Finnish to Icelandic: preserve who enjoys making something and who likes the result
The person enjoying an activity is not necessarily receiving anything
A Finnish comment about enjoying drawing should remain a statement about enjoyment in Icelandic. An unfamiliar case form must not turn the person concerned into the recipient of an object. Someone can enjoy making a sketch without receiving it, owning the paper or being the person depicted in the finished drawing.
A Taste of Finnish illustrates tykätä with both noun phrases and an infinitive. Its examples distinguish liking something from liking to perform an activity, including drawing. For a short feedback message, identify whether the source evaluates an object or describes the person’s enjoyment of doing something before selecting the Icelandic construction.
Nowenstein’s Icelandic dissertation gives an example meaning that the speaker likes baking bread, with mér marked as dative. It then gives a separate example of telling something to a listener whose form is also dative. The person experiencing enjoyment and the person receiving information have different roles despite sharing a case category.
Keep the maker, the viewer and the subject of a sketch distinct
Imagine a Finnish-speaking learner explaining that they enjoy drawing portraits. A following sentence says that a friend likes the resulting portrait. The first statement concerns an activity; the second concerns a particular object. The Icelandic translation should preserve who holds each preference rather than attributing both reactions to the learner.
A third person might appear in the portrait without drawing it or evaluating it. That person’s presence in the image does not make them the source of the opinion. When names and pronouns occur close together in Finnish feedback, trace the relationships through the complete sentence instead of assigning every reaction to the nearest named person.
The dissertation discusses a broader limitation on case-based reasoning: Icelandic datives occur with experiencers, recipients and other roles, and the correlations are not exact. This does not make case marking unimportant. It means that a case label must be interpreted with the verb and construction, rather than used as a universal description of the participant’s real-world role.
An activity preference is narrower than an unrestricted evaluation
Enjoying an activity does not prove that the person is skilled at it. A Finnish learner’s positive comment should not become a claim of professional ability or successful completion. Likewise, enjoying portrait drawing does not establish that the learner has already finished the particular portrait being discussed. Keep preference, ability and completion separate.
The object of an activity can narrow the preference further. Enjoying drawing portraits is not necessarily enjoying every kind of drawing, and appreciating a portrait does not mean approving every work by its maker. Retain a stated activity or object restriction instead of expanding a short positive comment into a general endorsement of the artist.
A negative reply needs the same care. Disliking the process of making a portrait can coexist with liking the finished picture; enjoying the process can coexist with dissatisfaction about its result. If the Finnish speaker distinguishes those reactions, the Icelandic version should keep both. One broadly positive or negative sentence about the picture would erase the useful distinction between an experience and its product.
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