Annotated Dialogue: A Job Interview (B1)

A job interview is a remarkably tidy grammar exam. You are asked, in order, what you have done (your experience), what you can do (your skills), and what you would do (hypotheticals about the role). Each of those questions pulls out a different structure that sits right at the heart of B1 Icelandic: the experience-perfect (ég hef unnið), the skill verbs kunna and geta, and the polite conditional ég myndi. Selecting the right one each time is exactly what signals B1 control. Below is an original interview: Anna is interviewing Davíð for a teaching post at a language school. Read it once, then we unpack the three structures in turn.

(This page is about how these structures surface in a real interview. For the perfect itself, see verbs/perfect-overview; for kunna vs geta, choosing/geta-vs-kunna; for the conditional, verbs/myndi-conditional. We link out rather than re-derive them.)

The dialogue

Anna, who runs a language school, interviews Davíð for a teaching position.

Short, realistic, and built almost entirely from three structures. We take them in turn.

Experience: the perfect — Ég hef unnið sem kennari í fimm ár

The opening question, Hvar hefurðu starfað? ("Where have you worked?"), is the engine of the whole first half. To narrate experience that stretches up to now — five years of teaching that is still relevant — Icelandic uses the perfect: hafa ("to have") + the supine. Ég hef unnið = "I have worked"; ég *hef verið að kenna* = "I have been teaching." This is exactly the English present perfect, and for once the two languages line up: experience "so far," with no specific endpoint, is the perfect's home turf.

The trap sits in the very next exchange. The moment a specific past time appears — í fyrra ("last year"), í ágúst ("in August"), 2019 — you must switch out of the perfect and into the plain preterite. So Davíð says Ég *flutti heim í fyrra ("I moved home last year"), preterite, *not hef flutt, because a finished event pinned to a past time is not "experience up to now." English speakers routinely keep the perfect with a past-time adverb ("I have moved last year") — that is ungrammatical in both languages, and especially audible in Icelandic.

Skills: kunna vs geta — Ég kann bæði ensku og þýsku

The skills questions force the distinction that English buries under one word, "can." Icelandic splits it:

• kunna = "know how to / have a learned skill / know a language." It is about acquired knowledge — something you have learned and now possess. You kannt a language, kannt to swim, kannt a poem by heart.
• geta = "be able to / be in a position to" — about ability or possibility in the moment, often physical or circumstantial. You getur lift the box, getur come on Friday, getur work under pressure.

So a learned competence is kunna: Ég *kann ensku og þýsku ("I know English and German"). A situational ability is *geta: Ég *get unnið undir álagi ("I can work under pressure"). Note also that *kunna að + infinitive ("know how to") names a skill, while geta + bare infinitive names an ability — and Davíð's answer uses both, deliberately.

Hypotheticals: the conditional — Ég myndi vilja kenna byrjendum

The final question is hypothetical — Ef þú *fengir starfið … ("If you *got the job …") — and hypotheticals run on the conditional. Icelandic builds it with myndi + infinitive, the close twin of English "would": Ég *myndi vilja kenna = "I *would like to teach." The conditional does two jobs at once here. It marks the unreality (you don't have the job yet), and it adds politeness/tentativeness — ég myndi vilja ("I'd like") is softer and more interview-appropriate than the blunt ég vil ("I want").

Crucially, the ef-clause that sets up the hypothesis takes the past subjunctive: ef þú fengir ("if you got"), ef ég fengi ("if I were given") — both from fá. So the pattern is: ef + past subjunctive … myndi + infinitive — exactly parallel to English "if you got …, I would …".

A note on register

The interview sits a notch above casual chat without becoming stiff. You can hear it in three small choices: the full greeting Komdu sæll og blessaður (warm-formal, where friends would just say hæ); the courteous Gjörðu svo vel og fáðu þér sæti ("please, have a seat"); and the conditional softening throughout (myndi vilja over vil). None of this is special "interview vocabulary" — it is the everyday grammar, dialled one click toward politeness, exactly as a Reykjavík interviewee would pitch it. (For the formal-colloquial dial in general, see register/formal-vs-colloquial.)

The insight: an interview is a three-structure workout

Notice how little choice you have. Asked about your past, you can't avoid the perfect (and the preterite the moment a date appears). Asked what you can do, you must choose between kunna (learned skill, language) and geta (situational ability). Asked what you'd do in the role, you're pushed into the conditional (myndi + the ef-subjunctive). These three are precisely the structures whose correct selection separates a confident B1 speaker from a hesitant A2 one — and an interview lines them up one after another, in a setting where you'd genuinely use them. Rehearse a mock interview in Icelandic and you drill all three at once.

Common Mistakes

Key Takeaways

• Experience → the perfect (hef unnið, hef verið að kenna); switch to the preterite (flutti) the moment a specific past time appears (í fyrra, í ágúst).
• Skills → kunna vs geta: kunna for a learned skill or a language (ég kann ensku); geta for situational ability (ég get unnið undir álagi). A language is always kunna.
• Hypotheticals → the conditional: ef + past subjunctive … myndi + infinitive (ef þú fengir … myndirðu vilja). Prefer ég myndi vilja ("I'd like") over the blunt ég vil.
• Register sits a click above casual: full greetings, gjörðu svo vel, and conditional softening — everyday grammar, made polite.
• An interview is the most natural single drill for all three B1 structures at once.