Learn Hardcore Icelandic: Stundum fara kærastar og kærustur saman í bíó á kvöldin. - Sometimes boyfriends and girlfriends go to the cinema together in the evenings.

If you start the sentence with the subject, you get:
Kærastar og kærustur fara stundum í bíó.
“Boyfriends and girlfriends sometimes go to the movies.”
If you move the adverb Stundum to the front, the verb has to come right after it:
Stundum fara kærastar og kærustur saman í bíó á kvöldin.

So Stundum is first, and fara must immediately follow it.

Why is the verb fara and not some other form like fer?

Fara is the 3rd person plural present tense form of the verb að fara (“to go”).

Present tense of að fara (to go):

ég fer – I go
þú ferð – you (sg.) go
hann / hún / það fer – he / she / it goes
við förum – we go
þið farið – you (pl.) go
þeir / þær / þau fara – they go

The subject here is kærastar og kærustur (“boyfriends and girlfriends”), which is plural, so the verb must also be plural: fara, not fer.

The basic structure is:
Stundum (adverb) fara (3rd pl. verb) kærastar og kærustur (plural subject) …

What are kærastar and kærustur, and what are their singular forms?

These are the plural forms of “boyfriend” and “girlfriend”:

kærastar = boyfriends
- singular: kærasti = boyfriend (masculine)
- plural nominative: kærastar
kærustur = girlfriends
- singular: kærasta = girlfriend (feminine)
- plural nominative: kærustur

A few points:

Both kærastar and kærustur are in the nominative plural, because they are the subject of the sentence.
The endings:
- -ar is a common masculine nominative plural ending.
- -ur is a common feminine nominative plural ending.
The feminine noun is a bit irregular: kærasta → kærustur (note the spelling change a → u), and this just has to be learned as the standard plural form for “girlfriends”.

So:
kærastar og kærustur = “(the) boyfriends and (the) girlfriends”.

Why mention both kærastar og kærustur instead of just one word for “couples”?

Using kærastar og kærustur literally says “boyfriends and girlfriends”, highlighting both sides of the couple.

You could talk about “couples” in other ways, for example:

pör fara saman í bíó á kvöldin.
“Couples go to the movies together in the evenings.”
kærustupör fara saman í bíó á kvöldin.
“(Romantic) couples go to the movies together in the evenings.”

But kærastar og kærustur emphasizes the two groups of people who are in relationships, not just the abstract idea of “pairs”.

Why is there no article like “the” or “a” before kærastar, kærustur, or bíó?

Icelandic does not use articles in the same way as English:

kærastar og kærustur
There’s no indefinite article in Icelandic (“a / an” don’t exist as separate words).
So kærastar og kærustur can mean:
- “boyfriends and girlfriends” (general)
- “the boyfriends and (the) girlfriends” (if the context makes them specific)
The sentence here is generic: talking about “boyfriends and girlfriends” as a group in general, so no extra article is used.
í bíó
bíó = cinema / movie theater.
að fara í bíó is an idiomatic phrase meaning “to go to the movies”.
You don’t normally say í bíóið (“into the cinema”) for this generic activity; that would sound like going into a particular building.

So the Icelandic article system is different:

No separate word for a / an.
The definite article is usually a suffix (e.g. bíóið, kærastarnir, kærusturnar) and is used only when a specific, already known thing is meant.

What does saman mean, and where can it go in the sentence?

Saman means “together”.

In this sentence:

Stundum fara kærastar og kærustur saman í bíó á kvöldin.
“Sometimes boyfriends and girlfriends go together to the movies in the evenings.”

Position:

saman usually comes close to the verb or directly after the subject/verb phrase:
- Þau fara saman í bíó. – They go together to the movies.
Here it comes right after the subject and before í bíó, which is very natural:
- … fara kærastar og kærustur saman í bíó …

You could also say:

Stundum fara kærastar og kærustur í bíó saman á kvöldin.

This is also understandable, but saman typically sounds more natural before the destination phrase (í bíó), not at the very end.

What does í bíó literally mean, and why is the preposition í used?

Literally, í bíó means “into cinema / in cinema”, but in practice the fixed phrase að fara í bíó means “to go to the movies” or “to go to a movie theater”.

í is the preposition “in / into”.
Here í takes the accusative case because it expresses movement towards something:
- í + accusative = into / to (direction)
- í + dative = in / inside (location)

In this sentence, we have í bíó (accusative), so it’s movement to the cinema, not “(already) in the cinema”.

