Breakdown of Brúðkaupsdagurinn er sérstakur dagur.
vera
to be
dagur
the day
sérstakur
special
brúðkaupsdagurinn
the wedding day
Questions & Answers about Brúðkaupsdagurinn er sérstakur dagur.
How is the word brúðkaupsdagurinn built up? It looks like several words stuck together.
Brúðkaupsdagurinn is a compound word made from several parts:
- brúðkaup – a neuter noun meaning wedding
- brúðkaups – the genitive singular of brúðkaup, meaning of a wedding
- dagur – a masculine noun meaning day
- dagurinn – dagur
- the definite ending -inn, meaning the day
- brúðkaupsdagur – wedding-day, literally day of a wedding
- brúðkaupsdagurinn – the wedding day
So brúðkaupsdagurinn literally means the day of a wedding, i.e. the wedding day. The -s is a genitive marker (“of”), and -inn is the attached definite article (“the”) for masculine nouns like dagur.
Why is there no separate word for “the” or “a” in this sentence?
Icelandic handles articles differently from English:
Definite article “the”
- Instead of a separate word, Icelandic usually attaches the definite article to the end of the noun.
- Here, dagur
- -inn → dagurinn = , so = .