Questions & Answers about Frændinn kemur í kvöld.
Frændinn means “the male relative”, but in modern everyday Icelandic it usually covers:
- uncle (especially on the father’s side, but can be either)
- male cousin (often first cousin, but can be more general)
Context normally tells you whether it’s an uncle or a cousin. For a woman, the word is frænka (“aunt / female cousin”).
So Frændinn kemur í kvöld can be understood as:
- “The uncle is coming this evening.” or
- “The (male) cousin is coming this evening.”
Icelandic uses a suffixed definite article. Instead of saying a separate word like English “the”, Icelandic usually attaches it to the end of the noun:
- frændi = a (male) relative / uncle / cousin
- frændinn = the (male) relative / the uncle / the cousin
The ending -inn here is the masculine singular definite article in the nominative case.
So structurally:
- frændi (stem) + -inn (definite article) → frændinn
In Frændinn kemur í kvöld:
- Gender: masculine
- Number: singular
- Case: nominative (subject case)
- Definiteness: definite (because of -inn)
So frændinn = “the (male) relative” as the subject of the verb kemur (“comes”).
Icelandic often uses the present tense to talk about near future events, especially planned or scheduled ones.
- kemur is the 3rd person singular present of að koma (“to come”).
- Literally: “The uncle comes this evening.”
- Natural English: “The uncle is coming this evening.” or “The uncle will come this evening.”
This is similar to English sentences like “He comes tomorrow” in some contexts, but in Icelandic this use is more common and natural. There is no separate future tense; present tense + time expression usually does the job.
The infinitive is að koma = “to come”. The verb is irregular.
Some key forms:
- Infinitive: að koma – to come
- 1st person singular pres.: ég kem – I come
- 2nd person singular pres.: þú kemur – you (sg.) come
- 3rd person singular pres.: hann / hún / það kemur – he / she / it comes
- 1st person plural pres.: við komum – we come
- 3rd person plural pres.: þeir / þær / þau koma – they come
In our sentence, kemur is 3rd person singular: “(He) comes / is coming.”
Literally, í kvöld means “in (the) evening” or more idiomatically “this evening / tonight”.
- í = “in” (also used for time expressions, not just locations)
- kvöld = evening
As a time expression, í kvöld is a fixed phrase meaning “this evening” / “tonight” (later the same day). You use í for many time phrases:
- í gær – yesterday
- í dag – today
- í fyrramálið – tomorrow morning
So Frændinn kemur í kvöld = “The uncle/cousin is coming this evening.”
In this idiomatic time expression, kvöld appears in its bare form, without article:
- kvöld (indefinite) = evening
- kvöldið (definite) = the evening
But as a time adverbial, Icelandic often drops the article and just uses the bare noun with a preposition:
- í kvöld – this evening / tonight
- í morgun – this morning
- í sumar – this summer
So í kvöld is the natural, set expression; í kvöldið would sound odd here in modern usage.
Yes, you can say:
- Frændinn kemur í kvöld.
- Í kvöld kemur frændinn.
Both mean roughly “The uncle/cousin is coming this evening.”
The difference is emphasis / focus:
- Frændinn kemur í kvöld: neutral; focus naturally starts with frændinn (who is coming).
- Í kvöld kemur frændinn: emphasizes the time (“as for this evening, it’s the uncle who’s coming”).
The second order is perfectly correct and quite natural, especially if you are contrasting with another time, or answering a question like “When is he coming?”
To make it indefinite, you remove the definite ending -inn:
- Frændi kemur í kvöld.
– “An uncle / a (male) cousin is coming this evening.”
So:
- frændi = a (male) relative, uncle / cousin
- frændinn = the uncle / the cousin
Possessive pronouns normally go after the noun in Icelandic:
- frændi minn – my uncle / my (male) cousin
- frændur mínir – my uncles / my male cousins
So:
- Frændi minn kemur í kvöld.
– My uncle (or male cousin) is coming this evening.
You usually don’t combine a possessive like minn with the suffixed article, so you wouldn’t say *frændinn minn here in standard usage.
You add ekki (“not”) after the verb:
- Frændinn kemur ekki í kvöld.
– The uncle/cousin is not coming this evening.
Basic pattern:
Subject – verb – ekki – (rest of sentence)
Examples:
- Hann kemur ekki. – He is not coming.
- Við komum ekki í kvöld. – We are not coming this evening.
Approximate pronunciation (not strict IPA, just helpful for English ears):
Frændinn ≈ FRAI-n-din
- æ like English eye
- nn is a clear n sound (roughly “nin” at the end)
kemur ≈ KEH-mur
- e like in bed, but a bit tenser
- final -ur like oor in some accents, but very short and unstressed
- í ≈ ee as in see
- kvöld ≈ kvelth (short e, and the final -ld cluster may sound almost like a soft lth to English ears)
So very roughly: “FRAI-n-din KEH-mur ee KVELTH.”
Traditionally, frændi could mean many kinds of male relatives, including nephews, but in modern everyday language:
- nephew is usually frændi only in a broad, informal “male relative” sense, or more specifically:
- bróðursonur – brother’s son
- systursonur – sister’s son
Strictly speaking, if you want to be clear and modern, you don’t rely on frændi alone for “nephew”; you’d use bróðursonur or systursonur.
So in most practical learning contexts, take frændinn as “the uncle” or “the (male) cousin.”