Icelandic grammar
Encyclopedia
Icelandic
is an inflected language
with four cases
: nominative
, accusative
, dative
and genitive
. Icelandic noun
s can have one of three grammatical gender
s, masculine, feminine or neuter. Nouns, adjective
s and pronoun
s are declined
in four cases and two numbers
, singular and plural.
speakers find Icelandic morphology
familiar. Almost every morphological category in one language is represented in the other. Noun
s are declined
for case
, number
and gender
; adjective
s for case, number, gender and degree; and there are two declensions for adjectives, weak and strong. Icelandic possesses only the definite article, which can stand on its own, or, as in other North Germanic languages
, be attached to its modified noun. Verb
s are conjugated
for tense
, mood
, person
, number and voice. There are three voices: active, passive and medial; but it may be debated whether the medial voice is a voice or simply an independent class of verbs. There are only two simple tenses, past and present, but to make up for that there are a number of auxiliary constructions, some of which may be regarded as tenses, others as aspects
to varying degrees.
, both in form and inflection. They decline in four cases (nominative, accusative
, dative
and genitive) and vary in gender (masculine, feminine or neuter) and number (singular and plural). There are two main declension paradigms for each gender: strong
and weak noun
s, which are furthermore divided in smaller paradigms for declension, according to many criteria (sound-shifts, consonant clusters, etc.) Following are four examples of strong declension. Glas means the drinking vessel glass, gler means the material glass. Those are etymologically the same words, but glas is a borrowing and gler is native. The (j) in the declension of gler means that the j is a later intrusion.
The gender of a noun can often be surmised by looking at the ending of the word:
(the) is usually joined onto the end of word in question. The independent article, i.e., not attached to the noun as a suffix, is mostly used in poetry and irregularly elsewhere (there are hardly any rules for the latter case; it is mainly a matter of taste). The table below shows the different suffix forms for the three genders (but be aware that this list is not exhaustive, and there are numerous exceptions in every case):
The example below shows three nouns, one for each respective gender, declined in the nominative:
The independent or free-standing definite article exists in Icelandic in the form hinn.
s in Icelandic are as follows:
Icelandic has separate masculine, feminine and neuter words for they; when talking about a group of mixed gender people or items, the neuter form is used.
Like English, the pronoun usually comes before the verb, as in the example below:
But, just as easily, the order of the sentence may be inverted. In this case, the pronoun moves to the end of the sentence:
In English, changing of the word order like this would render a phrase nonsensical. This is mainly due to the fact that whilst being a Germanic language, English has lost most of its noun declension
. See syntax for more information.
, functioning in much the same way as German
sich. The nominative case does not exist.
For example,
as opposed to being bathed by another,
as opposed to being dressed. The pronoun does not distinguish gender or number.
s for the respective grammatical persons are as follows,
where the three columns for each person represent masculine, feminine and neuter genders respectively. Minn means mine, þinn means yours (thine) and sinn means his.
where the three columns for each person represent masculine, feminine and neuter genders respectively. Þessi and sá roughly correspond to this/that and hinn means the other one of two.
This is probably the most colourful pronoun in Icelandic, but note that one can never go wrong using the first given forms. The forms in parentheses are either dialectal variations or archaic forms, used for poetic purposes. In time, however, one encounters all these forms. There is at least one more fossilized form, einugi, which is the dative of the singular neuter. It is preserved in the saying:
for the respective cases and genders:
Other numbers are as follows and not declined, except for those that are actually nouns:
The word hundrað is actually a neuter noun, þúsund can be either feminine or neuter and the higher multiples of a thousand are either masculine or feminine, according to the ending (e.g. milljón is feminine, milljarður is masculine and so on). Núll is neuter.
In strong declension, for example:
Both íslenskri and konu are dative singular. In this case, the preposition með governs the case. (Með can also take the accusative, but the distinction belongs to the syntax.) This is an example of strong declension of adjectives. If an adjective is modified by the article, or most pronouns, weak declension is used, for this word it would be íslenskur:
An example of weak declension:
Veiku is the weak declension of veikur (sick) in the accusative singular. Konuna is also accusative singular, but with the definite article attached (-na), and the article forces the adjective to be weak. Here the verb governs the case. The weak forms of nouns are often found in names of organisations, symbols, days and titles, for example:
Here, at least, there are far fewer forms to learn, three in all, although one has to learn, of course, how they are distributed.
in Icelandic: indicative, imperative
, conditional
, and subjunctive. As with most inflected languages, the verbs in Icelandic determine (or govern) the case of the subsequent noun
s, pronoun
s and adjective
s of a sentence. For example:
In the infinitive
, most Icelandic verbs end in -a. The exceptions include a few verbs ending in -á, such as slá (‘hit’); flá (‘flay’). Other exceptions include the auxiliaries munu and skulu; þvo (wash), which was originally þvá; and a verb borrowed from Danish that is frowned upon by purists, ske (happen). The two auxiliaries are important, since they turn up in various places to make up for the poverty of simple tenses. Þvo is, of course, very common, but ske can be avoided altogether. There are three main groups of weak verbs in Icelandic: -ar, -ir, and -ur, referring to the endings that these verbs take when conjugated in the third person
singular
present
. The strong verbs and the irregular verbs (auxiliaries, ri-verbs and valda) are a separate matter. Take the infinitive tala (‘to talk’), for example:
And compare with the verb vera (‘to be’), a strong verb, and a highly irregular one at that, but useful for comparison:
Læra (‘to learn’) is an -i verb:
And finally velja (‘to choose’), which is an -ur verb:
Note how for each of the verb groups, the conjugation
s in the singular change, but in the plural, the endings are nearly always predictable (-um, -ið and -a, respectively). Most English present verb
s are regular and have only one change in ending (-s for third person singular). In most cases in Icelandic, the conjugation patterns remain regular across most verbs. A verb's conjugation cannot be determined from its infinitive. Speakers must memorize which conjugation group a verb belongs to. Strong verb
s fall into six groups augmented by reduplication
verbs, each with exceptions (such as auxiliary verb
s, the r-verbs, and the only verb in Icelandic that has been called ‘totally irregular’, valda). There is a classification system for all verbs, with the paradigms going into the dozens.
Some Icelandic infinitives end with a -ja suffix. These verbs can be conjugated like -ur verbs, with the suffix lost in the first person singular. When conjugating -ja verbs, the single ‘j’ must be removed, so syngja (‘to sing’) would become ég syng (‘I sing’) in the first person singular and not ég syngj (and syngja is a strong verb (past tense söng), so irregularities are to be expected). The j in itself is not a reliable indicator. Examples could be emja (‘squeal’), which belongs to one class (singular, first person, ég emja, past tense ég emjaði) versus telja (‘count’), belonging to another class, (ég tel, past tense ég taldi).
in Icelandic, simple present and simple past. All other tenses are formed using auxiliary constructions (some of these are regarded as tenses, others as aspects
). For example, the present continuous is formed thus:
However, this construction only usually applies to abstract concepts, and is not used for activities, e.g. to sit would not use this construction. Instead, the simple present should be used.
