Learn Hardcore Icelandic: Rigning er oft falleg í skóginum. - Rain is often beautiful in the forest.

Rigning er oft falleg = Rain is often beautiful (rain in general)
If you said Rigningin er oft falleg, it would sound more like The rain is often beautiful (a bit more specific, e.g. the rain here, or some particular rain you know about).

So rigning without an article is the normal way to make a general statement like in the example sentence.

Why is the adjective falleg and not fallega?

Falleg is an adjective. It describes a noun, here rigning (rain).

Rigning er falleg = Rain is beautiful
– falleg agrees with rigning (feminine singular nominative).

Fallega would normally be an adverb, meaning something like beautifully, used to describe a verb:

Hún syngur fallega = She sings beautifully.

In Rigning er oft falleg í skóginum, you are saying what rain is (a quality of the noun), not how something is done, so you need the adjective falleg, not the adverb fallega.

How do I know that rigning is feminine, and why does falleg look feminine?

Every Icelandic noun has a grammatical gender: masculine, feminine, or neuter.

The noun rigning (rain) is feminine. You find this in dictionaries: it will be listed as rigning (kvk.), where kvk. = kvenkyn (feminine gender).

Adjectives in Icelandic must agree with the noun they describe in:

gender (here: feminine),
number (here: singular),
case (here: nominative).

So:

Feminine nominative singular form of the adjective is falleg.
If the noun were masculine or neuter, the form would change, e.g.:
- bærinn er fallegur = the town is beautiful (masculine)
- húsið er fallegt = the house is beautiful (neuter)

Here, because rigning is feminine, the correct form is falleg.

What does the ending -inum in skóginum mean?

The ending -inum on skóginum tells you two things at once:

Definiteness – it contains the meaning of the
- skógur = forest (indefinite)
- skógurinn (nominative) / skóginum (dative) = the forest
Case and gender – here it’s:
- masculine,
- singular,
- dative case.

So skóginum literally encodes in the forest:

í = in
skóg- = forest
-inum = dative singular the (for a masculine noun)

Icelandic usually attaches the definite article as a suffix to the noun rather than using a separate word like English the.

Why does í skóginum use the dative case?

The preposition í (in, into) can take either:

dative for location (where something is), or
accusative for movement into (where something is going).

In this sentence, the meaning is in the forest (a place where the rain is beautiful), not into the forest, so í takes the dative:

í skóginum (dative) = in the forest (location)
í skóginn (accusative) = into the forest (movement, going into the forest)

Because we’re talking about rain being beautiful in that place, we use the dative: skóginum.

Can I change the word order, for example Rigning er falleg oft í skóginum or Oft er rigning falleg í skóginum?

Word order in Icelandic is more flexible than in English, but not every order sounds natural.

Rigning er oft falleg í skóginum.
This is the most natural word order: verb (er) first, then adverb (oft), then adjective phrase (falleg í skóginum).
Oft er rigning falleg í skóginum.
This is also correct and natural. Starting with oft puts emphasis on often (something like Often, rain is beautiful in the forest).
Rigning er falleg oft í skóginum.
This is not natural. Frequency adverbs like oft normally come right after the verb (er) or at the very beginning of the sentence, not between the adjective and the rest of the phrase.

So you can move oft to the front for emphasis, but placing it after falleg sounds wrong.

Why do we use er and not something like það er or er það?

In English, you often need a dummy subject like it in It is raining or It is often beautiful. Icelandic does this too sometimes with það, but not in this type of sentence.

Here, rigning is the real subject:

Rigning er oft falleg = Rain is often beautiful.

If you said Það er oft falleg rigning í skóginum, that would mean:

There is often beautiful rain in the forest (new information appearing, existential construction).

But in the original sentence, the focus is on rain as a general subject, so you simply say:

Rigning er oft falleg í skóginum
(no það, because the sentence already has a clear noun subject).

Can I say Rigningin er oft falleg í skóginum? What is the difference?

You can say Rigningin er oft falleg í skóginum, and it is grammatically correct.

The nuance is:

Rigning er oft falleg í skóginum.
General statement about rain; Rain (as a phenomenon) is often beautiful in the forest.
Rigningin er oft falleg í skóginum.
More specific: The rain is often beautiful in the forest.
This can sound a bit more like you’re talking about the rain in a particular place or situation that both speakers know about (for example, the weather in a certain region).

So the version without the article feels more generic; the version with rigningin feels more specific.

Is oft used like English often, and why is it placed after er?

Yes, oft is very close in meaning to English often: it expresses frequency.

Typical position in a simple sentence is:

subject – verb – oft – rest of the predicate

So:

Rigning er oft falleg í skóginum.
subject (Rigning) – verb (er) – adverb (oft).

Other common placements:

Oft er rigning falleg í skóginum. (adverb moved to the front for emphasis)
You generally don’t put oft at the very end in this type of sentence.

So oft behaves much like often, but its default place is right after the finite verb (er) in neutral word order.

How do you pronounce rigning and skóginum?

Approximate standard pronunciations:

rigning
IPA: [ˈrɪkniŋk] (roughly)
- r: trilled or tapped.
- i: like i in bit.
- gn: often pronounced [kn].
- Final -ng: like the ng in sing, but often with a little [k]-sound after it in this word.
Very roughly: RICK-ningk.
skóginum
IPA: [ˈskouːjɪnʏm] (varies slightly by speaker)
- sk: as in skate.
- ó: like a long o in go.
- gi: often becomes a y-like sound [j].
- u (in -um) is a short, rounded sound, somewhat like the u in French tu or very short oo.
Very roughly: SKO-yih-num.

These are only approximations; Icelandic vowel quality and the gi → j type changes take some getting used to.