Compare:

Við förum í bíó. – We are going to the movies.
Við erum í bíó. – We are (currently) at the movies / in the cinema.

What does á kvöldin mean, and why is kvöldin in that form?

Á kvöldin means “in the evenings” (habitually / generally).

Breakdown:

á – a preposition that often means “on” or “in/at” when talking about time.
kvöld – “evening” (neuter noun).
kvöldin – definite plural accusative form of “evening”: literally “the evenings”.

In time expressions, Icelandic often uses definite plural to mean “on Xs / in the Xs”:

á morgnana – in the mornings
á kvöldin – in the evenings
á sunnudögum – on Sundays

Here, á governs the accusative to express time, and kvöldin is definite plural accusative. Together they convey a repeated, habitual time:

“Sometimes boyfriends and girlfriends go to the movies together in the evenings (as a regular kind of thing).”

Why is the word order Stundum fara kærastar og kærustur… and not Stundum kærastar og kærustur fara…?

In Icelandic main clauses, the finite verb normally has to be in second position (V2 rule), regardless of what comes first.

Here:

Stundum (1st element)
fara (2nd element – the finite verb)
kærastar og kærustur (subject)
… rest of the sentence

If you were to say:

✗ Stundum kærastar og kærustur fara…

you would be putting the verb third, which sounds wrong in standard Icelandic word order.

If the subject comes first, the verb follows it:

Kærastar og kærustur fara stundum í bíó.

If an adverb like Stundum comes first, the verb must move in front of the subject:

Stundum fara kærastar og kærustur í bíó.

What tense/aspect is fara here? Does it mean “sometimes are going” or “sometimes go”?

Fara is present tense, but Icelandic present tense is aspect‑neutral in a way that covers both simple and progressive meanings in English.

So:

Stundum fara kærastar og kærustur saman í bíó á kvöldin.

can naturally be translated as:

“Sometimes boyfriends and girlfriends go to the movies together in the evenings.”

You normally wouldn’t say “are going” in English for a general habit, and in Icelandic there is no separate progressive form like “are going”; fara here simply expresses a repeated, habitual action.

How would you say the same idea in the singular, like “Sometimes a boyfriend and a girlfriend go to the movies together in the evenings”?

You could make it singular like this:

Stundum fer kærasti og kærasta saman í bíó á kvöldin.
“Sometimes a boyfriend and a girlfriend go to the movies together in the evenings.”

Notes:

fer is 3rd person singular (because “a boyfriend and a girlfriend” are treated as one combined subject pair here; some speakers might prefer plural, but singular is quite natural if you think of them as one “unit”).
The structure is otherwise the same:
- Stundum (sometimes)
- fer (goes)
- kærasti og kærasta (a boyfriend and [a] girlfriend)
- saman í bíó á kvöldin (together to the movies in the evenings).

If you want to avoid any ambiguity and clearly use plural agreement, you could also say:

Stundum fara kærasti og kærasta saman í bíó á kvöldin.

Some speakers will prefer this plural verb form because there are two people; both versions can occur in real usage, but learners are usually safer matching plural subject with plural verb.

How do you pronounce the Icelandic words in this sentence roughly using English sounds?

Very roughly (stressed syllable in bold):

Stundum – STUHN-dum
- stu like “stun” (but a bit closer to “stynd”)
- dum like “doom” but shorter
fara – FAH-ra
- fa like “far” without the r
- ra like “rah”
kærastar – KAI-ra-star
- kæ like English “kai” (as in “kai-“) or like “cat” but a bit more fronted
- rast like “rust” with an a‑sound
- ar like “ar” in “car” (shorter)
kærustur – KAI-ru-stur
- kæ as above
- ru like “roo” but shorter
- stur like “stur” in “stir”, but with a rolled or tapped r
saman – SAH-man
- sa like “sa” in “salsa”
- man like English “man” but shorter
í – like English “ee” in “see”
bíó – BEE-yo
- bí like “bee”
- ó like “oh”
á – like a long “ow” in “cow” but more pure (closer to “au” in German)
kvöldin – KVEL-thin
- kv like “kv” in “kvetch”
- öld a bit like “ehld” but with rounded lips
- in like “in” in “pin”

This is only approximate, but it should help you hear and say the sentence more confidently.