The collective tenses are:
The middle voice form of many verbs carries a slightly different meaning, and in some cases may carry a different meaning altogether. Some verbs survive only in their middle voice form, the other forms having been lost over time. The middle voice is generally used in the following situations to express:
, Icelandic has the subjunctive mood
. It is often used to refer to situations with a degree of hypotheticity, but more specifically in the following situations:
s, noun
s and verb
s. These derived adverbs often end in -lega (approximately equivalent to the -ly suffix in English):
Note: The adverbs ending in -lega can be declined for comparison, which makes a rather large group on its own. Exempli gratia:
This is a regular way to form adverbs. Another way is to take the neutral nominative singular of an adjective and turn it into an adverb:
Another way is taking the stem of an adjective and add an a:
Like English, very many common adverbs do not stick to these patterns but are, so to speak, adverbs in their own right:
The basic adverbs of direction include, among others:
Inn and út denote motion, going in and going out.
The case governed by prepositons depends on the context. The most frequent occurrence of this is determined by whether or not motion towards or away from is implied by the context: í, á, eftir, yfir and undir are all affected in this way. The following examples demonstrate this:
Here the preposition á governs the accusative case because specific motion towards/away from is implied, i.e. going to the restaurant.
In this example, the preposition á governs the dative; here the situation is static with no motion towards or away from implied. Yfir, undir and eftir all behave in the same way:
Here the use of the accusative implies that the cat was not under the bed before, but is on its way there now.
Here, the use of the dative implies an unchanging situation. Now the cat is still crawling, but within the confines of under the bed. Note that to govern the accusative, the preposition must imply movement towards or away from something, that is to say a changing situation. If the situation is static, i.e., the same at the end as it was at the start, then the preposition governs the dative.
is SVO (subject–verb–object), generally speaking, with the subject and verb inverted in questions and when a sentence begins with an adverb. However, the inflectional system allows for considerable freedom in word order. For poetical purposes, every combination is possible, even the rare OSV. The phrase Helga Bjarni drap (Bjarni killed Helgi) might well occur in, say, a ríma
.
Despite this, certain rules of syntax are relatively inflexible. For example, the main verb must always be the second lexical unit
of the sentence (this is a feature known as V2 word order
, as is common to many Germanic languages). Take the example below (subject in yellow, verb in blue, object in red):
Here the element var (the past tense third person singular form of the verb vera, ‘to be’, i.e. ‘was’) is the second lexical unit of the sentence. If we change the sentence, however:
Here, var is still the second lexical unit of the sentence, despite the fact that it is not the second word in the sentence. The prepositional phrase árið 2000 (highlighted in green) counts as one lexical unit, and so for the verb to be the second lexical unit, it must come after 2000 and not after árið. The subject and object of the verb then follow. An exception to this rule arises when forming questions by inversion
:
and when turned into a question:
Here the subject and verb have been inverted to form a question, meaning the verb is the first lexical unit in the sentence as opposed to the second. This method of forming questions is used in many languages, including English.
can be made into a question as follows:
It should be noted that often a form of elision
occurs when asking questions in the second person; the verb and þú have a tendency to merge together to ease pronunciation. This is reflected in writing, and so one would more often encounter talarðu as opposed to the expanded form talar þú. The actual change undergone here is the transformation of the voiceless dental fricative
þ into the voiced dental fricative
ð. This elision rule applies to many verbs, some having their own special forms (for example vera, ‘to be’, has the form ertu).
The inversion rule still applies when interrogatives
are involved, which are simply added to the front of the sentence. The interrogatives in Icelandic are:
However, interrogative pronouns (hvað/hver) must decline with the verb that they modify, so the case of the pronoun changes depending on the verb. The meaning of a sentence does not change whether hvers vegna or af hverju is used; however they are used in a specific manner in Icelandic. Also of note, hví is rarely used.
s that occur in Icelandic, detailed below. The shifts occur very frequently across all word classes. For one of the most thorough books about the subject see Íslenzk málfræði handa æðri skólum.
. It comes in two varieties:
This umlaut is no longer productive.
a changes to ö because of a u in the next syllable
. This affects a only, and not á or au. Some examples:
If there is an intermediate syllable between the first a and the u, then the U-shift does not take place.
U-umlaut is not to be confused with breaking
although they appear similar.
Note that if there are two a's preceding the u, the first a becomes an ö and the second becomes a u. An example:
Exceptions to this include several borrowings, for instance banani—banana ⇒ banönum (dative plural) and Arabi—Arab ⇒ Aröbum (also dative plural).
Historically, there were four more additional forms of the U-umlaut; these are no longer productive or have been reversed.
The above effects of the I-umlaut are most visible in strong verbs
. Take the verb hafa (‘to have’), for example:
In the singular conjugation, the I-umlaut has caused the stem a to become an e. If we look at the plural conjugation however, we can see that the stem a remains intact here, with the notable exception of the ‘við’ form, where a U-umlaut has taken place (thanks to the -um ending). The I-shift affects verbs only in their singular conjugations.
(The verb hafa actually has two acceptable conjugations. The first is the above, the second goes (ég) hefi, (þú) hefir, (hann) hefir.)
Less known, non-productive and reversed changes include:
These are much more limited in scope, and operate more or less in the same way as the above mentioned umlauts (i.e. have more or less the same effect). Having mentioned reversed or non-productive umlauts above, it remains to be stressed that the I- and U-umlauts are very much alive, both as a fixture of the declension system as well as being useful tools for composing neologisms. This applies to breaking
as well.
Icelandic language
Icelandic is a North Germanic language, the main language of Iceland. Its closest relative is Faroese.Icelandic is an Indo-European language belonging to the North Germanic or Nordic branch of the Germanic languages. Historically, it was the westernmost of the Indo-European languages prior to the...
is an inflected language
Fusional language
A fusional language is a type of synthetic language, distinguished from agglutinative languages by its tendency to overlay many morphemes in a way that can be difficult to segment....
with four cases
Grammatical case
In grammar, the case of a noun or pronoun is an inflectional form that indicates its grammatical function in a phrase, clause, or sentence. For example, a pronoun may play the role of subject , of direct object , or of possessor...
: nominative
Nominative case
The nominative case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb or the predicate noun or predicate adjective, as opposed to its object or other verb arguments...
, accusative
Accusative case
The accusative case of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb. The same case is used in many languages for the objects of prepositions...
