Questions & Answers about Við bíðum fyrir utan húsið.
What does við mean here, and can it ever be left out?
Við means we. It is the 1st person plural pronoun in the nominative case.
Unlike in some languages (e.g. Spanish), Icelandic usually does not drop the subject pronoun in normal sentences, so you normally keep við:
- Við bíðum fyrir utan húsið. – We are waiting outside the house.
Leaving it out (Bíðum fyrir utan húsið) would sound like an imperative (“Let’s wait outside the house”) or just incomplete in most contexts.
Why is the verb bíðum and not bíða?
Bíða is the infinitive (“to wait”).
Bíðum is the 1st person plural present tense form:
- ég bíð – I wait / I am waiting
- við bíðum – we wait / we are waiting
So við bíðum matches the subject við (“we”) in person and number. Icelandic always marks the verb to agree with the subject like this.
Does bíða take a special case, and is any object missing here?