Questions & Answers about Ég borða lítið í kvöld.
Icelandic very often uses the present tense to talk about the near future, especially when the time is clearly stated, like í kvöld (this evening / tonight).
So:
- Ég borða lítið í kvöld. = I will eat little tonight / I’m eating little tonight.
- Literally it’s “I eat little tonight”, but with í kvöld it’s naturally understood as future.
There is a future auxiliary (mun), but it’s used less often than English will, and often adds more emphasis or formality:
Ég mun borða lítið í kvöld. – I will (indeed) eat little tonight.
Word by word:
- Ég – I (subject, nominative case)
- borða – eat (verb, present tense, 1st person singular)
- lítið – little / not much (here used as an adverb, modifying borða)
- í – in (preposition, here forming a time expression)
- kvöld – evening / night (neuter noun; together with í it means this evening / tonight)
So the structure is: Subject – Verb – Adverb – Time expression.
Yes, that is perfectly correct:
- Ég borða lítið í kvöld. – neutral order.
- Í kvöld borða ég lítið. – puts í kvöld (tonight) in first position for emphasis: Tonight, I will eat little.
Both are good standard Icelandic.
What you cannot say is something like *Ég lítið borða í kvöld – adverbs like lítið normally follow the verb, they don’t go between subject and verb in this way.
In this sentence, lítið functions as an adverb, modifying the verb borða (eat), meaning “little / not much”.
Grammatically, it’s the neuter singular form of the adjective lítill (little, small), but Icelandic very often uses the neuter singular form of adjectives as adverbs. Some common patterns:
- lítill → lítið (little → little / a little, not much)
- góður → vel (good → well) – this one is more irregular
- hr快速 forms etc. (many adverbs are neuter forms)
So here you should think of lítið as an adverb meaning “little, not much”.
Icelandic can express quantity with an adverb directly on the verb, without an explicit noun:
- Ég borða lítið. – I eat little / I don’t eat much.
- Ég sef lítið. – I sleep little / I don’t sleep much.
In English we often need “little + noun” (little food, little time) or “not much”, but Icelandic can just say lítið and let the context supply “of what”.
In Ég borða lítið í kvöld, it naturally means “I won’t eat much (food) tonight”.
Both can be translated “I won’t eat much tonight”, but the nuance is slightly different:
Ég borða lítið í kvöld.
– Focus on small quantity. Neutral, simple “I will eat little / not much.”Ég borða ekki mikið í kvöld.
– Literally: “I do not eat much tonight.”
– Uses negation (ekki) and mikið (much, a lot), so it’s like saying “I won’t eat a lot tonight”.
In practice, they’re very close in meaning; lítið feels a bit shorter and more direct; ekki mikið feels like “not a big amount” rather than “a small amount”, but in most contexts they can be used interchangeably.
Literally, í kvöld is “in evening”, but as a fixed expression it means “this evening / tonight” (the coming or current evening).
Some useful contrasts:
- í kvöld – tonight, this evening (one specific evening)
- í gærkvöldi – last night / last evening
- á kvöldin – in the evenings, in the evening(s) generally / habitually
(e.g. Ég les á kvöldin. – I read in the evenings.)
So í kvöld is best translated simply as “tonight” in most contexts.
In time expressions, the preposition í usually takes the dative case.
- í + dative for “in/at (a time)” → í kvöld (this evening / tonight).
The noun kvöld is a neuter noun whose nominative, accusative and dative singular are all the same form: kvöld. So its form doesn’t change, but we still analyze it as dative here because of the preposition í and the time meaning.
Declension (singular):
- Nom: kvöld
- Acc: kvöld
- Dat: kvöld
- Gen: kvölds
A simple approximation in English-like spelling:
- Ég – roughly “yeg” (y + open e; final g is soft / breathy)
- borða – “BOR-tha” (the ð is like the th in this; stress on the first syllable)
- lítið – “LEE-tith” (long í; final ð often sounds like a soft “th” or almost disappears)
- í – “ee” (long, clear)
- kvöld – roughly “kveult” or “kvölt” (rounded vowel; kv pronounced together)
Very rough phonetic transcription (not strict IPA):
YEG BOR-tha LEE-tith ee KVEULT.
There are two common verbs that can mean to eat:
borða – the most neutral, everyday verb for “eat” in modern Icelandic.
Ég borða. – I eat / I am eating.éta – also means “eat”, but often with a sense like “devour, gobble (like animals)”, or just a bit rougher / more colloquial. You’ll also see it in some fixed expressions.
In your sentence, Ég borða lítið í kvöld uses the normal, polite verb.
Ég éta lítið í kvöld would sound unusual or comical, unless you were deliberately playing with style.
Past tense of borða is borðaði (1st person singular):
- Ég borðaði lítið í kvöld.
– Literally: I ate little tonight.
– Natural English: I didn’t eat much tonight.
If you want to mirror the “not much” structure:
- Ég borðaði ekki mikið í kvöld.
– I didn’t eat much tonight.
Both are correct; they differ in the same way as in the present: lítið (small amount) vs ekki mikið (not a large amount).
To express a habit in the evenings (not just this one evening), you change the time expression:
- Ég borða lítið á kvöldin.
– I eat little in the evenings / I don’t eat much in the evenings (as a habit).
Compare:
- í kvöld – tonight, this evening (one specific time)
- á kvöldin – in the evenings (regularly, generally)
The verb borða stays in the present tense in both cases; Icelandic uses the simple present for habits just like English.