Vocabulary and Collocation Errors | Icelandic Grammar

Some Icelandic mistakes are not grammar mistakes at all — the case endings are right, the verb is conjugated correctly, and yet a native speaker winces. These are lexical transfer errors: you reached for the Icelandic word that translates your English word, but English had quietly merged several distinct Icelandic words into one. English "know" is three verbs in Icelandic; English "can" is two; English "make a decision" uses the wrong light verb; English prepositions calque into the wrong Icelandic preposition (and sometimes the wrong case). The cure is not more grammar but awareness of the splits. This page catalogues the high-frequency ones. Where a confusion deserves a full page, it is cross-linked — treat this as the map, and the Choosing pages as the territory.

"Know" splits three ways: vita / þekkja / kunna

English "know" is a single overloaded verb. Icelandic carves it into three, and choosing wrongly is one of the most audible learner errors.

vita — to know a fact (know that, know whether, know where). Takes a clause or an abstract object.
þekkja — to know / be acquainted with a person, place, or thing (recognise, be familiar with). Takes a concrete object.
kunna — to know how to do something, to have a skill (and to know something by heart).

The flagship error is using vita for people. You do not know a fact a person; you are acquainted with them — þekkja.

❌ Ég veit hann mjög vel.

Incorrect — 'vita' is for facts; knowing a person is 'þekkja'.

✅ Ég þekki hann mjög vel.

I know him very well. (acquaintance → þekkja)

❌ Ég þekki að hún er læknir.

Incorrect — knowing a fact (that-clause) is 'vita', not 'þekkja'.

✅ Ég veit að hún er læknir.

I know that she's a doctor. (fact → vita)

❌ Ég veit að synda.

Incorrect — knowing how to do something is a skill: 'kunna'.

✅ Ég kann að synda.

I know how to swim. (skill → kunna)

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The three-way test: is it a fact (vita), a person/place/thing you're familiar with (þekkja), or a skill / something you've memorised (kunna)? "I don't know" answering a factual question is ég veit ekki; "I don't know that street" is ég þekki ekki þá götu; "I don't know the poem (by heart)" is ég kann ekki kvæðið. See the full Choosing page for edge cases.

"Can" splits two ways: geta vs kunna

English "can" covers both ability/possibility and acquired skill. Icelandic separates them:

geta — to be able to (have the possibility, be in a position to) — the everyday "can". It takes the supine: ég get synt "I can swim (right now / am able to)".
kunna — to know how to, to have learned a skill — overlaps with "can" only in the skill sense. It takes the infinitive with að: ég kann að synda "I know how to swim".

Learners over-extend kunna to mean general "can", or use geta where a learned skill is meant. A clean test: if you could paraphrase with "be able to (in this situation)", use geta; if with "have learned how to", use kunna.

❌ Ég kann ekki að koma í kvöld.

Incorrect — this is about possibility tonight, not a skill: use 'geta'.

✅ Ég get ekki komið í kvöld.

I can't come tonight. (ability/possibility → geta + supine 'komið')

❌ Getur þú frönsku?

Incorrect — knowing a language is a learned skill: 'kunna'.

✅ Kannt þú frönsku?

Can you (speak) French? (skill → kunna)

Note the different complements, which are themselves a frequent error: geta + supine (get synt, get komið), but kunna + að + infinitive (kann að synda). See the dedicated Choosing page for the full breakdown.

Light-verb calques: taka ákvörðun, not *gera ákvörðun

English makes nouns "happen" with a small set of light verbs — make a decision, make a mistake, take a shower, do one's homework. Icelandic uses light verbs too, but the pairing is fixed per noun and rarely matches English. The classic trap is "make a decision": English "make" pushes learners to gera ("do/make"), but Icelandic takes a decision — taka ákvörðun.

❌ Við þurfum að gera ákvörðun.

Incorrect — a decision is 'taken' in Icelandic: 'taka ákvörðun'.

✅ Við þurfum að taka ákvörðun.

We need to make a decision. (taka, not gera)

❌ Ég gerði mistök.

Incorrect — you 'make' a mistake with 'gera mistök' — this one DOES use gera; but 'taka ákvörðun', 'taka þátt', 'fara í sturtu' don't.

✅ Ég gerði mistök.

