Icelandic grammar is the set of structural rules that describe the use of the Icelandic language.
Icelandic is a heavily inflected language. Icelandic nouns are assigned to one of three grammatical genders (masculine, feminine, or neuter), and are declined into four cases (nominative, accusative, dative, and genitive). Nominals decline into two numbers: singular and plural, and verbs conjugate for person, number, tense, mood, and voice.
Morphology Icelandic morphology is prototypical of Germanic/Indo-European languages. Nouns decline for case, number and gender. Adjectives decline for case, number, gender, degree (i.e., positive, comparative, and superlative), and definiteness (i.e. weak and strong). In nouns, definiteness and non-definiteness depend on articles, but are not related to strong and weak declension types. In nouns, weak and strong declension types describe endings expressing gender, case, and number, rather than definiteness and non-definiteness.
Icelandic has only a definite article, which can stand on its own or be attached to its modified noun. Verbs are conjugated for tense, mood, person, number and voice. There are three voices: active, passive and medial. There are only two simple tenses, past and present, along with a number of auxiliary constructions, some of which may be regarded as tenses, others as aspects.Jón Friðjónsson (1989). Samsettar myndir sagna, Málvísindastofnun Háskóla Íslands, Reykjavík.Kress, Bruno (1982). Isländische Grammatik, VEB Verlag Enzyklopädie Leipzig.
Nouns
Icelandic nouns are declined in four cases: nominative, accusative, dative and genitive. They belong to three main noun classes (masculine, feminine, neuter) and can be inflected for number (singular, plural) and definiteness (definite, indefinite). There are two main declension paradigms for nouns from all noun classes: strong nouns (i.e. root ending in consonant) and weak nouns (root ending in a vowel), which are further divided in smaller groups for declension, according to many criteria (sound-shifts, consonant clusters, etc.) The following table shows four examples of strong declension.
+ Examples of strong declension number case masculine feminine neuter singular plural
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 in the nominative. Feminine nouns—often end in -a, -ing, or -un in the nominative. Neuter nouns—usually have no ending or have a final accented vowel in the nominative. But this is not always reliable. Many endings overlap between genders (see how the -a ending appears in the strong masculine, feminine, and neuter), and exceptions and more complicated rules make this type of discernation impossible. For example, the word (north) is a neuter noun, although it ends in -ur which is typically reserved for masculine nouns.
Articles Icelandic does not have an indefinite article (a/an in English), and the definite article (the in English) is usually joined to the end of the word. The table below shows the different suffix forms for the three genders in the nominative. This list is not exhaustive, and there are numerous exceptions in every case.
+ Suffix forms of Icelandic nouns in the nominative Gender No article Definite article Singular Plural Singular Plural Masculine -ur -ar -urinn -arnir -i -inn -ll -llinn -nn -nninn Feminine – -ir -in -irnar -a -ur -an -urnar Neuter – – -ið -in
The examples below show three nouns, one for each respective gender, declined in the nominative: masculine: —"(a) boy" becomes —"the boy" feminine: —"(a) girl" becomes —"the girl" neuter: —"(a) child" becomes —"the child"
The independent, or free-standing, definite article (not attached to the noun as a suffix) exists in Icelandic in the form . It is used mostly in poetry and irregularly elsewhere (there are hardly any rules for the latter case; it is mainly a matter of taste).
Pronouns
Personal The personal pronouns in Icelandic are as follows: case 1st person 2nd person 3rd person masculine feminine neuter singular plural Icelandic has separate masculine, feminine and neuter words for they. The masculine is used when referring to an all masculine group, the feminine for an all feminine group, and the neuter for either an all neuter or a mixed-gender group.
Like in English, the pronoun usually comes before the verb, as in the example below: —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 I am called (or, literally Magnús called am I) In English, changing the word order like this would either render a phrase nonsensical or make it sound poetic. 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.
Icelandic has also two extra lesser used personal pronouns. They are as follows: case 1st person 2nd person These two personal pronouns are now archaic. They are a leftover from the Old Icelandic (and Old Norse) use of a dual number along with the singular and plural when it came to the 1st and 2nd person pronouns. Modern Icelandic plural forms of those pronouns ( and ) are what were the dual number form, while the old plurals ( and ) are now only used in formal speech.
Reflexive Icelandic possesses a reflexive pronoun, functioning in much the same way as German , although unlike German it also has a dative and a genitive. The nominative case does not exist.
case pronoun
For example, —he washes himself, as opposed to being bathed by another, —she dresses herself, as opposed to being dressed. The pronoun does not distinguish gender or number.