, dative
Dative case
The dative case is a grammatical case generally used to indicate the noun to whom something is given, as in "George gave Jamie a drink"....
and genitive
Genitive case
In grammar, genitive is the grammatical case that marks a noun as modifying another noun...
. Icelandic noun
Noun
In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...
s can have one of three grammatical gender
Grammatical gender
Grammatical gender is defined linguistically as a system of classes of nouns which trigger specific types of inflections in associated words, such as adjectives, verbs and others. For a system of noun classes to be a gender system, every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be...
s, masculine, feminine or neuter. Nouns, adjective
Adjective
In grammar, an adjective is a 'describing' word; the main syntactic role of which is to qualify a noun or noun phrase, giving more information about the object signified....
s and pronoun
Pronoun
In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun is a pro-form that substitutes for a noun , such as, in English, the words it and he...
s are declined
Declension
In linguistics, declension is the inflection of nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and articles to indicate number , case , and gender...
in four cases and two numbers
Grammatical number
In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions ....
, singular and plural.
Morphology
Many GermanGerman language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
speakers find Icelandic morphology
Morphology (linguistics)
In linguistics, morphology is the identification, analysis and description, in a language, of the structure of morphemes and other linguistic units, such as words, affixes, parts of speech, intonation/stress, or implied context...
familiar. Almost every morphological category in one language is represented in the other. Noun
Noun
In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...
s are declined
Declension
In linguistics, declension is the inflection of nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and articles to indicate number , case , and gender...
for case
Grammatical case
In grammar, the case of a noun or pronoun is an inflectional form that indicates its grammatical function in a phrase, clause, or sentence. For example, a pronoun may play the role of subject , of direct object , or of possessor...
, number
Grammatical number
In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions ....
and gender
Grammatical gender
Grammatical gender is defined linguistically as a system of classes of nouns which trigger specific types of inflections in associated words, such as adjectives, verbs and others. For a system of noun classes to be a gender system, every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be...
; adjective
Adjective
In grammar, an adjective is a 'describing' word; the main syntactic role of which is to qualify a noun or noun phrase, giving more information about the object signified....
s for case, number, gender and degree; and there are two declensions for adjectives, weak and strong. Icelandic possesses only the definite article, which can stand on its own, or, as in other North Germanic languages
North Germanic languages
The North Germanic languages or Scandinavian languages, the languages of Scandinavians, make up one of the three branches of the Germanic languages, a sub-family of the Indo-European languages, along with the West Germanic languages and the extinct East Germanic languages...
, be attached to its modified noun. Verb
Verb
A verb, from the Latin verbum meaning word, is a word that in syntax conveys an action , or a state of being . In the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the particle to, is the infinitive...
s are conjugated
Grammatical conjugation
In linguistics, conjugation is the creation of derived forms of a verb from its principal parts by inflection . Conjugation may be affected by person, number, gender, tense, aspect, mood, voice, or other grammatical categories...
for tense
Grammatical tense
A tense is a grammatical category that locates a situation in time, to indicate when the situation takes place.Bernard Comrie, Aspect, 1976:6:...
, mood
Grammatical mood
In linguistics, grammatical mood is a grammatical feature of verbs, used to signal modality. That is, it is the use of verbal inflections that allow speakers to express their attitude toward what they are saying...
, person
Grammatical person
Grammatical person, in linguistics, is deictic reference to a participant in an event; such as the speaker, the addressee, or others. Grammatical person typically defines a language's set of personal pronouns...
, number and voice. There are three voices: active, passive and medial; but it may be debated whether the medial voice is a voice or simply an independent class of verbs. There are only two simple tenses, past and present, but to make up for that there are a number of auxiliary constructions, some of which may be regarded as tenses, others as aspects
Grammatical aspect
In linguistics, the grammatical aspect of a verb is a grammatical category that defines the temporal flow in a given action, event, or state, from the point of view of the speaker...
to varying degrees.
Nouns
Icelandic nouns are much like Old NorseOld Norse
Old Norse is a North Germanic language that was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and inhabitants of their overseas settlements during the Viking Age, until about 1300....
, both in form and inflection. They decline in four cases (nominative, accusative
Accusative case
The accusative case of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb. The same case is used in many languages for the objects of prepositions...
, dative
Dative case
The dative case is a grammatical case generally used to indicate the noun to whom something is given, as in "George gave Jamie a drink"....
and genitive) and vary in gender (masculine, feminine or neuter) and number (singular and plural). There are two main declension paradigms for each gender: strong
Strong noun
A strong noun is a phenomenon of both Icelandic and Irish, marked in each by case or number markings.- Icelandic :In the Icelandic language, a strong noun is one which falls into one of four categories, depending on the endings of the characteristic cases, i.e., the nominative and genitive singular...
and weak noun
Weak noun
See also Weak inflectionIn the Icelandic language nouns are considered weak, if they fulfill the following conditions:Masculines:An example of the latter is nemandi , plural nemendur. The words bóndi and fjandi belong to this class with some irregularities. The plural of bóndi is bændur...
s, which are furthermore divided in smaller paradigms for declension, according to many criteria (sound-shifts, consonant clusters, etc.) Following are four examples of strong declension. Glas means the drinking vessel glass, gler means the material glass. Those are etymologically the same words, but glas is a borrowing and gler is native. The (j) in the declension of gler means that the j is a later intrusion.
| number | case | masculine | feminine | neuter | neuter |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| singular | nom. | hattur | borg | glas | gler |
| acc. | hatt | borg | glas | gler | |
| dat. | hatti | borg | glasi | gleri | |
| gen. | hatts | borgar | glass | glers | |
| plural | nom. | hattar | borgir | glös | gler |
| acc. | hatta | borgir | glös | gler | |
| dat. | höttum | borgum | glösum | gler(j)um | |
| gen. | hatta | borga | glasa | gler(j)a |
The gender of a noun can often be surmised by looking at the ending of the word:
- Masculine nouns—often end in -ur, -i, -ll or -nn.
- Feminine nouns—often end in -a, -ing or -un.
- Neuter nouns usually have no ending or have a final accented vowel.
Articles
Icelandic does not have an indefinite article (a/an in English), and the definite articleDefinite Article
Definite Article is the title of British comedian Eddie Izzard's 1996 performance released on VHS. It was recorded on different nights at the Shaftesbury Theatre...
