Two number tasks come up constantly in your first conversations: telling someone how old you are, and giving (or reading back) a phone number. Both are completely learnable as fixed chunks before you understand the grammar underneath. The age frame in particular is a gift — "X years old" is always X ára, a single frozen word that never changes — so you can say your age correctly on day one. This page hands you those chunks; the grammar of why lives on the Numbers pages, and you do not need it to be understood.
Your age: Ég er X ára
To say how old you are, slot a number into one fixed frame:
Ég er + [number] + ára.
That is it. Ára is invariant — it is the same word whether you are 7, 19, or 88, and whether you are a man or a woman. Notice what Icelandic does not do: there is no separate verb for "to be … years old" and no word for "old" in the statement. You literally say "I am twenty of-years," and the of-years part is frozen as ára forever.
Ég er tuttugu ára.
I'm twenty years old.
Ég er nítján ára.
I'm nineteen years old.
Hún er sjö ára og bróðir hennar er fimm ára.
She's seven and her brother is five.
Why ára and nothing else? It is the genitive plural of ár (hk, "year") — historically "I am twenty of years." You do not need to know that to use it; the practical takeaway is that ára is a fixed chunk. Resist the urge to "make it agree" or add a word for old — the construction is complete as it stands.
To swap the subject, just change the start of the frame — þú ert, hann er, hún er, við erum — and keep ára untouched:
Strákurinn er átta ára.
The boy is eight years old.
Við erum bæði þrjátíu ára.
We're both thirty years old.
Asking someone's age: Hvað ertu gamall / gömul?
The question "how old are you?" does have the word for "old" in it — and here, unlike ára, that word agrees with the gender of the person you are asking. To a man you say gamall; to a woman, gömul:
| Asking… | Question |
|---|---|
| a man | Hvað ertu gamall? |
| a woman | Hvað ertu gömul? |
| about a child (neuter barn) | Hvað er barnið gamalt? |
Hvað ertu gömul? – Ég er nítján ára.
How old are you? – I'm nineteen. (asking a woman → gömul)
Hvað ertu gamall? – Ég er tuttugu og fimm ára.
How old are you? – I'm twenty-five. (asking a man → gamall)
Hvað er hún gömul? – Hún er sex ára.
How old is she? – She's six.
So there is an asymmetry worth fixing in your head: the answer is genderless (ára never changes), but the question has an adjective (gamall/gömul/gamalt) that must match the person. The bare form is gamall (masc.); the feminine gömul swaps the vowels (a → ö), and the neuter is gamalt. Ertu is, as always, ert þú fused together.
Phone numbers: read in pairs
Icelandic phone numbers have seven digits, and they are read in pairs — the same habit as much of Europe, and unlike the digit-by-digit English style. A number like 555 1234 is grouped and spoken as the pairs you see, with the leftover single digit at the front. The numbers themselves are just the cardinals you already know (see Counting 1–20), and for this purpose they do not decline — you read them plainly.
Síminn minn er fimm, fimmtíu og fimm, tólf, þrjátíu og fjögur.
My number is five, fifty-five, twelve, thirty-four. (555 1234, read in pairs)
Hvað er símanúmerið þitt? – Sex, fjörutíu og þrjú, núll, sautján.
What's your phone number? – Six, forty-three, oh, seventeen. (643 0017)
A few practical notes. Núll is "zero" (you do not say "oh" as a letter). To ask for a number, use Hvað er símanúmerið þitt? ("what is your phone number?" — símanúmerið, hk). And because the pairs are read as two-digit numbers (fimmtíu og fimm = fifty-five), you will use the larger cardinals too, but the principle is the same: group in twos, say each group as a number.
Geturðu gefið mér símanúmerið? – Já, þrjú, tuttugu og eitt, fjörutíu og sex.
Can you give me the phone number? – Yes, three, twenty-one, forty-six. (321 46…)
Bonus: prices and the clock
While we are doing spoken numbers, two more everyday frames use the same cardinals. Prices in krónur: Það kostar 500 krónur ("it costs 500 krónur" — króna, kvk). And the simplest clock statement: Klukkan er þrjú ("it's three o'clock" — literally "the clock is three").
Hvað kostar þetta? – Það kostar fimm hundruð krónur.
How much is this? – It costs five hundred krónur.
Klukkan er þrjú.
It's three o'clock.
Common Mistakes
❌ Ég er tuttugu ár.
Incorrect — age uses the frozen genitive ára, not the plain noun ár.
✅ Ég er tuttugu ára.
I'm twenty years old.
The age word is ára, always. Ár (the plain "year/years") is wrong in this frame — ára is a fixed chunk.
❌ Ég er tuttugu ára gamall. (offered as the normal way to state age)
Unnecessary — Ég er tuttugu ára already means 'twenty years old'; the extra word is redundant.
✅ Ég er tuttugu ára.
I'm twenty years old.
Do not append a word for "old" to the statement. Ég er X ára is already complete; gamall belongs in the question, not the plain answer.
❌ Hvað ertu gamall? (asked of a woman)
Incorrect — to a woman the form is gömul, agreeing with her gender.
✅ Hvað ertu gömul?
How old are you? (to a woman)
The adjective in the age question agrees: gamall to a man, gömul to a woman, gamalt about a neuter noun.
❌ Reading a phone number digit by digit: 'fimm, fimm, fimm, einn…'
Unnatural — Icelandic groups phone numbers in pairs, not single digits.
✅ fimm, fimmtíu og fimm, tólf…
five, fifty-five, twelve… (grouped in pairs)
Read phone numbers in pairs, saying each pair as a two-digit number — not one digit at a time as in English.
❌ Ég er tuttugu ára gömul gamall.
Incorrect — never stack both gender forms; and the plain statement needs neither.
✅ Ég er tuttugu ára.
I'm twenty years old.
Keep the diacritics too: ára (á), gömul (ö), króna/krónur (ó). Dropping an accent is a spelling error.
Key Takeaways
- Age: Ég er + [number] + ára — ára is frozen, never changing for gender, number, or age. No verb for "to be … old," no word for "old."
- Age question: Hvað ertu gamall? (to a man) / Hvað ertu gömul? (to a woman) / gamalt (neuter) — the adjective agrees.
- The split: invariant ára in the answer, agreeing gamall/gömul/gamalt in the question.
- Phone numbers: seven digits, read in pairs; núll is "zero"; ask with Hvað er símanúmerið þitt?
- Same cardinals power prices (Það kostar 500 krónur) and the clock (Klukkan er þrjú).
Now practice Icelandic
Reading grammar gets you part of the way. The exercises are where it sticks — free, no signup needed.
Start learning Icelandic→Related Topics
- Age, Height, and Measurement ExpressionsA2 — Stating age and measurements idiomatically — the frozen genitive 'ára' for age (Ég er 30 ára, invariant), the gender-agreeing age question (gamall/gömul), height and weight (einn áttatíu á hæð), and the measurement nouns (metri, kíló, gráða) with temperature (tíu stiga hiti).
- Counting 1 to 20A1 — The spoken cardinal numbers núll to tuttugu, how to recite them, the special forms that trip up English speakers (þrír, sjö, níu), and an early warning that 1–4 will later change with gender.
- Small Talk and Everyday ReactionsA1 — The frozen Icelandic small-talk rituals — Hvað segirðu?, Allt gott, Hvað er að frétta?, Ekkert sérstakt, Gaman að hitta þig, Sömuleiðis — and why Hvað segirðu? is never a literal question.