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Learn Hardcore Icelandic: Hún skellir hurðinni. - She slams the door.

Hardcore Icelandic
/Completing an individual tax return
/Hún skellir hurðinni.

Hún skellir hurðinni.

Word

Hún skellir hurðinni.

Meaning

She slams the door.

Part of speech

sentence

Pronunciation

Course

Hardcore Icelandic

Lesson

Completing an individual tax return

Breakdown of Hún skellir hurðinni.

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Questions & Answers about Hún skellir hurðinni.

What form is skellir, and what is its dictionary form?

Skellir is the 3rd person singular present tense form of the verb að skella.

So:

að skella = the dictionary form, to slam / bang shut
hún skellir = she slams

A useful pattern to notice is that many Icelandic verbs have these present-tense singular endings:

ég skelli
þú skellir
hún/hann/það skellir

So the -ir ending here matches hún because the subject is 3rd person singular.

Why is hurðinni in the dative case?

Because in this meaning, að skella commonly takes a dative object in Icelandic.

That is something learners often just have to memorize with the verb:

skella e-u = slam something
where e-u stands for a noun in the dative

So:

hurð = door
hurðinni = the door in the dative singular

An English speaker may expect an accusative-style direct object, but Icelandic verbs often govern a specific case, and it is not always the one English would suggest.

What exactly does the ending mean in ?

-inni

hurðinni

Here -inni shows that the noun is:

singular
definite = the
dative
feminine

So hurðinni means roughly the door, but specifically in the form required by the verb.

For this noun:

hurð = a door
hurðin = the door, nominative
hurðina = the door, accusative
hurðinni = the door, dative

So the ending is doing a lot of grammatical work at once.

Why isn’t there a separate word for the?

Because Icelandic usually puts the definite article onto the end of the noun instead of using a separate word like English the.

So:

hurð = door
hurðin / hurðina / hurðinni = the door, with different case forms

Icelandic does have separate article forms such as hinn / hin / hið, but in an ordinary sentence like this, the normal pattern is the suffixed article attached to the noun.

Why is the subject hún?

Hún is the nominative singular feminine pronoun, so it is the subject form meaning she.

It is used because the sentence has a feminine subject.

Also, in Icelandic, pronouns can refer not only to people but also to nouns with grammatical gender. So in context, hún could sometimes refer back to a feminine noun, where English might say it. But by itself, most learners will naturally read hún as she.

Is skella stronger than just saying close?

Yes. Skella is stronger and more vivid than a neutral verb like loka.

Compare:

loka hurðinni = close the door
skella hurðinni = slam the door

So skella usually suggests:

force
abrupt movement
often noise
sometimes emotion, such as anger or impatience

Is the word order here just normal subject–verb–object?

Yes. Hún skellir hurðinni is a normal, straightforward subject–verb–object sentence:

Hún = subject
skellir = verb
hurðinni = object

But Icelandic also follows the verb-second pattern in main clauses. That means if you move another element to the front, the finite verb still stays in second position:

Nú skellir hún hurðinni. = Now she slams the door.

So the sentence you have is the most neutral order, but not the only possible one.

Does the present tense here mean it is happening right now?

Not necessarily. The Icelandic present tense can be used for:

something happening now
something habitual
a vivid description in a story

So Hún skellir hurðinni could mean:

she is slamming the door
she slams the door
she habitually slams the door

The exact meaning depends on context.

What is the dictionary form of hurðinni?

The dictionary form is hurð.

That is the basic noun form you would look up. It is a feminine noun meaning door.

In this sentence, it appears as hurðinni because it has been changed to match:

the required case: dative
the number: singular
the definiteness: the

So when looking vocabulary up, always strip a form like hurðinni back to its base form: hurð.

What does the accent in hún mean?

The accent in ú is not just a spelling decoration. It shows a different vowel sound from plain u.

So hún is pronounced with ú, and the accent matters for both spelling and pronunciation.

A useful general point:

Icelandic accents usually mark vowel quality/length
they do not mainly mark stress the way learners sometimes expect

So hún must be learned as its own form, not as just hun with extra emphasis.

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