(the) is usually joined onto the end of word in question. The independent article, i.e., not attached to the noun as a suffix, is mostly used in poetry and irregularly elsewhere (there are hardly any rules for the latter case; it is mainly a matter of taste). The table below shows the different suffix forms for the three genders (but be aware that this list is not exhaustive, and there are numerous exceptions in every case):
| No article | Definite article | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| masculine | feminine | neuter | masculine | feminine | neuter | ||||||
| sing. | plu. | sing. | plu. | sing. | plu. | sing. | plu. | sing. | plu. | sing. | plu. |
| -ur | -ar | - | -ir | - | - | -urinn | -arnir | -in | -irnar | -ið | -in |
| -i | -inn | ||||||||||
| -ll | -a | -ur | -llinn | -an | -urnar | ||||||
| -nn | -nninn | ||||||||||
The example below shows three nouns, one for each respective gender, declined in the nominative:
- masculine: hvalur—“(a) whale” becomes hvalurinn—“the whale”
- feminine: klukka—“(a) clock” becomes klukkan—“the clock”
- neuter: heimilisfang—“(an) address” becomes heimilisfangið—“the address”
The independent or free-standing definite article exists in Icelandic in the form hinn.
Personal
The personal pronounPersonal pronoun
Personal pronouns are pronouns used as substitutes for proper or common nouns. All known languages contain personal pronouns.- English personal pronouns :English in common use today has seven personal pronouns:*first-person singular...
s in Icelandic are as follows:
| case | 1st person | 2nd person | 3rd person | |||
| masculine | feminine | neuter | ||||
| singular | nom. | ég | þú | hann | hún | það |
| acc. | mig | þig | hann | hana | það | |
| dat. | mér | þér | honum | henni | því | |
| gen. | mín | þín | hans | hennar | þess | |
| plural | nom. | við | þið | þeir | þær | þau |
| acc. | okkur | ykkur | þá | þær | þau | |
| dat. | okkur | ykkur | þeim | |||
| gen. | okkar | ykkar | þeirra | |||
Icelandic has separate masculine, feminine and neuter words for they; when talking about a group of mixed gender people or items, the neuter form is used.
Like English, the pronoun usually comes before the verb, as in the example below:
- ég heiti Magnús—I am called Magnús
But, just as easily, the order of the sentence may be inverted. In this case, the pronoun moves to the end of the sentence:
- Magnús heiti ég—Magnús I am called (or, literally Magnús called am I)
In English, changing of the word order like this would render a phrase nonsensical. This is mainly due to the fact that whilst being a Germanic language, English has lost most of its noun declension
Declension
In linguistics, declension is the inflection of nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and articles to indicate number , case , and gender...
. See syntax for more information.
Reflexive
Icelandic possesses a reflexive pronounReflexive pronoun
A reflexive pronoun is a pronoun that is preceded by the noun, adjective, adverb or pronoun to which it refers within the same clause. In generative grammar, a reflexive pronoun is an anaphor that must be bound by its antecedent...
, functioning in much the same way as German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
sich. The nominative case does not exist.
| case | pronoun |
|---|---|
| acc. | sig |
| dat. | sér |
| gen. | sín |
For example,
- hann þvær sér—he washes himself,
as opposed to being bathed by another,
- hún klæðir sig—she dresses herself,
as opposed to being dressed. The pronoun does not distinguish gender or number.
Possessive
The Icelandic possessive pronounPossessive pronoun
A possessive pronoun is a part of speech that substitutes for a noun phrase that begins with a possessive determiner . For example, in the sentence These glasses are mine, not yours, the words mine and yours are possessive pronouns and stand for my glasses and your glasses, respectively...
s for the respective grammatical persons are as follows,
| case | 1st person | 2nd person | 3rd person | |||||||
| singular | nom. | minn | mín | mitt | þinn | þín | þitt | sinn | sín | sitt |
| acc. | minn | mína | mitt | þinn | þína | þitt | sinn | sína | sitt | |
| dat. | mínum | minni | mínu | þínum | þinni | þínu | sínum | sinni | sínu | |
| gen. | míns | minnar | míns | þíns | þinnar | þíns | síns | sinnar | síns | |
| plural | nom. | mínir | mínar | mín | þínir | þínar | þín | sínir | sínar | sín |
| acc. | mína | mínar | mín | þína | þínar | þín | sína | sínar | sín | |
| dat. | mínum | þínum | sínum | |||||||
| gen. | minna | þinna | sinna | |||||||
where the three columns for each person represent masculine, feminine and neuter genders respectively. Minn means mine, þinn means yours (thine) and sinn means his.
Demonstrative
The Icelandic demonstrative pronouns are as follows,| case | "this" | "that" | "the other" | |||||||
| singular | nom. | þessi | þessi | þetta | sá | sú | það | hinn | hin | hitt |
| acc. | þennan | þessa | þetta | þann | þá | það | hinn | hina | hitt | |
| dat. | þessum | þessari | þessu | þeim | þeirri | því | hinum | hinni | hinu | |
| gen. | þessa | þessarar | þessa | þess | þeirrar | þess | hins | hinnar | hins | |
| plural | nom. | þessir | þessar | þessi | þeir | þær | þau | hinir | hinar | hin |
| acc. | þessa | þessar | þessi | þá | þær | þau | hina | hinar | hin | |
| dat. | þessum | þeim | hinum | |||||||
| gen. | þessara | þeirra | hinna | |||||||
where the three columns for each person represent masculine, feminine and neuter genders respectively. Þessi and sá roughly correspond to this/that and hinn means the other one of two.
Indefinite
There are around fifteen to twenty of these, depending on who is counting. For argument’s sake, paradigm for enginn (nobody) is given below. It is inflected thus:| nobody | case | Masculine | Feminine | Neuter |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| singular | nom. | enginn (engi) | engin (engi) | ekkert (ekki) |
| acc. | engan (öng(v)an) | enga (öng(v)a) | ekkert (ekki) | |
| dat. | engum (öng(v)um) | engri (öngri) | engu (öng(v)u) | |
| gen. | einskis (einkis) | engrar (öngrar) | einskis (einkis) | |
| plural | nom. | engir (öng(v)ir) | engar (öng(v)ar) | engin (engi) |
| acc. | enga (öng(v)a) | engar (öng(v)ar) | engin (engi) | |
| dat. | engum (öng(v)um) | |||
| gen. | engra (öngra) | |||
This is probably the most colourful pronoun in Icelandic, but note that one can never go wrong using the first given forms. The forms in parentheses are either dialectal variations or archaic forms, used for poetic purposes. In time, however, one encounters all these forms. There is at least one more fossilized form, einugi, which is the dative of the singular neuter. It is preserved in the saying:
- Fátt er svo illt, að einugi dugi, roughly translates as:
- Few things are so bad that nothing helps.
