The English word know is amazingly versatile: you can know information (knowledge), you can know a person or a place (familiarity), you can know how to do something (skill), and more. This can cause some confusion as, in Icelandic, there are four words that all translate to know, but are used very differently.
See bin.arnastofnun.is for comprehensive inflections of these verbs, as well as on every word in the language.
Að vita means to know information, facts and figures.
Að þekkja means to know a person, to be familiar with something, or to recognise something.
Að kunna means to know something by heart, to know how to do something, or to know how to work something. Note the exclusion of being able to do something: in Icelandic, skill or knowledge is independent of capacity. You would say a guitar player can play the guitar: this is skill, að kunna. If you break the guitar player’s fingers, you would say he can’t play the guitar: this is capacity, translated to að geta.
Að rata means to know one’s way, to know how to get somewhere.
Summary Example
In the following example, the English version likely sounds strange and repetitive, while the Icelandic version doesn’t.
It is left as an exercise to the reader to recognise which know maps to what word.
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