Icelandic: í marga klukkutíma

[gramster]

I came across the idiom í marga klukkutíma in the sentence "Strangt til tekið hefur hennar verið saknað í marga klukkutíma", from
Richards, Olly. Short Stories in Icelandic for Beginners: Read for pleasure at your level, expand your vocabulary and learn Icelandic the fun way! (Teach Yourself) (p. 178). John Murray Press. Kindle Edition.

Google Translate renders this as, "Strictly speaking, she has been missing for hours", and Microsoft Translate produces, "Technically, she's been missing for hours."

The agreement between the two on the meaning of í marga klukkutíma suggests that this is the correct way to think of it. But then, how would one express for many hours in Icelandic?

I should probably point out that when the phrase í marga klukkutíma is taken out of context the agreement between GT and MT breaks down. GT renders this as for many hours, as I would have guessed, and MT renders it as simply for hours, which is not what I would have guessed.

Thanks!

 

[Rafeind]

What is the difference between between for hours and for many hours?

For many hours would also be í marga klukkutíma. Icelandic doesn't differentiate there. (Or maybe you could use í fleiri klukkutíma for for hours but generally the difference simply isn't made.)

 

[gramster]

What is the difference between between for hours and for many hours?

Right, that's a good question. I suppose it's largely a question of emphasis. Taken literally for hours obviously means for at least two hours, which I would never describe as for many hours. On the other hand, I think I would need at least 5 hours to elapse before I started describing it as for many hours, although in such a case for hours would be a less emphatic way to say the same thing. Once we reach something like 15 hours, at that point to describe it merely as for hours seems a little misleading. At that point for many hours seems close to necessary.

 

[Rafeind]

For the shorter end of this you can of course use nokkra klukkutíma in Icelandic (which corresponds with a few hours), but yeah for Icelandic simply lacks this emphasis difference.

 

[gramster]

For the shorter end of this you can of course use nokkra klukkutíma in Icelandic (which corresponds with a few hours), but yeah for Icelandic simply lacks this emphasis difference.

Or maybe it's just that Icelandic does the emphasis in the other direction? That is, the default is "for hours" (í marga klukkutíma), but one might emphasize that the duration was relatively small with "for a few hours" (nokkra klukkutíma)?

If I understand you correctly.

 

[Rafeind]

Well, if it is under 3 hours I think almost everyone would use nokkra and not marga. I think it is more that neither is particularly emphatic (and fleiri klukkutíma isn't either) and the only difference is time length.

Though there is a range where whether you choose nokkra or marga kind of depends on weither you think it has been more or less time than is normal. If you do want to emphasize that it has been a very long time (and still mention hours) you might say something like fleiri, fleiri klukkutíma or mjög marga klukkutíma but I think at that point I would just use some other phrase (heila eilífð, hálfan daginn, allan daginn). In the context of the story you are reading I think mentioning the time she went missing would be common (síðan í morgun, síðan seinnipartinn í gær, síðan um tvöleitið, síðan um miðnættið ...).

 

[gramster]

Thank you for clarifying all of that. Another question I can ask here is what would be the meaning of í klukkutíma? Since the preposition í appears to govern the accusative case in this context, I would think it might mean either for an hour or for hours, and if so, I'm wondering if the function of marga therefore is purely to resolve this ambiguity? That is, if one didn't say í marga klukkutíma, then it wouldn't be clear if it was just one or more than one hour.

 

[Rafeind]

Í klukkutíma is for an hour. So resolving ambiguity might be a part of it but when talking about weeks í vikur also isn't used (í viku is for a week), it is also í margar vikur, í nokkrar vikur, í fleiri vikur ... The same for days and years (though í dag sound wrong for for a day, that would be phrased like í heilan dag, í allan dag, allan daginn or something, í dag instead means today).

Then there is also the fact that í fleiri tíma/í marga tíma can mean for (many) hours but í tíma means at class and í langan tíma means for a long time.