Numerals
The words for one to four are declinedDeclension
In linguistics, declension is the inflection of nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and articles to indicate number , case , and gender...
for the respective cases and genders:
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Other numbers are as follows and not declined, except for those that are actually nouns:
| five | fimm | nineteen | nítján |
| six | sex | twenty | tuttugu |
| seven | sjö | twenty-one | tuttugu og einn |
| eight | átta | thirty | þrjátíu |
| nine | níu | forty | fjörutíu |
| ten | tíu | fifty | fimmtíu |
| eleven | ellefu | sixty | sextíu |
| twelve | tólf | seventy | sjötíu |
| thirteen | þrettán | eighty | áttatíu |
| fourteen | fjórtán | ninety | níutíu |
| fifteen | fimmtán | (one) hundred | (eitt) hundrað |
| sixteen | sextán | (one) thousand | (eitt) þúsund |
| seventeen | sautján | (one) million | (ein) milljón |
| eighteen | átján | zero | núll |
The word hundrað is actually a neuter noun, þúsund can be either feminine or neuter and the higher multiples of a thousand are either masculine or feminine, according to the ending (e.g. milljón is feminine, milljarður is masculine and so on). Núll is neuter.
Adjectives
Adjectives themselves must agree with the gender and number of the nouns that they describe. For example, the word íslenskur (Icelandic) agrees as follows:| Icelandic (strong) | case | Masculine | Feminine | Neuter |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| singular | nom. | íslenskur | íslensk | íslenskt |
| acc. | íslenskan | íslenska | íslenskt | |
| dat. | íslenskum | íslenskri | íslensku | |
| gen. | íslensks | íslenskrar | íslensks | |
| plural | nom. | íslenskir | íslenskar | íslensk |
| acc. | íslenska | íslenskar | íslensk | |
| dat. | íslenskum | |||
| gen. | íslenskra | |||
In strong declension, for example:
- Ég bý með íslenskri konu—I live with an Icelandic woman
Both íslenskri and konu are dative singular. In this case, the preposition með governs the case. (Með can also take the accusative, but the distinction belongs to the syntax.) This is an example of strong declension of adjectives. If an adjective is modified by the article, or most pronouns, weak declension is used, for this word it would be íslenskur:
| Icelandic (weak) | case | Masculine | Feminine | Neuter |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| singular | nom. | íslenski | íslenska | íslenska |
| acc., dat., gen. | íslenska | íslensku | íslenska | |
| plural | All cases | íslensku | ||
An example of weak declension:
- Ég sá veiku konuna—I saw the sick woman
Veiku is the weak declension of veikur (sick) in the accusative singular. Konuna is also accusative singular, but with the definite article attached (-na), and the article forces the adjective to be weak. Here the verb governs the case. The weak forms of nouns are often found in names of organisations, symbols, days and titles, for example:
- Íslenski fáninn—the Icelandic flag
- Sumardagurinn fyrsti—the First Day of Summer
Here, at least, there are far fewer forms to learn, three in all, although one has to learn, of course, how they are distributed.
Verbs
There are four moodsGrammatical mood
In linguistics, grammatical mood is a grammatical feature of verbs, used to signal modality. That is, it is the use of verbal inflections that allow speakers to express their attitude toward what they are saying...
in Icelandic: indicative, imperative
Imperative mood
The imperative mood expresses commands or requests as a grammatical mood. These commands or requests urge the audience to act a certain way. It also may signal a prohibition, permission, or any other kind of exhortation.- Morphology :...
, conditional
Conditional mood
In linguistics, the conditional mood is the inflectional form of the verb used in the independent clause of a conditional sentence to refer to a hypothetical state of affairs, or an uncertain event, that is contingent on another set of circumstances...
, and subjunctive. As with most inflected languages, the verbs in Icelandic determine (or govern) the case of the subsequent noun
Noun
In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...
s, pronoun
Pronoun
In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun is a pro-form that substitutes for a noun , such as, in English, the words it and he...
s and adjective
Adjective
In grammar, an adjective is a 'describing' word; the main syntactic role of which is to qualify a noun or noun phrase, giving more information about the object signified....
s of a sentence. For example:
- Safna ('to collect or save') governs the dative case.
- Ég er að safna peningum til þess að geta keypt jólagjöf handa mömmu.
- I am saving money to be able to buy a Christmas gift for Mum. (Peningum is the dative plural form of peningur (coin))
- Sakna ('to miss') governs the genitive case
- Ég sakna þín
- I miss you
In the infinitive
Infinitive
In grammar, infinitive is the name for certain verb forms that exist in many languages. In the usual description of English, the infinitive of a verb is its basic form with or without the particle to: therefore, do and to do, be and to be, and so on are infinitives...
, most Icelandic verbs end in -a. The exceptions include a few verbs ending in -á, such as slá (‘hit’); flá (‘flay’). Other exceptions include the auxiliaries munu and skulu; þvo (wash), which was originally þvá; and a verb borrowed from Danish that is frowned upon by purists, ske (happen). The two auxiliaries are important, since they turn up in various places to make up for the poverty of simple tenses. Þvo is, of course, very common, but ske can be avoided altogether. There are three main groups of weak verbs in Icelandic: -ar, -ir, and -ur, referring to the endings that these verbs take when conjugated in the third person
Grammatical person
Grammatical person, in linguistics, is deictic reference to a participant in an event; such as the speaker, the addressee, or others. Grammatical person typically defines a language's set of personal pronouns...
singular
Grammatical number
In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions ....
present
Present tense
The present tense is a grammatical tense that locates a situation or event in present time. This linguistic definition refers to a concept that indicates a feature of the meaning of a verb...
. The strong verbs and the irregular verbs (auxiliaries, ri-verbs and valda) are a separate matter. Take the infinitive tala (‘to talk’), for example:
| Number | Singular | Plural | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Person | ég I |
þú you (compare archaic thou) |
hann/hún/það he/she/it |
við we |
þið you (pl. Plural In linguistics, plurality or [a] plural is a concept of quantity representing a value of more-than-one. Typically applied to nouns, a plural word or marker is used to distinguish a value other than the default quantity of a noun, which is typically one... ) |
þeir/þær/þau they |
| tala to talk |
tala talk (talke) |
talar talk (talkest) |
talar talks (talketh) |
tölum talk |
talið talk |
tala talk |
And compare with the verb vera (‘to be’), a strong verb, and a highly irregular one at that, but useful for comparison:
| vera to be |
er am |
ert are (art) |
er is |
erum are |
eruð are |
eru are |
|---|
Læra (‘to learn’) is an -i verb:
| læra to learn |
læri learn (learne) |
lærir learn (learnest) |
lærir learns (learneth) |
lærum learn |
lærið learn |
læra learn |
|---|
And finally velja (‘to choose’), which is an -ur verb:
| velja to choose |
vel choose |
velur choose (choosest) |
velur chooses (chooseth) |
veljum choose |
veljið choose |
velja choose |
|---|
Note how for each of the verb groups, the conjugation
Grammatical conjugation
In linguistics, conjugation is the creation of derived forms of a verb from its principal parts by inflection . Conjugation may be affected by person, number, gender, tense, aspect, mood, voice, or other grammatical categories...
