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One thing I try to do every day is read over the Icelandic news sites, primarily RÚV and Vísir. One strategy is to find a short article, just one or two paragraphs to read through several times. It often ends up being an exercise in looking up words, but if you do it long enough you find yourself looking up fewer and fewer words, and actually being able to get the gist of the story. You also begin to recognize certain phrases over and over, one of which is the topic of this post. The language of a news story is of course very different from prose or colloquial speech, but this phrase seems generic enough: koma til greina
The basic meaning of koma til greina is “possible” or “conceivable” or “to be considered”, as in the following:
“David Beckham segir ekki koma til greina að spila með öðru liði í Englandi en Manchester United.”
This was from an article about David Beckham where he said he never considered playing for any other team in England besides Manchester United.
The title of this article was Kemur til greina að banna munntóbak, which was about the possibility of banning chewing tobacco.
The word grein itself has many meanings, and in this phrase is actually in the genitive plural:
| grein f (-ar, -ar) point, consideration | ||
|---|---|---|
| singular | plural | |
| nom | grein | greinar |
| acc | grein | greinar |
| dat | grein | greinum |
| gen | greinar | greina |
So keep an eye out for this fairly common phrase!