#21: Dýragarður

One of my favorite places to go when I was younger was Dýragarðurinn í Bronx. Of course, I knew nothing of Icelandic back then, so I called it by its English name-- the Bronx Zoo. Now that I am living in New York City again, I've been meaning to have another fun-filled day at the zoo, as I'm long overdue for a visit. But until then, I'll just talk about zoos on the internet, starting with the Icelandic word for them (which, as you have probably guessed, is dýragarður).

The etymology of dýragarður is pretty simple. It's a compound of dýr ("animal," not to be confused with the other dýr, "expensive" or dyr, "door") and garður ("garden"). By all accounts, "animal garden" is a pretty apt description for a large, enclosed area filled with animals, and is probably the most sensible choice for a language that, unlike its other Nordic cousins, refuses to simply borrow the word "zoo."

In English, we mostly use the term "zoo" to refer to wild animal parks, like Dýragarðurinn í Bronx which features things like tigers (tígrisdýr), rhinos (nashyrningar), monkeys (apar) and, my favorite, red pandas (rauðar pöndur). But the word dýragarður is a bit more flexible, and can also be used to describe places that would be considered farms or aquaria in English. In fact, the dýragarður in Reykjavík houses primarily domestic animals, including sheep (kindur), horses (hestar), and rabbits (kanínur). If you want to be more specific, you could use the word húsdýragarður ("house animal garden") to describe this sort of place, which in English we may call a public farm or petting zoo. The aquarium can sometimes be referred to as a sædýrasafn ("sea animal museum"), but this is really just a subset of dýragarðar.

I think that when I do finally head back to the dýragarður in the Bronx, I will make an effort to identify as many animals as I can by their Icelandic names. One of the best ways to learn vocabulary in a new language is to simply start substituting native words with their foreign "equivalents" whenever applicable, and where/when else am I going to be in a position to talk about snæhlébarðar?

Þetta er snæhlébarði.

WORD SUMMARY:

dýragarð/ur, -s, -ar (m): zoo