Accusative-Subject Verbs: mig langar, mig vantar, mig dreymir

The dative-subject verbs put the experiencer in the dative (mér finnst, mér líkar). A second, smaller family puts the experiencer in the accusative instead — mig "me," þig "you," hann/hana "him/her" — and the verb sits frozen in the third-person singular. These are some of the most everyday verbs in the language: langa "to want / feel like," vanta "to need / lack," dreyma "to dream," gruna "to suspect," minna "to half-remember," and the ache verbs verkja and svíða. The sentence "I want a coffee" comes out as mig langar í kaffi — literally "me longs into coffee" — with mig in the accusative and langar never changing. For an English speaker the hard part is twofold: the subject is in the "wrong" case, and the thing you want often hides behind a preposition. This page drills both.

The accusative experiencer

Whatever the verb, the experiencer is accusative. Learn this little set — it is the front end of every sentence on this page:

Two of these — hann (masc.) and the plurals okkur, ykkur, þau — happen to look identical to their nominative or dative forms, which can make the case hard to see. But the construction is the same: the experiencer is the accusative object of an impersonal verb, and the verb stays 3sg.

langa — 'want / feel like / fancy'

langa is the everyday verb of wanting in the sense of desire, fancy, feel like. Present langar, past langaði, supine langað (mig hefur lengi langað… "I've long wanted…"). It is overwhelmingly used with an accusative experiencer, and the thing wanted appears in one of two shapes:

• langa í + accusative for wanting a thing: mig langar í kaffi "I'd like a coffee," mig langar í nýjan síma "I want a new phone." The preposition í is not optional here — it is part of the construction.
• langa að + infinitive for wanting to do something: mig langar að fara "I want to go," mig langar að læra spænsku "I'd like to learn Spanish."

The reason for that í is worth pausing on. With a noun, langa doesn't take a direct object at all — it points toward the desired thing with a directional preposition, the way "I'm longing for a coffee" points in English. So mig langar kaffi is simply ungrammatical; the longing needs its target í kaffi. (Some speakers also use langa til + genitive — mig langar til Íslands "I long to go to Iceland" — for places and more abstract longing.)

vanta — 'need / lack / be short of'

vanta means "to need" in the sense of lack, be missing, be short of. Present vantar, past vantaði. The experiencer is accusative and the thing needed is the (accusative) object: mig vantar pening "I need money / I'm short of money." It frames need as a deficiency — something is missing from you — rather than as an active wanting.

dreyma — 'dream'

dreyma "to dream" takes an accusative experiencer and (when there is a dreamt object) an accusative object: mig dreymdi draum "I dreamed a dream," mig dreymdi þig "I dreamed about you / I dreamed of you." Present dreymir, past dreymdi. English makes the dreamer the subject; Icelandic makes the dream something that happens to you, hence the accusative.

gruna and minna — 'suspect' and 'half-remember'

Two more high-frequency members use the same accusative frame, both for mental states you don't fully control:

• gruna "to suspect / have a hunch": mig grunar að… "I suspect that…". Present grunar, past grunaði.
• minna "to seem to recall / have a vague memory": mig minnir að… "I seem to remember that…". This is the softer, hedged "I think it was…" — note it is impersonal mig minnir, distinct from the transitive minna á "to remind." Present minnir, past minnti.

The ache verbs: verkja and svíða

Bodily pain is also accusative. verkja "to ache" and svíða "to sting/smart" take an accusative experiencer, often with the body part introduced by í + accusative: mig verkjar í hausinn "my head aches," mig svíður í augun "my eyes are stinging." (Note the contrast with the dative pain phrase mér er illt í maganum on the dative-subjects page — Icelandic distributes its ache verbs across both cases, which simply has to be learned per verb.)

langa vs vilja: the case picks the meaning

The most useful insight here is that want in Icelandic forks into two verbs that take different subject cases, and the choice of verb is the choice of case. langa (accusative subject) is desire, fancy, "feel like" — softer and the everyday default for "I'd like." vilja (nominative subject) is will, intention, demand — ég vil fara "I want / intend to go." So mig langar í kaffi ("I fancy a coffee," accusative mig) and ég vil kaffi ("I want coffee," firmer, nominative ég) are both grammatical but pragmatically different. Crucially, you cannot mix them: langa never takes a nominative subject (\ég langa), and *vilja never takes an accusative one (*mig vil). Picking the verb commits you to its case. (The full contrast — including why vilja can sound blunt in requests — is on the vilja vs langa page.)

Common Mistakes

Key Takeaways

• A family of common verbs takes an accusative experiencer with a frozen 3rd-person-singular verb: langa (want/fancy), vanta (need/lack), dreyma (dream), gruna (suspect), minna (half-remember), verkja/svíða (ache/sting).
• The experiencer is accusative: mig, þig, hann, hana, okkur, ykkur, þá/þær/þau — never nominative ég.
• The verb never inflects for the experiencer's person or number: mig langar, okkur langar, þá langar — always langar.
• langa wants a target, not a direct object: langa *í
  • accusative for a thing (*mig langar í kaffi), *langa
  að
  • infinitive for an action (*mig langar að fara). Dropping the í is a classic error.
• langa (accusative, soft "I'd like") and vilja (nominative, firm "I want/will") split the English "want" — and the verb you choose dictates the subject's case.