I made a mistake. (here gera is correct — the point is each noun fixes its own verb)

Other high-frequency fixed pairings worth memorising as whole units:

English	❌ calque	✅ Icelandic collocation
make a decision	gera ákvörðun	taka ákvörðun
take part	taka hlut / gera þátt	taka þátt (í + dat)
take a shower	taka sturtu	fara í sturtu
make a phone call	gera símtal	hringja (símtal)
have a good time	hafa góðan tíma	skemmta sér

✅ Ég ætla að fara í sturtu og svo skemmta mér í kvöld.

I'm going to take a shower and then have a good time tonight.

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Light-verb collocations cannot be reasoned out from the English — they must be stored as whole chunks: "taka ákvörðun", "taka þátt", "fara í sturtu", "skemmta sér". When you learn the noun, learn its verb at the same time. See the Light Verbs page for the systematic list.

Preposition-idiom calques: bíða eftir, not *bíða fyrir

English prepositions almost never map one-to-one onto Icelandic ones, and idiomatic verb+preposition pairs are fixed. "Wait for" tempts learners to fyrir (the usual "for"), but the verb bíða takes eftir + dative.

❌ Ég er að bíða fyrir strætó.

Incorrect — 'wait for' is 'bíða eftir' + dative, not 'bíða fyrir'.

✅ Ég er að bíða eftir strætó.

I'm waiting for the bus. (bíða eftir + dative 'strætó')

❌ Ég er að leita fyrir lyklunum.

Incorrect — 'look for' is 'leita að' + dative.

✅ Ég er að leita að lyklunum.

I'm looking for the keys. (leita að + dative)

The most notorious member of this family is hlakka til ("look forward to"), because it gets the preposition and the case wrong at once: hlakka til governs the genitive, not the dative or accusative that English-mediated guessing produces.

❌ Ég hlakka til ferðina.

Incorrect — 'hlakka til' governs the GENITIVE, so it's 'ferðarinnar', not the accusative 'ferðina'.

✅ Ég hlakka til ferðarinnar.

I'm looking forward to the trip. (hlakka til + genitive 'ferðarinnar')

✅ Við hlökkum til jólanna.

We're looking forward to Christmas. (genitive plural 'jólanna'; note the u-umlaut in 'hlökkum')

Store each verb with its preposition and the case that preposition assigns: bíða eftir + dat, leita að + dat, hlakka til + gen, spyrja að + dat, hugsa um + acc. The Preposition Idioms page lists the high-frequency set.

Loanword overuse: tölva, not *kompúter

English speakers reach for an anglicism and assume an Icelandicised spelling will do. But Icelandic has a strong, living tradition of native coinage, and for most everyday technology the native word is the only normal word — the anglicism sounds either jokey or uneducated. "Computer" is tölva (a coinage from tala "number" + völva "seeress"), never kompúter.

❌ Tölvupósturinn er í kompúternum mínum.

Incorrect — 'computer' is 'tölva'; '*kompúter' is not standard Icelandic.

✅ Tölvupósturinn er í tölvunni minni.

The email is on my computer. (note 'tölvupóstur' itself is the native word for 'email')

A few more where the native word is the default and the loan sounds wrong:

English	❌ anglicism	✅ Icelandic
computer	kompúter	tölva
phone	fónn	sími
email	ímeil	tölvupóstur / póstur
television	television	sjónvarp
computer screen	skjár (ok!)	skjár

This is not a hard purism rule for every word — plenty of loans are fully naturalised (banki, kaffi, jeppi). But for the core technology vocabulary above, defaulting to the anglicism is a real error, because the native coinage has fully won.

✅ Hann svaraði ekki í símann, svo ég sendi honum tölvupóst.

He didn't answer the phone, so I sent him an email.

The pattern behind all of these

Every error here is the same shape: English collapsed a distinction Icelandic keeps. One "know" became three; one "can" became two; one "make/take" became a noun-specific choice; one "for" became eftir/að/til with their own cases; one borrowed noun masked a native coinage. You cannot fix this by translating harder — translating harder is what causes it. You fix it by learning the Icelandic word as its own thing, in its own collocation, with its own preposition and case, from the start. When in doubt about which member of a split you need, the Choosing pages walk through each contrast in depth.

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