Talmál og slangur — how people actually talk

The spoken layer

Real spoken Icelandic runs on words the textbooks skip. You just learned the -ó adjectives; here is the rest of the everyday register.

word	meaning	neutral sibling
ansi	pretty, quite	mjög
hausinn	the head	höfuðið
karlinn	the old man, the bloke	maðurinn
vitleysan	the nonsense
klikka	to fail, to go haywire
skrítinn	weird, odd
skella	to slam; skella sér — to dash off

pretty, quite (colloquial intensifier)ansi sits before adjectives exactly like *mjög*, but with a shrug in it: *ansi góður* — pretty good. to fail, to go haywire (colloquial)klikka is what plans, computers and people do when they stop working. to slam (skella sér = to dash off)skella with *sér* is the most Icelandic way to go anywhere: *skella sér í sund*.

Use this register with friends; in writing, keep to the neutral siblings.