Breakdown of Brottfarardagurinn er á morgun.
Questions & Answers about Brottfarardagurinn er á morgun.
Because Icelandic, like the other North Germanic languages, very often writes compound nouns as a single word.
brottfarardagurinn is built from:
- brottför = departure
- dagur = day
In the compound, the first part appears as brottfarar-, which comes from the genitive form of brottför. So the base compound brottfarardagur is literally departure-day or more naturally day of departure.
The base form is brottfarardagur.
The ending -inn / -urinn is the suffixed definite article, so:
- brottfarardagur = a departure day / departure day
- brottfarardagurinn = the departure day
Since the last part of the compound is dagur, that is the part that carries the grammatical ending and the article.
Because dagur is a masculine noun, and in the nominative singular definite form it becomes dagurinn.
The same pattern happens inside the compound:
- dagur = day
- dagurinn = the day
- brottfarardagur = departure day
- brottfarardagurinn = the departure day
So the -urinn ending is not random; it is the normal definite ending for this noun pattern.