Just Saying: Spá í

Have you ever predicted that you’d fall in love with someone? Icelanders do it all the time, (to mixed results). ‘Spá í’ is the rather modern saying that one uses when they are thinking about doing something. But it’s a little more complicated than that. Spá í translates to  ”To predict something.” The ‘í’ is key here. It’s the difference between predicting you’ll go to the shop, for example, or prophesying that a shop exists somewhere in the world.

Now, you can also use ‘spá í’ when you’re into someone—hence the aforementioned predictions of falling in love. Then it means I like this guy/girl/being, and I want to see if this could actually work out. In Icelandic you’d say: “Ég er að spá í hann”, (I’m thinking of dating this man). So if you want to sound like a native when you are hypothetically crushing on someone, here you go.

Magic.

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