s in the singular change, but in the plural, the endings are nearly always predictable (-um, -ið and -a, respectively). Most English present verb
Verb
A verb, from the Latin verbum meaning word, is a word that in syntax conveys an action , or a state of being . In the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the particle to, is the infinitive...
s are regular and have only one change in ending (-s for third person singular). In most cases in Icelandic, the conjugation patterns remain regular across most verbs. A verb's conjugation cannot be determined from its infinitive. Speakers must memorize which conjugation group a verb belongs to. Strong verb
Strong verb
*for the strong inflection in various languages, see strong inflection*for irregular verbs, see irregular verb*for the strong verbs in Germanic languages, see Germanic strong verb...
s fall into six groups augmented by reduplication
Reduplication
Reduplication in linguistics is a morphological process in which the root or stem of a word is repeated exactly or with a slight change....
verbs, each with exceptions (such as auxiliary verb
Auxiliary verb
In linguistics, an auxiliary verb is a verb that gives further semantic or syntactic information about a main or full verb. In English, the extra meaning provided by an auxiliary verb alters the basic meaning of the main verb to make it have one or more of the following functions: passive voice,...
s, the r-verbs, and the only verb in Icelandic that has been called ‘totally irregular’, valda). There is a classification system for all verbs, with the paradigms going into the dozens.
Some Icelandic infinitives end with a -ja suffix. These verbs can be conjugated like -ur verbs, with the suffix lost in the first person singular. When conjugating -ja verbs, the single ‘j’ must be removed, so syngja (‘to sing’) would become ég syng (‘I sing’) in the first person singular and not ég syngj (and syngja is a strong verb (past tense söng), so irregularities are to be expected). The j in itself is not a reliable indicator. Examples could be emja (‘squeal’), which belongs to one class (singular, first person, ég emja, past tense ég emjaði) versus telja (‘count’), belonging to another class, (ég tel, past tense ég taldi).
Tenses
Strictly speaking, there are only two simple tensesGrammatical tense
A tense is a grammatical category that locates a situation in time, to indicate when the situation takes place.Bernard Comrie, Aspect, 1976:6:...
in Icelandic, simple present and simple past. All other tenses are formed using auxiliary constructions (some of these are regarded as tenses, others as aspects
Grammatical aspect
In linguistics, the grammatical aspect of a verb is a grammatical category that defines the temporal flow in a given action, event, or state, from the point of view of the speaker...
). For example, the present continuous is formed thus:
- personal pronoun + vera + að + infinitive verb
- ég er að læra
- I am learning
However, this construction only usually applies to abstract concepts, and is not used for activities, e.g. to sit would not use this construction. Instead, the simple present should be used.
The collective tenses are:
- conditional
- future
- past
- continuous
- perfect
- subjunctive
- present
- continuous
- perfect
- subjunctive
Voice
Icelandic possesses the middle voice in addition to both the active and passive. Verbs in the middle voice always end in -st; this ending can be added to both the infinitive and conjugated verb forms. For the conjugated forms, second and third person endings (i.e. -(u)r, -ð and -rð) must be removed, as must any dental consonants (ð, d and t). Compare the verb breyta (‘to change’) to its middle voice forms, for example:| breyta to change |
breyti change |
breytir change |
breytir changes |
breytum change |
breytið change |
breyta change |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| breytast to change |
breytist change |
breytist change |
breytist changes |
breytumst change |
breytist change |
breytast change |
The middle voice form of many verbs carries a slightly different meaning, and in some cases may carry a different meaning altogether. Some verbs survive only in their middle voice form, the other forms having been lost over time. The middle voice is generally used in the following situations to express:
- Reflexivity—The middle voice form of a verb may be used in lieu of a reflexive pronoun, for example: Þór klæðir sig ⇒ Þór klæðist (‘Þór gets dressed’)
- Reciprocity—Here the middle voice is used to mean ‘each other’, for example: Þór talar við Stefán og Stefán talar við Þór ⇒ Þór og Stefán talast við (‘Þór and Stefán talk to each other’)
- An alternative meaning—As previously mentioned, some middle voice verbs carry different meanings than their counterparts. Examples include koma (‘to come’ becoming komast (‘to get there’) and gera (‘to do’) becoming gerast (‘to happen’)
- The passive—In certain situations, the middle voice may express an idea for which English would use the passive. For example, the phrase, Bíllinn sést ekki, translates as ‘The car cannot be seen’. Most often the middle voice is used in this context when there is no direct reference to any grammatical person.
- In reported speech—When the subject of reported speech is the same of that reporting, the middle voice may be used. For example, Hann sagðist ekki lesa bókina, translates to, 'He said (that) he didn't read the book'. Note three special features of this construction: 1) the use of the infinitive 'lesa' in the subordinate clause; 2) the placement of 'ekki'; and 3) the lack of the complementizerComplementizerIn linguistics , a complementizer is a syntactic category roughly equivalent to the term subordinating conjunction in traditional grammar. For example, the word that is generally called a complementizer in English sentences like Mary believes that it is raining...
'að', corresponding to English 'that'.
Subjunctive mood
Like many other Indo-European languagesIndo-European languages
The Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major current languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and South Asia and also historically predominant in Anatolia...
, Icelandic has the subjunctive mood
Subjunctive mood
In grammar, the subjunctive mood is a verb mood typically used in subordinate clauses to express various states of irreality such as wish, emotion, possibility, judgment, opinion, necessity, or action that has not yet occurred....
. It is often used to refer to situations with a degree of hypotheticity, but more specifically in the following situations:
- In reported speech—It is used with the verb segja in the following sense: Jón segir að hún komi (‘Jón says that she’s coming’)
- To express uncertainty—Used after the verbs vona (‘to hope’), óska (‘to wish’), halda (‘to believe’), búast við (‘to expect’), óttast, vera hræddur um (‘to fear’) and gruna (‘to suspect’): ég vona að henni batni (‘I hope that she gets better’)
- Interrogative sentences—Specifically after the verb spyrja (‘to ask’): Jón spyr hvort þú ætlir að borða með okkur (‘Jón asks whether you’re going to eat with us’)
- With conjunctions—The subjunctive is used after the conjunctions nema (‘unless’), þó að/þótt (‘although’), svo að (‘so that’), til þess að (‘in order to’)
Adverbs
Compared to other lexical categories, Icelandic adverbs are relatively simple, and are not declined, except in some cases for comparison, and can be constructed easily from adjectiveAdjective
In grammar, an adjective is a 'describing' word; the main syntactic role of which is to qualify a noun or noun phrase, giving more information about the object signified....
s, noun
Noun
In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...
s and verb
Verb
A verb, from the Latin verbum meaning word, is a word that in syntax conveys an action , or a state of being . In the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the particle to, is the infinitive...
s. These derived adverbs often end in -lega (approximately equivalent to the -ly suffix in English):
- nýr—new ⇒ nýlega—lately (lit. newly)
Note: The adverbs ending in -lega can be declined for comparison, which makes a rather large group on its own. Exempli gratia:
- hætta—danger ⇒ hættulega→hættulegar→hættulegast, i.e. dangerously→more dangerously→most dangerously.