Possessive Modern Icelandic has only possessive pronouns for the first-person singular, second-person singular and the third-person reflexive. They are as follows, where the three columns for each person represent masculine, feminine and neuter genders respectively: case 1st person 2nd person 3rd person singular plural means mine, means (singular) yours and (which is a reflexive possessive pronoun) means his, her, its or theirs. If one is to indicate possession for a person and number not amongst these pronouns (e.g. ours, plural yours, non-reflexive his, hers, its and theirs) the genitive of the corresponding (same person and number) personal pronoun is used.
Icelandic also has a possessive of the archaic personal pronoun . case singular plural This possessive is only used in formal or official situations, and means ours.
Demonstrative The Icelandic demonstrative pronouns are as follows, where the three columns for each person represent masculine, feminine and neuter genders respectively: case "this" "that" "the other" singular plural and roughly correspond to this and that, and means the other one of two.
Indefinite There are around fifteen to twenty of these, depending on how they are counted. A paradigm for (nobody) is given below. nobody case Masculine Feminine Neuter singular plural
Numerals The numbers one to four are declined for the respective cases and genders:
one masculine feminine neuter nominative accusative dative genitive
two masculine feminine neuter nominative accusative dative genitive
three masculine feminine neuter nominative accusative dative genitive
four masculine feminine neuter nominative accusative dative genitive
Other numbers are as follows and not declined, except for those that are actually nouns:
The word is actually a neuter noun, can be either feminine or neuter and the higher multiples of a thousand are either masculine or feminine, according to the ending (e.g. is feminine, is masculine and so on). is neuter.
Adjectives Adjectives must agree with the gender, number and grammatical case of the nouns they describe. For example, the word íslenskur (Icelandic) agrees as follows:
Icelandic (strong) case Masculine FeminineNeuter singular plural
In strong declension, for example: —I live with an Icelandic woman
Both and are dative singular. In this case, the preposition governs the case ( can also take the accusative). 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 : Icelandic (weak) case Masculine FeminineNeuter singular , , pluralAll cases
An example of weak declension: —I saw the sick woman is the weak declension of (sick) in the accusative singular. 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: '—the Icelandic flag '—the First Day of SummerHere there are far fewer forms to learn, three in total, although one has to learn how they are distributed.
Verbs There are three moods in Icelandic: indicative, imperative, and subjunctive. As with most inflected languages, the verbs in Icelandic determine (or govern) the case of the subsequent nouns, pronouns and adjectives of a sentence. For example:
('to collect or save') governs the dative case:
'' I am saving money to be able to buy a Christmas gift for Mum. ( is the dative plural form of "coin")
("to miss") governs the genitive case:
'' I miss youIn the infinitive, most Icelandic verbs end in -a. Some exceptions include a few verbs ending in -á, such as ('hit'); ('flay'). Other exceptions include the auxiliaries and ; (wash), which was originally ; and a verb borrowed from Danish, (happen). 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 ) are a separate matter. Take the infinitive ('to talk'), for example:
Number Singular Plural Person I you () he/she/it we you () they to talk talk talk(s) talk talk talkto beamareisareareareto learnlearnlearn(s)learnlearnlearnto choosechoosechoose(s)choosechoosechoose
Note how, for each of the verb groups, the conjugations in the singular change but, in the plural, the endings are nearly always predictable (-um, -ið and -a, respectively). Most English present verbs 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. The conjugation of a verb cannot be determined from its infinitive. Speakers must memorize which conjugation group a verb belongs to. Strong verbs fall into six groups augmented by reduplication verbs, each with exceptions (such as auxiliary verbs, the r-verbs, and the only verb in Icelandic that has been called 'totally irregular', ). There is a classification system for all verbs, with the paradigms going into the dozens. The simplification of inflections through person and number seen in Danish (and standard Norwegian & Swedish) with the adoption of the 3.p.s. is seen only in the first person in the conditional and in first person in the past tense where it is formed with suffix and with the first verb (to be) where em was replaced with er.
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 ('to sing') would become ('I sing') in the first person singular and not (and is a strong verb (past tense ), so irregularities are to be expected). The j in itself is not a reliable indicator. Examples could be ('squeal'), which belongs to one class (singular, first person, , past tense ) versus ('count'), belonging to another class, (, past tense ).
The six categories of Icelandic verbs are as follows:
-a verbs, which form the past indicative with an -aði ending;