Category:Grammar

[This webpage is still being created/Þessi vefsíða er enn að vera skapað]

In Icelandic, the grammar is undoubtably the hardest thing to get one's head around.

Declension
Declension is where the ending of a noun or adjective changes in accordance to who does what, to whom something is done, and whose something is. These ending changes are called cases, and in Icelandic there are four cases.


 * Nominative - the person or object that acts out the verb.
 * Accusative - the person or object that is directly affected by the verb.
 * Dative - the person or object that affected by the verb because of the accusative.
 * Genitive - the person or object that owns another person or object.

For example, in the sentence "David gave Fred's book to Stephan", the grammar in Icelandic would structure the sentence as:

"David-(Nom) gave Fred-(Gen) book-(Acc) to Stephan-(Dat)".

This also means that one can order the words in a different way and the sentence would still mean the same thing.

Pronouns
As pronouns are used all the time, the declension of pronouns is very irregular.

Nouns
Nouns are a little more complicated. Like pronouns, they decline into the four cases, and singular and plural, but they also decline with their gender and definite article.

In Icelandic, there are three genders.

The gender of a word does not mean that the word's meaning is a living thing, but is a classification of the word.
 * Masculine - relating to males and men.
 * Feminine - relating to females and women.
 * Neuter - not relating to any gender.

The word "bók" for example is feminine, but it means "book". In Icelandic, the sentence "I like this book; it is interesting." would literally translate as "I like this book; she is interesting." even though a book is an object.

Strong Nouns
Strong nouns are called so becuse they have a very hard declension, thus making them the hardest to remember.

Masculling nouns usually end in "-ur", and feminine and neuter nouns have no ending.

The "m" in the dative plural is omited with the definite prefix, which is why it is put in brackets. Note that the dative and genitive plural all end the same for each gender.

Weak Nouns
Weak nouns are much easier to memorise.

The "m" in the dative plural is omited with the definite prefix, which is why it is put in brackets.

Articles
The definite article in English is the word "the" before the noun and the indefinite article is the word "a" or "an". Icelandic only uses the definite article, which means that the word "maður" could mean either "man" or "a man".

In Icelandic, the definite article is suffixed at the end of a word. As mentioned in the noun section, the definite article also uses declension, and they decline depending on gender of the noun.

Adjectives
Adjectives are even more complicated than nouns. They decline in agreement to a noun's gender, number, case, and definiteness.

Strong Declension
Most adjectives decline this way when the noun has no definite article. This is known as strong declension as it is the most hard on declensions.

Again, note that dative and genitive plural all end the same.

Weak Declension
Adjectives decline this way when the nouns is with a definite suffix. This form is the most easiest to learn.

Note that all plural declensions are the same.

Verbs
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