This is a regular way to form adverbs. Another way is to take the neutral nominative singular of an adjective and turn it into an adverb:
- blítt—gentle ⇒ blítt—gently, cf. hún sefur blítt—she sleeps gently
Another way is taking the stem of an adjective and add an a:
- illur—bad ⇒ illa—badly, cf. hann hagar sér illa—he behaves badly (illur never takes the -lega suffix).
Like English, very many common adverbs do not stick to these patterns but are, so to speak, adverbs in their own right:
- bráðum—soon
- núna—now
- oft—often
- strax—right away
The basic adverbs of direction include, among others:
- austur—east
- norður—north
- suður—south
- vestur—west
- inn—in
- innan—from within
- utan—from outside
- út—out
Inn and út denote motion, going in and going out.
Prepositions
In Icelandic, prepositions determine the case of the following noun. Some examples are given below:| accusative | dative | genitive | acc. or dat. depending on context |
|---|---|---|---|
| um—about | að—at, with | til—to | á—on |
| gegnum—through | af—off | án—without | eftir—after |
| umfram—in addition | frá—from | meðal—amongst | fyrir—before |
| kringum—around | hjá—with | milli—between | í—in |
| umhverfis—around | úr—out of | sökum—due to | með—with |
| andspænis—opposite | vegna—because | undir—under | |
| ásamt—along | handan—beyond | við—by | |
| gagnvart—towards | innan—inside | yfir—over | |
| gegn—through | utan—outside | ||
| gegnt—vis-à-vis | ofan—above | ||
| handa—for | neðan—below | ||
| meðfram—along | |||
| móti—opposite, against | |||
| undan—from under |
The case governed by prepositons depends on the context. The most frequent occurrence of this is determined by whether or not motion towards or away from is implied by the context: í, á, eftir, yfir and undir are all affected in this way. The following examples demonstrate this:
- Jón fer á veitingahúsið—Jón goes to the restaurant
Here the preposition á governs the accusative case because specific motion towards/away from is implied, i.e. going to the restaurant.
- Jón er á veitingahúsinu—Jón is at the restaurant
In this example, the preposition á governs the dative; here the situation is static with no motion towards or away from implied. Yfir, undir and eftir all behave in the same way:
- Kötturinn skríður undir rúmið—The cat crawls under the bed
Here the use of the accusative implies that the cat was not under the bed before, but is on its way there now.
- Kötturinn skríður undir rúminu—The cat is crawling under the bed
Here, the use of the dative implies an unchanging situation. Now the cat is still crawling, but within the confines of under the bed. Note that to govern the accusative, the preposition must imply movement towards or away from something, that is to say a changing situation. If the situation is static, i.e., the same at the end as it was at the start, then the preposition governs the dative.
Syntax
Icelandic word orderWord order
In linguistics, word order typology refers to the study of the order of the syntactic constituents of a language, and how different languages can employ different orders. Correlations between orders found in different syntactic subdomains are also of interest...
is SVO (subject–verb–object), generally speaking, with the subject and verb inverted in questions and when a sentence begins with an adverb. However, the inflectional system allows for considerable freedom in word order. For poetical purposes, every combination is possible, even the rare OSV. The phrase Helga Bjarni drap (Bjarni killed Helgi) might well occur in, say, a ríma
Rímur
In Icelandic literature, a ríma is an epic poem written in any of the so-called rímnahættir . They are rhymed, they alliterate and consist of two to four lines per stanza...
.
Despite this, certain rules of syntax are relatively inflexible. For example, the main verb must always be the second lexical unit
Lexical item
A Lexical item is a single word or chain of words that forms the basic elements of a language's lexicon . Examples are "cat", "traffic light", "take care of", "by-the-way", and "it's raining cats and dogs"...
of the sentence (this is a feature known as V2 word order
V2 word order
In syntax, verb-second word order is the rule in some languages that the second constituent of declarative main clauses is always a verb, while this is not necessarily the case in other types of clauses.- V2 effect :...
, as is common to many Germanic languages). Take the example below (subject in yellow, verb in blue, object in red):
- Mannfjöldinn var 1.500—The population was 1,500
Here the element var (the past tense third person singular form of the verb vera, ‘to be’, i.e. ‘was’) is the second lexical unit of the sentence. If we change the sentence, however:
- Árið 2000 var mannfjöldinn 1.500—In 2000, the population was 1,500 (lit. The year 2000 was the population 1,500)
Here, var is still the second lexical unit of the sentence, despite the fact that it is not the second word in the sentence. The prepositional phrase árið 2000 (highlighted in green) counts as one lexical unit, and so for the verb to be the second lexical unit, it must come after 2000 and not after árið. The subject and object of the verb then follow. An exception to this rule arises when forming questions by inversion
Inversion (linguistics)
In linguistics, grammatical inversion is any of a number of different distinct grammatical constructions in the languages of the world. There are three main uses in the literature which, unfortunately, have little if any overlap either formally or typologically: syntactic inversion, thematic...
:
- Stefán er svangur—Stefán is hungry
and when turned into a question:
- Er Stefán svangur?—Is Stefán hungry?
Here the subject and verb have been inverted to form a question, meaning the verb is the first lexical unit in the sentence as opposed to the second. This method of forming questions is used in many languages, including English.
Questions
As we have seen, questions can be easily formed by rearranging the order of the sentence from subject–verb–object to verb–subject–object. For example:- Þú talar íslensku.—You speak Icelandic.
can be made into a question as follows:
- Talar þú íslensku?—Do you speak Icelandic? (lit. Speak you Icelandic?)
It should be noted that often a form of elision
Elision
Elision is the omission of one or more sounds in a word or phrase, producing a result that is easier for the speaker to pronounce...
occurs when asking questions in the second person; the verb and þú have a tendency to merge together to ease pronunciation. This is reflected in writing, and so one would more often encounter talarðu as opposed to the expanded form talar þú. The actual change undergone here is the transformation of the voiceless dental fricative
Voiceless dental fricative
The voiceless dental non-sibilant fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. It is familiar to English speakers as the 'th' in thing. Though rather rare as a phoneme in the world's inventory of languages, it is encountered in some of the most widespread and influential...
þ into the voiced dental fricative
Voiced dental fricative
The voiced dental non-sibilant fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound, eth, is . The symbol was taken from the Old English letter eth, which could stand for either a voiced or unvoiced...
