Shadow and Bone

[sapphireone]

The year I lived in Germany, I thought I’d try to learn a language that I couldn’t learn back home in the states. I picked Czech. (I’ve since regretted not taking Mittelhochdeutsch, or medieval German, which would have been useful for my early music performing.) I didn’t make much headway with Czech, though I made some of my best friends there

Comments

[odinyotoo]

I like to read these detective novels about Iceland, and Icelandic does something similar with male and female names (and I find all this naming stuff fascinating!). Here is are some examples taken from Wikipedia: A person's surname indicates the first name of the person's father (patronymic) or in some cases mother (matronymic). "a man named Jón Einarsson has a son named Ólafur. Ólafur's last name will not be Einarsson like his father's; it will become Jónsson, literally indicating that Ólafur is the son of Jón (Jóns + son). Jón Einarsson's daughter Sigríður would not have the last name Einarsson; she would have the name Jónsdóttir. Again, the name literally meaning "Jón's daughter" (Jóns + dóttir)." And also, Icelanders are formally addressed by their first names! This I can really delight in!