Enginn er reiður í dag.

to be

Breakdown of Enginn er reiður í dag.

• reiður: angry
• í: to
• dagur: the day
• enginn: no one

Questions & Answers about Enginn er reiður í dag.

What does enginn mean and how is it different from ekkert?

enginn is an indefinite pronoun meaning no one, referring to people. It declines like an adjective:

• masculine nominative enginn
• feminine nominative engin
• neuter nominative ekkert

By contrast, ekkert on its own means nothing, referring to things or abstract concepts. You cannot swap them: use enginn when you mean “nobody” (a person), and ekkert when you mean “nothing” (a thing).

Why does reiður end with -ur?

Adjectives in Icelandic agree with their noun in gender, number and case. Here, reiður is modifying the subject enginn, which is masculine singular nominative. The base form of the adjective is reiður, and its masculine nominative singular form also ends in -ur.

Why is the adjective reiður placed after the verb er, rather than before the noun?

This is a predicative use of the adjective (it describes a state, linked by the verb “to be”). Predicative adjectives in Icelandic always follow verbs like vera. Attributive adjectives (when placed directly next to a noun) normally precede the noun and take different endings (for example, reiður maður “an angry man”).

Why is the verb er used here instead of eru?

vera (“to be”) is irregular and conjugates differently by person and number:

• ég er (I am)
• þú ert (you are)
• hann/hún/það er (he/she/it is)
• við erum (we are)
• þið eruð (you pl. are)
• þeir/þær/þau eru (they are)

Since enginn is treated as 3rd person singular, we use er, the singular form.

Why do we say í dag for “today” and not á dag or í degi?

í dag is the fixed, idiomatic way to say “today.” Although dagur is a noun, temporal expressions with í often use the accusative case (here dag). Saying á dag would mean “during the day,” and í degi is ungrammatical. Similar idioms: í gær (“yesterday”), á morgun (“tomorrow”) – each time expression is its own set phrase.

Can we move í dag to the front and say Í dag er enginn reiður?

Yes. Icelandic allows you to place time or place adverbials at the beginning for emphasis or style. Í dag er enginn reiður carries the same meaning, “Today no one is angry.”

Why don’t we add ekki for negation, as in Enginn er ekki reiður í dag?

That would be a double negative, which in Icelandic (as in English) either cancels out or reverses the meaning. enginn already expresses “no one.” Adding ekki (“not”) would literally give “No one is not angry,” implying everyone is angry. To express “nobody is angry,” you use enginn er reiður, without ekki.