant both "to forget" and "to be merry." Apparently, in medieval Scandinavia, ignorance was bliss!

WORD SUMMARY:

að gleyma (v + dat.): to forget

    Present: gleymi, gleymir, gleymir
    Past: gleymdi
    Participle: gleymt

Posted in: Verbs