ð. This elision rule applies to many verbs, some having their own special forms (for example vera, ‘to be’, has the form ertu).
The inversion rule still applies when interrogatives
Interrogative word
In linguistics, an interrogative word is a function word used for the item interrupted in an information statement. Interrogative words are sometimes called wh-words because most of English interrogative words start with wh-...
are involved, which are simply added to the front of the sentence. The interrogatives in Icelandic are:
- hvað?—what/how?
- Hvað ert þú að gera?—What are you doing? (lit. What are you to do?)
- hvaða?—which/what?
- Hvaða hundur?—What dog?
- hver?—who?
- Hver ert þú?—Who are you?
- hvernig?—how?
- Hvernig hefur þú það?—How are you? (lit. How have you it?)
- hvar/hvert/hvaðan?—where/whither/whence?
- Hvar ert þú?—Where are you?
- Hvert ert þú að fara—Where are you going? (lit. Where are you to go?)
- Hvaðan kemur þú?—Where do you come from? (lit. Whence come you?)
- hvenær?—when?
- Hvenær kemur þú?—When do you come? (lit. When come you?)
- hvers vegna/af hverju/hví?—why?
- Hvers vegna hann?—Why him?
- Af hverju ekki?—Why not?
- Hví?—Why?
- hvort?—whether/which?
- Hvort hann komi, veit ég ekki.—I don’t know whether he’s coming or not. (lit. Whether he comes, know I not.)
- Hvort vilt þú?—Which do you want? (lit. Which want you?, implying a choice between two alternatives.)
However, interrogative pronouns (hvað/hver) must decline with the verb that they modify, so the case of the pronoun changes depending on the verb. The meaning of a sentence does not change whether hvers vegna or af hverju is used; however they are used in a specific manner in Icelandic. Also of note, hví is rarely used.
Sound shifts
There are a number of sound shiftSound change
Sound change includes any processes of language change that affect pronunciation or sound system structures...
s that occur in Icelandic, detailed below. The shifts occur very frequently across all word classes. For one of the most thorough books about the subject see Íslenzk málfræði handa æðri skólum.
A-umlaut
This is the oldest umlaut of all, attested in every Germanic language except, perhaps, GothicGothic language
Gothic is an extinct Germanic language that was spoken by the Goths. It is known primarily from the Codex Argenteus, a 6th-century copy of a 4th-century Bible translation, and is the only East Germanic language with a sizable Text corpus...
. It comes in two varieties:
- i ⇒ e (as for instance in niður vs. neðan).
- u ⇒ o. Well known examples include fugl (cf. English fowl) or stofa (cf. German Stube).
This umlaut is no longer productive.
U-umlaut
The U-umlaut occurs when a stem vowelVowel
In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, such as English sh! , where there is a constriction or closure at some...
a changes to ö because of a u in the next syllable
Syllable
A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds. For example, the word water is composed of two syllables: wa and ter. A syllable is typically made up of a syllable nucleus with optional initial and final margins .Syllables are often considered the phonological "building...
. This affects a only, and not á or au. Some examples:
- tala—talk ⇒ (við) tölum—(we) talk
- fara—go ⇒ (við) förum—(we) go
If there is an intermediate syllable between the first a and the u, then the U-shift does not take place.
U-umlaut is not to be confused with breaking
Breaking (linguistics)
In historical linguistics, vowel breaking is the change of a monophthong into a diphthong or triphthong. The change into a diphthong is also known as diphthongization...
although they appear similar.
Note that if there are two a's preceding the u, the first a becomes an ö and the second becomes a u. An example:
- fagnaður—joy ⇒ fögnuðum—joys (dative, plural).
Exceptions to this include several borrowings, for instance banani—banana ⇒ banönum (dative plural) and Arabi—Arab ⇒ Aröbum (also dative plural).
Historically, there were four more additional forms of the U-umlaut; these are no longer productive or have been reversed.
I-umlaut
The I-umlaut is slightly more complex, and consists of the following vowel changes:- a ⇒ e
- á ⇒ æ
- e ⇒ i
- o ⇒ e
- ó ⇒ æ
- u ⇒ y (It sometimes appears as if o ⇒ y, but this is never the case. An example: Sonur (singular) ⇒ synir (plural) might give the impression of an I-umlaut, but the original vowel in sonur was u changed to o by the A-umlaut.)
- ú, jú and jó ⇒ ý
- au ⇒ ey
The above effects of the I-umlaut are most visible in strong verbs
Germanic strong verb
In the Germanic languages, a strong verb is one which marks its past tense by means of ablaut. In English, these are verbs like sing, sang, sung...
. Take the verb hafa (‘to have’), for example:
| Number | Singular | Plural | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Person | ég I |
þú you |
hann/hún/það he/she/it |
við we |
þið you (pl. Plural In linguistics, plurality or [a] plural is a concept of quantity representing a value of more-than-one. Typically applied to nouns, a plural word or marker is used to distinguish a value other than the default quantity of a noun, which is typically one... ) |
þeir/þær/þau they |
| hafa to have |
hef have |
hefur have |
hefur has |
höfum have |
hafið have |
hafa have |
In the singular conjugation, the I-umlaut has caused the stem a to become an e. If we look at the plural conjugation however, we can see that the stem a remains intact here, with the notable exception of the ‘við’ form, where a U-umlaut has taken place (thanks to the -um ending). The I-shift affects verbs only in their singular conjugations.
(The verb hafa actually has two acceptable conjugations. The first is the above, the second goes (ég) hefi, (þú) hefir, (hann) hefir.)
Less known, non-productive and reversed changes include:
- o ⇒ ø
- ǫ ⇒ ø
Other umlauts
Historically, there were many more umlauts in Icelandic, including- IR-umlaut
- J-umlaut
- R-umlaut
- G-k-umlaut
- W-umlaut
These are much more limited in scope, and operate more or less in the same way as the above mentioned umlauts (i.e. have more or less the same effect). Having mentioned reversed or non-productive umlauts above, it remains to be stressed that the I- and U-umlauts are very much alive, both as a fixture of the declension system as well as being useful tools for composing neologisms. This applies to breaking
Breaking (linguistics)
In historical linguistics, vowel breaking is the change of a monophthong into a diphthong or triphthong. The change into a diphthong is also known as diphthongization...
as well.
External links
- An Icelandic minigrammar, Intercomprehension in Germanic Languages Online / University of TromsøUniversity of TromsøThe University of Tromsø is the world's northernmost university. Located in the city of Tromsø, Norway, it was established in 1968, and opened in 1972. It is one of eight universities in Norway. The University of Tromsø is the largest research and educational institution in northern Norway...
, 2003. - Mimir - Online Icelandic grammar notebook
- Verbix - an online Icelandic verb conjugator An online declension tool for Icelandic words
- Icelandic Language Forum