Afmæli (Vocabulary for 6/7/2002)

By special request, here are some birthday words.

afmæli [n.] (afmælisdagur [m.]) - birthday
afmæliskort [n.] - birthday card
gjöf [f.] - gift, present (afmælisgjöf = birthday present)
kaka [f.] - cake (afmæliskaka = birthday cake)
kerti [n.] - candle

Here's a recipe for birthday cake in Icelandic, with English translation:

Gjöf is an example of a noun that has u-shift in the nominative, but not in the genitive or in the plural (except in the dative plural, where the -um causes a u-shift).
gjöf gift
Sg. nom. gjöf gjafir
Sg. acc. gjöf gjafir
Sg. dat. gjöf gjöfum
Sg. gen. gjafar gjafa

If it's your friend's birthday, you could say:

Til hamingju með afmælið.
which is like 'happy birthday.' Maybe you'd also say Gangi þér vel - 'good luck.' To ask how old someone is:
Hvað ertu gamall? (to a male)
Hvað ertu gömul?  (to a female)
Icelandic has special adjectives to use for numbers expressing age and measurements. For the numbers 20-70, you add -tugur: tvítugur, þrítugur, fertugur, fimmtugur, sextugur, sjötugur. Then from 80-120 you add -ræður: áttræður, níræður, tíræður, tólfræður. So you could say Ég er tvítugur maður, or Hún er níræð kerling. One of my books has this phrase: að klífa þrítugan hamarinn - to climb the cliff thirty fathoms high (to accomplish the impossible). I struggle with all the different words for numbers in Icelandic!

To say when you were born:

Ég var fædd/ur 7. júní.
Anyone know where the tradition of putting the candles on the birthday cake came from? And who came up with the candles that light back up after you blow them out? Were they invented specifically for that purpose?

I think John Lennon or Paul McCartney or one of those guys owned the rights to the 'Happy Birthday' song. So you can sing it at your friend's birthday party, but you can't record it and sell it. Do Icelanders have a similar song?

Whew. Silly, off-topic questions today... But maybe someone can answer them in Icelandic :)

Til hamingju með afmælið, Tanya.