Questions & Answers about Vinátta hjálpar mér að slaka á.
Word by word, it is roughly:
- vinátta – friendship (a noun, abstract concept)
- hjálpar – helps (3rd person singular, present tense of hjálpa “to help”)
- mér – me (in the dative case)
- að – to (infinitive marker before a verb)
- slaka á – relax (literally “slacken on”, but together it means “to relax”)
Icelandic usually does not use an article (a/the) for general statements or abstract concepts.
- Vinátta hjálpar mér að slaka á.
→ “Friendship helps me relax.” (friendship in general)
If you wanted to say “the friendship” (a specific friendship), you would use the definite form:
- Vináttan hjálpar mér að slaka á.
→ “The friendship helps me relax.”
There is no separate word for a or an in Icelandic; indefiniteness is expressed by using the bare noun (here: vinátta).
Vinátta is:
- Gender: feminine
- Case in this sentence: nominative singular (it’s the subject of the sentence)
Some basic forms:
- Nominative: vinátta – “friendship”
- Accusative: vináttu
- Dative: vináttu
- Genitive: vináttu
Definite forms:
- Nominative definite: vináttan – “the friendship”
- Accusative definite: vináttuna
- Dative definite: vináttunni
- Genitive definite: vináttunnar
Hjálpa is the infinitive (“to help”).
In the sentence, you need the 3rd person singular present tense, because the subject (vinátta) is singular:
- Ég hjálpa – I help
- Þú hjálpar – You (sg.) help
- Hann / hún / það hjálpar – He / she / it helps
- Við hjálpum – We help
- Þið hjálpið – You (pl.) help
- Þeir / þær / þau hjálpa – They help
So with vinátta (“friendship”) as the subject:
- Vinátta hjálpar… – “Friendship helps…”
Mér is the dative form of the pronoun ég (“I”).
The four main forms of “I” are:
- Nominative: ég – I (subject)
- Accusative: mig – me (direct object)
- Dative: mér – me (indirect object, after certain verbs)
- Genitive: mín – my / of me
The verb hjálpa (“to help”) always takes the dative case for the person being helped. So you must say:
- Hún hjálpar mér. – She helps me.
- Vinátta hjálpar mér. – Friendship helps me.
You cannot say hjálpar mig; that is ungrammatical.
Yes. In this context:
- að before a verb is the infinitive marker, very similar to English “to” before a verb.
So:
- slaka á – “(to) relax” (verb phrase)
- að slaka á – “to relax”
The structure hjálpa + dative + að + infinitive is very common:
- Hún hjálpar mér að læra. – She helps me (to) learn.
- Þetta hjálpar þér að sofa. – This helps you (to) sleep.
- Vinátta hjálpar mér að slaka á. – Friendship helps me (to) relax.
You generally cannot drop á here.
- slaka á is a fixed verb phrase meaning “to relax, to unwind”.
- Literally, slaka means “to slacken / loosen”, and á means “on”, but together they function like a single verb: slaka á = relax.
Examples:
- Ég slaka á eftir vinnu. – I relax after work.
- Geturðu slakað aðeins á? – Can you relax a bit?
If you say just slaka by itself, it usually sounds incomplete or means something more like “slacken/loosen (something)” and would normally need an object.
In að slaka á, slaka is in the infinitive (“to relax”).
To say “I relax” as a standalone sentence, you conjugate the verb in the present tense and still keep á:
- Ég slaka á. – I relax.
- Þú slakar á. – You (sg.) relax.
- Hann / hún / það slakar á. – He / she / it relaxes.
- Við slökum á. – We relax.
- Þið slakið á. – You (pl.) relax.
- Þeir / þær / þau slaka á. – They relax.
Exactly. Icelandic uses cases instead of extra prepositions in many places.
In English you say:
- “helps me” (no preposition, but English doesn’t mark case clearly on nouns)
- “gives to me”
In Icelandic, the verb itself decides which case to use. Hjálpa requires the dative, so you use mér and no extra preposition:
- Vinátta hjálpar mér. – Friendship helps me.
- Hjálpaðu mér! – Help me!
There is no need (and no room) for an extra “to” in Icelandic here; the dative ending is what carries that function.
No, that kind of reordering would be incorrect or at least very unnatural.
The normal, neutral word order in Icelandic main clauses is:
- Subject – Verb – (Objects / Complements / Adverbials)
In this sentence:
- Vinátta (subject)
- hjálpar (verb)
- mér að slaka á (what it helps with / who is helped to do what)
So:
- Vinátta hjálpar mér að slaka á. – correct and natural
Moving að slaka á in front of hjálpar or splitting it from mér in that way doesn’t work here. You can put an adverb somewhere (e.g. Vinátta oft hjálpar mér að slaka á – “Friendship often helps me relax”), but the basic S–V order is kept.
You just put hjálpa into the past tense. The verb is weak, so the past 3rd person singular is hjálpaði:
- Present: Vinátta hjálpar mér að slaka á.
– Friendship helps me relax. - Past: Vinátta hjálpaði mér að slaka á.
– Friendship helped me relax.
Keep vinátta hjálpar and change the dative pronoun:
- Vinátta hjálpar mér að slaka á. – Friendship helps me relax.
- Vinátta hjálpar þér að slaka á. – Friendship helps you (sg.) relax.
- Vinátta hjálpar honum að slaka á. – Friendship helps him relax.
- Vinátta hjálpar henni að slaka á. – Friendship helps her relax.
- Vinátta hjálpar okkur að slaka á. – Friendship helps us relax.
- Vinátta hjálpar ykkur að slaka á. – Friendship helps you (pl.) relax.
- Vinátta hjálpar þeim að slaka á. – Friendship helps them relax.
All of these pronouns are in the dative case, because of the verb hjálpa.
A fairly close phonetic approximation (in broad IPA) is:
- [ˈvɪː.naʊht.a ˈçaul.par mjɛr aːð ˈslaka au]
Some key points for an English speaker:
- v in vinátta is like English v.
- í / i here is a short [ɪ], like in bit.
- á is a diphthong, roughly like ow in now.
- tt in vinátta is pronounced more like ht.
- hj in hjálpar is like a “soft h” before y: a voiceless palatal fricative [ç], a bit like the h in German ich.
- mér sounds like myair but shorter and tenser: [mjɛr].
- að is roughly [að] or [aːθ], with a soft ð (like th in this).
- slaka has a clear sl and k as in skylark.
- The final á in á is again like ow in now.