Breakdown of Þau elska að ferðast saman og skoða ný lönd.
Questions & Answers about Þau elska að ferðast saman og skoða ný lönd.
Þau is a 3rd‑person plural pronoun meaning they.
Icelandic has three different words for they, depending on gender:
- þeir – they (a group of men / masculine)
- þær – they (a group of women / feminine)
- þau – they (a mixed group, or a group whose genders you don’t want to specify; also used with some neuter words like börn “children” or hjón “married couple”)
So in this sentence, Þau is a neutral way to say they, often understood as a couple or group of people of mixed or unspecified gender.
Þau is pronounced approximately like “thœy” in one syllable:
- Þ / þ is like the th in thing (unvoiced, [θ]).
- au is a diphthong, usually pronounced [œy] – it starts a bit like the vowel in British “bird” or French “œuf”, then glides towards y in “yes”.
Putting it together, it’s roughly [θœy].
The form of the verb must agree with the subject Þau (they, plural).
In the present tense, elska conjugates like this:
- ég elska – I love
- þú elskar – you (sg.) love
- hann / hún / það elskar – he / she / it loves
- við elskum – we love
- þið elskið – you (pl.) love
- þeir / þær / þau elska – they love
Since Þau is plural, you use the 3rd‑person plural form elska, not elskar.
Að here is the infinitive marker, similar to to in English “to travel”.
So að ferðast literally corresponds to to travel.
In constructions like elska að + verb, the finite verb (elska) is conjugated, and að + verb stays in the infinitive:
Þau elska að ferðast… – They love to travel…
Icelandic often behaves like English here. In English, you usually say “to travel and explore”, not “to travel and to explore”.
The same idea applies:
- Full form: elska að ferðast og (að) skoða ný lönd
- In normal speech/writing, the second að is simply omitted.
So að in að ferðast is understood to apply to both ferðast and skoða.
Ferðast means to travel in general, like moving around, going on trips, visiting places. It does not take a direct object; you don’t ferðast lönd, you just ferðast (possibly in or through places).
Compare:
- að ferðast – to travel (in general)
- að fara í ferðalag – to go on a trip/journey
- að heimsækja – to visit (a place/a person)
- að skoða – to look at / explore / examine (something)
In this sentence, ferðast describes the general travelling, and skoða ný lönd describes what they like to do while travelling.
Saman means together.
It’s an adverb, and here it modifies ferðast, so að ferðast saman = to travel together.
This placement is natural: að ferðast saman og skoða ný lönd.
You could move saman slightly (e.g. að ferðast og skoða saman ný lönd), but then it sounds more like they explore the new countries together, rather than travel together in general. The original word order is the clearest.
The adjective must agree with the noun in gender, number, case, and declension type.
Lönd is neuter plural, nominative/accusative, indefinite. The regular (strong) form of nýr (new) in that slot is ný:
- neuter plural, nom./acc., strong: ný lönd – new countries
Nýja lönd would be grammatically wrong in this context.
If you said nýju löndin, that would be the new countries (definite form, different pattern).
Land is the singular form: a country / land.
Lönd is the plural: countries / lands.
The word is irregular; the vowel changes (umlaut) in the plural:
- singular: land (nom./acc.)
- plural: lönd (nom./acc.)
So ný lönd means new countries (plural), not a new country.
Grammatically, ný lönd is in the accusative plural. It’s the direct object of the verb skoða (they explore new countries).
For neuter nouns like land, the nominative and accusative forms are identical in both singular and plural (land / lönd), so the form itself doesn’t show the case difference.
You know it’s accusative here because of its role: it’s what they skoða (look at / explore).