Breakdown of Ég þarf að sofa lengur í kvöld.
Questions & Answers about Ég þarf að sofa lengur í kvöld.
Roughly word-for-word:
- Ég – I (subject pronoun, nominative case)
- þarf – need / have to (1st person singular present of að þurfa)
- að – to (marks the infinitive verb sofa)
- sofa – sleep (infinitive form, to sleep)
- lengur – longer (comparative of lengi “for a long time” → lengur “for longer”)
- í kvöld – this evening / tonight (literally “in the evening” with the meaning “this coming evening / tonight” in context)
Þarf is the correctly conjugated present-tense form of the verb að þurfa (to need) for ég (I).
- Infinitive: að þurfa – to need
- 1st person singular present: ég þarf – I need
- 2nd person singular: þú þarft
- 3rd person singular: hann/hún/það þarf
- Plural: við þurfum, þið þurfið, þeir/þær/þau þurfa
Icelandic main (finite) verbs are normally in second position in a clause, so the order is:
- Ég þarf ... not Ég að þarf ... and not just Ég þurfa ...
Að here is the infinitive marker, like to in English.
- sofa is the bare infinitive: sleep
- að sofa is to sleep
After þarf (need), you typically use another verb in the infinitive, often with að:
- Ég þarf að sofa. – I need to sleep.
- Ég þarf að fara. – I need to go.
So the pattern is: [subject] + [conjugated þurfa] + að + [infinitive].
In modern standard Icelandic, with að þurfa, að is normally included before the infinitive, so:
- Ég þarf að sofa lengur í kvöld is the natural, standard form.
- Ég þarf sofa lengur í kvöld sounds non-standard / wrong to most speakers.
There are some verbs (like munu, skulu, vilja, mega, geta, kunna) that typically do not take að before the next verb:
- Ég vil sofa. – I want to sleep.
- Ég get sofið. – I can sleep.
But þurfa usually does take að in this construction: þarf að sofa.
Both relate to duration, but they’re different forms:
- lengi – “for a long time” (positive degree)
- Ég sef lengi. – I sleep for a long time.
- lengur – “for longer” / “any longer” (comparative of lengi)
- Ég þarf að sofa lengur. – I need to sleep longer.
So in this sentence, lengur specifically implies longer than usual or more time than before, not just “for a long time” in isolation.
By default, að sofa lengur means sleep for a longer time (longer duration), not “go to bed later”.
- It suggests: compared with normal, your total sleep time tonight should be longer.
- If you wanted to say “I have to go to bed later this evening”, you’d say something like:
- Ég þarf að fara seinna að sofa í kvöld. – literally “I have to go later to sleep this evening.”
So understand lengur here as for longer, not later in the day.
You can say Ég þarf að sofa meira í kvöld, and it’s perfectly natural, but there’s a small nuance:
- sofa lengur – sleep longer (in time)
Focus on the duration of sleep. - sofa meira – sleep more
Slightly broader; can also mean more sleep than usual, which often amounts to longer duration, but it’s a bit less specific.
In practice, in this context, both often end up meaning almost the same thing and both are acceptable.
Icelandic is a verb-second (V2) language in main clauses:
- The finite verb (here þarf) must come in second position in the clause.
- The first position is usually occupied by one element: a subject, an adverb, or a whole phrase.
So:
- Ég (subject) – first position
- þarf (finite verb) – second position
- The rest (að sofa lengur í kvöld) – follows.
Other possible, still grammatical word orders (with different emphasis) keep the verb second:
- Í kvöld þarf ég að sofa lengur. (emphasis on “this evening”)
- Lengur þarf ég að sofa í kvöld. (emphasis on “longer”)
But forms like Ég að þarf ... or Ég sofa þarf ... break the V2 rule and are ungrammatical.
Ég is the nominative (subject) form of the 1st person singular pronoun:
- Ég – I (subject form)
- Mig – me (object form/accusative)
In this sentence, I am the one doing the needing, so I is the subject:
- Ég þarf ... – I need ...
You’d use mig when it’s an object, e.g.:
- Þú þarft mig. – You need me.
Icelandic often uses the present tense with a future meaning when there’s a clear time expression:
- Ég þarf að sofa lengur í kvöld. – literally I need to sleep longer this evening, but naturally interpreted as I will need to sleep longer this evening / tonight.
- The time adverbial í kvöld signals that this need concerns the near future.
So this is like English sentences such as:
- “I’m flying tomorrow.”
- “I leave next week.”
Present tense + a future time expression = a common way to talk about the future in Icelandic.
- í kvöld – this evening / tonight (usually the coming evening), similar to German heute Abend.
- Used for the specific evening we’re talking about (usually today’s).
- í nótt – tonight / last night, depending on context, but refers to the night (the sleeping hours, after midnight-ish).
- á kvöldin – in the evenings (habitual / regularly in the evenings).
- Ég sef mikið á kvöldin. – I sleep a lot in the evenings.
In your sentence, í kvöld anchors the need to this specific upcoming evening.
Approximate pronunciations (Icelandic has sounds not found in English, so these are only rough):
- Ég – often like yeh or yeɣ
- The é is like “ye” in yes; the final sound can be a soft voiced velar fricative.
- þarf – roughly tharf
- þ as in English thin.
- Short a as in father but shorter.
- rf often pronounced with a kind of “rb” or rolled tendency, varying by dialect.
- sofa – SOH-va
- Stress on the first syllable.
- o mildly like the o in go (but shorter and more closed).
- kvöld – roughly kveldt
- kv similar to kv in kvetch.
- ö is like German ö (between e and u, similar to British English bird but with rounded lips).
- Final ld sometimes realized closer to llt (depends on speaker).
Listening to native audio is important, because Icelandic spelling doesn’t map 1:1 to English sound expectations.
Yes. It’s a natural, everyday sentence that a native speaker might easily say, for example:
- After a very short night of sleep the day before.
- When planning their evening and realizing they need more rest.
It’s neither formal nor slangy—just neutral, standard Icelandic.