Ég sé að bíllinn er nýr.

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Breakdown of Ég sé að bíllinn er nýr.

• vera: to be
• bíllinn: the car
• sjá: to see
• nýr: new
• að: that

Questions & Answers about Ég sé að bíllinn er nýr.

Why is the present-tense form of sjá written as sé instead of something more intuitive like sý?

Because sjá is an irregular strong verb. Its first-person singular present indicative is ég sé. Although it looks like a subjunctive form, here it functions as the normal “I see.”

Why do we need the word að before “bíllinn er nýr”?

In Icelandic, subordinate clauses—especially after verbs of perception or thought—are introduced with að (equivalent to English “that”). So Ég sé að bíllinn er nýr literally means “I see that the car is new.”

Should there be a comma before að as in English?

No. Modern Icelandic generally does not use a comma before að when it introduces a subordinate clause. Commas are more sparingly applied than in English.

Why is bíllinn in the nominative case and why does it end in -inn?

Inside the clause bíllinn er nýr, bíllinn (“the car”) is the subject, so it takes the nominative. The suffix -inn is the definite article attached to the noun (Icelandic does not have a separate word “the”).

Why is the adjective nýr not inflected as nýjan or nýrri?

Because nýr is used predicatively (after vera “to be”). Predicate adjectives in Icelandic always use the strong declension. For a masculine nominative singular subject, that form is nýr. (If you used it attributively—“the new car”—you would say nýji bíllinn with the weak declension.)

Could I drop the að and use an infinitive construction instead?

Yes. With perception verbs you can use an object–infinitive pattern:
• Ég sé bílinn vera nýjan.
Here bílinn is accusative (it’s the object of sé), vera is the infinitive, and nýjan agrees in accusative masculine singular. This structure is correct but somewhat more formal or literary than the common að-clause.

Why do we still need the pronoun ég? Can’t we drop it like in Spanish?

Icelandic verbs have fewer distinct endings than Spanish or Italian, and many present-tense forms overlap for different persons. To avoid ambiguity, Icelanders almost always include subject pronouns. “Sé að bíllinn er nýr” without ég would be grammatically odd and hard to parse.