Annotated Dialogue: Weather and Plans

Talking about the weather is unavoidable in Iceland — and it quietly drills two structures English has no real equivalent for. First, weather verbs take a dummy subject það ("it") that points at nothing: það rignir ("it's raining"). Second, when you feel cold, the natural Icelandic is mér er kalt — literally "to-me is cold," with mér in the dative, not ég. Below is a realistic exchange between two friends bumping into each other, glossed line by line, then unpacked: the dummy það, the dative-experiencer mér er kalt, the plan-making ætla að, and time phrases like á morgun and um helgina.

The dialogue

Two friends, Anna and Bjarni, meet on the street on a grey afternoon.

Almost every line here turns on one of three patterns: það + weather verb, mér er kalt, or ætla að + infinitive for plans. Let's take them in turn.

það rignir, það er kalt — the weather "it" that means nothing

In English "it's raining," the it is a grammatical placeholder — there is no thing that is doing the raining. Icelandic works the same way, with það ("it/that") sitting in the subject slot purely to fill it. This það is a dummy (or expletive) subject: it carries no meaning, it just satisfies the grammar's need for something in front of the verb.

The crucial thing: weather verbs already have their subject — the empty það — so you must not add a real one. There is no "I/we/the sky" doing the raining. (Full inventory of weather verbs: verbs/impersonal-weather.)

When the verb comes first (e.g. after a question word or a fronted phrase), the það can even drop out, because the slot is filled by something else:

Mér er kalt — when you are the cold one

Now compare two lines that sit almost back to back in the dialogue:

• Það er kalt — "It's cold" (the weather is cold; ambient temperature).
• Mér er kalt — "I'm cold" (the sensation in my body).

This is the heart of it. To say you personally feel cold, Icelandic does not say ég er kaldur — that would describe your character or temperature as an object (a cold-hearted person, or a corpse). The feeling of being cold is a dative-experiencer construction: the person who feels it goes in the dative (mér = "to me"), and the sentence has no nominative subject at all. Literally: "to-me is cold."

The pronoun swaps for the dative of whoever feels it, and the verb stays frozen as er:

• mér er kalt — I'm cold
• þér er kalt — you're cold
• honum er kalt — he's cold
• henni er kalt — she's cold
• okkur er kalt — we're cold

The same frame gives mér er heitt ("I'm hot"), mér er illt ("I feel unwell"), and mér leiðist ("I'm bored") — all states that happen to you rather than things you are. That last one appears in the dialogue: mér leiðist heima ("I get bored at home").

ætla að + infinitive — talking about plans

Icelandic has no "will" auxiliary the way English does. To talk about a plan or intention, the everyday tool is ætla að ("to intend / be going to") + the infinitive. So ég ætla að fara = "I'm going to go," and the question form is ætlarðu að …? (a contraction of ætlar þú).

For things that are simply scheduled or near-certain, Icelandic often just uses the plain present tense with a future meaning — "future-by-present." The dialogue's það verður kalt uppi á fjalli ("it'll be cold up on the mountain") and ef það verður þurrt ("if it stays dry") use verður, the present of verða ("to become"), to mean "will be." No separate future tense is needed. (More on expressing the future: verbs/future-expression.)

There's also a neat way to report a forecast — what is supposed to happen: eiga að ("to be supposed to") + infinitive. The dialogue's það á að rigna á morgun is literally "it is-to to-rain tomorrow" = "it's supposed to rain tomorrow."

Time phrases: á morgun, um helgina, á laugardaginn

Three time expressions recur, and each uses a fixed case you should just memorise as a chunk:

• á morgun — "tomorrow" (a set phrase; morgun here is accusative, but treat it as one word).
• um helgina — "this/the weekend." um ("about/around/during") takes the accusative, so helgi ("weekend," feminine) becomes helgina. Note there is no ö here — it's helgi, giving helgina.
• um helgar — "on weekends" (habitual, plural).
• á laugardaginn — "on Saturday." Days with á take the accusative definite form: laugardagur → laugardaginn.

(More on these: prepositions/time-prepositions.)

klæddu þig — the wrap-up-warm imperative

The friendly Icelandic send-off in cold weather is klæddu þig vel ("dress warmly," lit. "dress yourself well"). It's an imperative of klæða ("to dress"), and because dressing is something you do to yourself, it takes the reflexive þig ("yourself"). The little -u ending (klæddu) is the singular imperative.

Vocabulary and forms

Things English speakers get wrong here

Key Takeaways

• Weather verbs take a meaningless dummy það as subject — það rignir, það er kalt — and you must not add a real subject.
• Your personal feeling of cold is mér er kalt: the experiencer is dative (mér, þér, honum), the verb is just er, and there is no nominative. Never ég er kaldur.
• Contrast það er kalt (the world is cold) with mér er kalt (I feel cold) — same word kalt, completely different grammar.
• For plans use ætla að + infinitive; for forecasts eiga að + infinitive; for scheduled futures just the present (það verður kalt). Icelandic has no "will" auxiliary.
• Time chunks take the accusative: um helgina, á laugardaginn, plus the fixed á morgun.