The Present Participle in -andi

The Icelandic present participle ends in -andi: tala "speak" → talandi "speaking", hlaupa "run" → hlaupandi "running". It looks exactly like the English -ing form, and that resemblance is a trap, because the two do completely different jobs. English -ing builds the progressive tense ("I am reading"); Icelandic -andi does not — it is a participle and an agent-former. It turns up as an adverb ("he came running"), as an attributive adjective ("running water"), and, most productively, as the stem of a whole class of nouns naming the person who does something (nemandi "student", eigandi "owner"). This page maps those uses and hammers on the one mistake that English speakers make almost universally: pressing -andi into service as a progressive. (The past participle — the -inn/-aður form used in the perfect and passive — is a separate topic and lives with the verbs.)

How the form is built

Take the infinitive, drop the final -a, add -andi: tala → talandi, lesa → lesandi, ganga → gangandi, hlaupa → hlaupandi, syngja → syngjandi. It is built off the present stem, so strong and weak verbs alike form it the same transparent way. There is essentially no irregularity in the formation — the difficulty is entirely in what it does.

Use 1: adverbial — "he came running"

The most characteristic use of -andi is adverbial, describing the manner in which something is done — and here it is indeclinable, a fixed form that never changes shape. The classic pattern is a verb of motion (koma "come", fara "go") plus an -andi participle telling you how: hann kom hlaupandi "he came running", hún fór syngjandi "she went off singing". English does the same with bare -ing ("came running", "went singing"), so the construction itself is familiar; only remember that the Icelandic form stays frozen.

Use 2: attributive — "running water"

-andi also works as an attributive adjective in front of a noun: rennandi vatn "running water", brennandi áhugi "burning interest", lifandi tónlist "live music" (literally "living music"). In careful written Icelandic these can take weak adjective endings (rennandi, rennandi…), but a great many of them are used in a fixed, uninflected shape, especially in set phrases. Treat the common ones as frozen collocations.

Use 3: agent nouns — nemandi, eigandi, stjórnandi

This is the most productive use and the most useful to recognise. A large family of agent nouns — names for the person who does the verb — is built on the -andi participle: nema "learn, study" → nemandi "student", eiga "own" → eigandi "owner", stjórna "manage, direct" → stjórnandi "manager, conductor", kenna "teach" also gives the participial kennandi, though the everyday word for "teacher" is the -ari noun kennari. These -andi agent nouns are masculine and decline as a special weak class.

The declension is the giveaway: in the singular they end in -andi throughout most cases (nemandi, nemanda, nemanda, nemanda), but the plural is irregular, ending in -endur: nemandi → nemendur "students", eigandi → eigendur "owners", stjórnandi → stjórnendur "managers". This -andi → -endur shift is the single fact to memorise about the class.

What -andi is NOT: it is not a progressive

Here is the cardinal trap. English -ing is the engine of the progressive — "I am reading", "she is talking" — so an English speaker reaches for -andi to say the same thing and produces \ég er lesandi, *hún er talandi. *This is wrong. Icelandic does not use the present participle to make a progressive tense. To say "I am reading" you have two correct options:

• the plain present, which already covers ongoing action: ég les "I read / I am reading";
• the dedicated progressive vera að
  • infinitive: ég er að lesa "I am (in the middle of) reading".

The participle -andi is simply not part of this system. Ég er lesandi is not "I am reading" — at best it is a malformed attempt that a native ear flags immediately. So the rule is blunt: never use vera + -andi to translate the English progressive.

English vs Icelandic

English collapses several jobs into one -ing form: the progressive ("I am reading"), the gerund ("reading is fun"), the participial adjective ("running water"), and the manner adverb ("came running"). Icelandic splits these. The progressive goes to vera að + infinitive or to the plain present. The gerund/verbal noun is a separate nominalisation. Only the adjectival and adverbial and agent-noun jobs land on -andi. So the English -ing → Icelandic -andi equation is true for some of -ing's uses and false — dangerously false — for the most frequent one, the progressive. Sort the English -ing by its job, and only the "running water / came running / the doer of X" jobs map to -andi.

Common Mistakes

The cardinal error. vera + -andi is not the English progressive. Use vera að + infinitive, or the plain present.

The agent nouns take the irregular -endur plural; don't regularise them.

In its adverbial/predicative use the participle is indeclinable — leave it bare.

Key Takeaways

• The present participle in -andi (talandi, hlaupandi) is built off the present stem and does three jobs: adverbial (kom hlaupandi "came running"), attributive (rennandi vatn "running water"), and agent-noun base (nemandi "student").
• It is indeclinable in its adverbial/predicative use — a frozen manner form.
• The agent nouns (nemandi, eigandi, stjórnandi) are masculine with an irregular plural in -endur (nemendur, eigendur) — the one declension fact to memorise.
• -andi is NOT a progressive. "I am reading" is ég les or ég er að lesa, never \ég er lesandi*. This is the dominant English-transfer trap.
• English -ing covers several jobs; only the adjectival, adverbial, and agent-noun ones map onto -andi — the progressive does not.