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[christhiane]

I'm reading a Faroese book in hopes of understanding the language. Well, it's sort of helping, but some passages I can't make out because there's a keyword I don't understand. So, I'd be really grateful if you could tell me what the words in italics mean (and the entire italic sentence).

So bað ein av gentumum meg at mjavaEg havi verið úti og

Comments

[purka]

Ah! There's already been response, but I thought I'd give my two cents as a native speaker. (and kudos for trying to learn the language by reading a book! :D)

mjava, as already stated in the first comment, is to mew, like a cat.

But, understandable, the next sentence is a bit hard for foreigners to understand, because what's he's talking about (lopið skalv) is an activity that most children (and some childish adolescent ;D) indulge in at winter time. It's simply finding a high place with a huge pile of snow underneath, and then jumping! The higher the better. :)

stuttligt, is more like the word 'fun' in english, rather than 'funny'/'humorous'. (he's saying, 'it was so much fun')

(and there is a mispelling in the sentence, it should be við Mortan og teimun, it means 'with Mortan and them', and could be translated more nicely as 'with Mortan and the rest (of the boys or children)')

prúður, is referring more to how proud and manly (i.e. lots of hair and muscles) he is looking, rather than just handsome. (but it is really rather the same! :3)

And lastly, skýmligt in the last sentence means 'dark, dim', rather than gloomy ('gloomy' is a description of atmosphere rather than the actual lighting conditions).

Anna and Onnu, it's the same. It happens a lot that the endings of names are changed when it is in accusative (? actually I'm not that sure about the technical term, but I saw it used in the first comment :), like say, Maria turns to Mariu and so on. (Mostly younger people don't say 'Onnu', but 'Annu' in stead.)

Hopefully this helped :)