Questions & Answers about Við förum í brúðkaup á morgun.
Word by word:
- Við – we (subject pronoun, nominative plural)
- förum – go / are going (1st person plural present of fara “to go”)
- í – in / into / to (preposition; here it means “to”)
- brúðkaup – wedding (literally “bride-purchase”, now just “wedding”)
- á – on / at (preposition; here used in a time expression)
- morgun – morning (but á morgun together = “tomorrow”)
So literally: We go to wedding tomorrow.
Icelandic (like English) often uses the present tense to express future plans, especially when something is arranged or clearly expected:
- Við förum í brúðkaup á morgun.
= We’re going to a wedding tomorrow. / We go to a wedding tomorrow.
This is completely natural and usually preferred in everyday speech.
You can also say:
- Við munum fara í brúðkaup á morgun.
(literally “We will go to a wedding tomorrow.”)
Using munum fara is a bit more formal or neutral; förum is very natural for a planned event.
Við förum í brúðkaup á morgun.
– “We’re going to a wedding tomorrow.” (a plan / scheduled event)Við erum að fara í brúðkaup.
– literally “We are to go to a wedding,” but in practice usually means
“We’re (just) about to go to a wedding / we’re in the process of going.”
erum að + infinitive is more about an action happening now or about to happen, like English “be going to / be doing”, while the simple present (förum) with a time expression often covers the future.
The infinitive is fara – “to go”.
Present tense (indicative):
- ég fer – I go
- þú ferð – you go (singular)
- hann / hún / það fer – he / she / it goes
- við förum – we go
- þið farið – you go (plural)
- þeir / þær / þau fara – they go
Past tense:
- ég fór – I went
- þú fórst – you went
- hann / hún / það fór – he / she / it went
- við fórum – we went
- þið fóruð – you (pl.) went
- þeir / þær / þau fóru – they went
So in your sentence, förum is 1st person plural present.
The preposition í can take either:
- accusative – when there is movement/direction into something
- dative – when there is location (being in/on something)
Here we have movement to a wedding, so í takes the accusative:
- Við förum í brúðkaup. – We go to a wedding. (motion → accusative)
The noun brúðkaup has the same form in nominative and accusative singular (brúðkaup), so you don’t see a spelling difference, but grammatically it is accusative.
Compare:
- Ég var í brúðkaupi í gær. – I was at a wedding yesterday.
(no movement → dative brúðkaupi)
Brúðkaup is a neuter noun.
It declines like this (singular):
- Nominative: brúðkaup – a wedding (subject)
- Accusative: brúðkaup – (go to) a wedding
- Dative: brúðkaupi – (at) a wedding
- Genitive: brúðkaups – (of) a wedding
Plural:
- Nominative: brúðkaup – weddings
- Accusative: brúðkaup – (to) weddings
- Dative: brúðkaupum – (at) weddings
- Genitive: brúðkaupa – (of) weddings
In your sentence, it’s accusative singular, but the form is identical to nominative.
Icelandic does not have an indefinite article (“a”) and uses a suffix for the definite article (“the”).
- brúðkaup – wedding / a wedding (indefinite, no article)
- brúðkaupið – the wedding (definite)
So:
- Við förum í brúðkaup á morgun.
– We’re going to a wedding tomorrow. (some wedding, not specified)
If you mean a particular, known wedding, you’d say:
- Við förum í brúðkaupið á morgun.
– We’re going to the wedding tomorrow.
English forces you to choose “a” vs “the”; Icelandic only marks definite (“the”), and simply omits “a”.
Á morgun is a fixed time expression meaning tomorrow.
Literally it’s “on (the) morning”, but idiomatically it has become “tomorrow”.
- á
- accusative (morgun) is very common in time expressions:
- á föstudag – on Friday
- á mánudag – on Monday
- accusative (morgun) is very common in time expressions:
Morgun is masculine:
- Nominative: morgunn – (the) morning (as subject)
- Accusative: morgun – used after á here
Í morgun is also a phrase, but it means this morning (earlier today), not tomorrow:
- Ég fór í vinnuna í morgun. – I went to work this morning.
Yes. Icelandic allows some flexibility in word order, but the finite verb must be in second position in a main clause (V2 rule).
Both of these are correct:
- Við förum í brúðkaup á morgun.
- Á morgun förum við í brúðkaup.
The second one puts “Á morgun” first for emphasis (“Tomorrow, we’re going to a wedding”), but förum still stays in second position.
You attach the definite article as a suffix to brúðkaup:
- Við förum í brúðkaupið á morgun.
– We’re going to the wedding tomorrow.
Breakdown:
- brúðkaup – wedding
- -ið – neuter singular definite ending → brúðkaupið = “the wedding” (accusative)
Everything else stays the same.
In á morgun, the noun morgun is in the accusative singular, governed by á in a time expression.
Declension of morgunn (masculine):
- Nominative: morgunn – (the) morning (subject)
- Accusative: morgun – (on) the morning
- Dative: morgni – (in) the morning
- Genitive: morguns – (of) the morning
So the form you see in the sentence, morgun, is the accusative.
Very rough English-style approximation (stressed syllables in CAPS):
- Við – like “VITH” (ð = soft “th” as in “this”)
- förum – roughly “FUR-um” (ö like British “ur” in “fur”)
- í – like long “EE”
- brúðkaup – “BROOTH-koip”
- brúð – “brooth” (ð = soft “th”)
- kaup – somewhere between “koip” and “kœyp”
- á – like “OW” in “cow”
- morgun – roughly “MOR-gun” (r rolled, g very light)
Stress is always on the first syllable of each word.
Yes, that is correct:
- Við munum fara í brúðkaup á morgun.
– We will go to a wedding tomorrow.
Difference in nuance:
Við förum í brúðkaup á morgun.
– Everyday, natural way to state a plan (“We’re going to a wedding tomorrow.”)Við munum fara í brúðkaup á morgun.
– Slightly more formal / explicit future, closer to English “we will go”.
In most casual contexts, Icelanders would use the simple present (förum) with the time expression.