Learn Hardcore Icelandic: Við gerum stuttar æfingar daglega, því endurtekning hjálpar mér að muna reglurnar. - We do short exercises daily, because repetition helps me remember the rules.

stuttar æfingar – several short exercises done each day → plural matches the idea of “exercises”.
endurtekning – “repetition” as a general concept → singular is natural when talking about something abstract (“Repetition helps me…”).

You could say endurtekningin hjálpar mér… (“the repetition helps me…”) or endurtekningar hjálpa mér… (“repetitions help me…”) in other contexts, but here the idea is “repetition in general”, so endurtekning in the singular is the usual choice.

What exactly does „því“ mean here, and how is it different from „af því að“?

In this sentence, „því“ is a conjunction meaning “because”:

… daglega, því endurtekning hjálpar mér…

= “… daily, because repetition helps me…”

Some points:

Historically, this því comes from the dative of það (“that”), but in modern usage here it functions like a conjunction.
It’s common and quite natural in written Icelandic, especially after a comma.

You can also say:

af því að endurtekning hjálpar mér… – also “because repetition helps me…”

Difference in feel:

því on its own is a bit shorter and more formal/written.
af því að is more explicit and very common in speech.

Grammar-wise, both introduce a reason clause, and in this sentence they’re essentially interchangeable:

… daglega, því endurtekning hjálpar mér…
… daglega, af því að endurtekning hjálpar mér…

Why is there a comma before „því“?

Icelandic comma rules are a bit different from English. Here the comma separates two main clauses:

Við gerum stuttar æfingar daglega,
því endurtekning hjálpar mér að muna reglurnar.

The second clause gives the reason for the first one, introduced by því (“because”). Icelandic typically puts a comma before such a conjunction when it connects two main clauses.

In English you might or might not write a comma before “because”; in Icelandic, the comma here is normal and expected.

Can „daglega“ be placed somewhere else in the sentence?

Yes, „daglega“ (an adverb meaning “daily”) is fairly flexible. Common options:

Við gerum stuttar æfingar daglega. – very natural, adverb at the end.
Við gerum daglega stuttar æfingar. – also correct; the focus is slightly more on how often you do them.
Daglega gerum við stuttar æfingar. – fronting the time word “daily” for emphasis (“Daily, we do short exercises”).

What you wouldn’t normally say:

*Við gerum stuttar daglega æfingar. – splitting adjective and noun like this sounds wrong in Icelandic.

So: the adverb can move, but you shouldn’t separate stuttar and æfingar.

Why is it „hjálpar mér“ and not „hjálpar mig“?

The verb hjálpa (“to help”) in Icelandic takes the dative case for the person being helped.

hjálpa einhverjum → “to help someone” (where einhverjum is dative)

Personal pronouns in dative:

ég → mér (dative)
þú → þér
hann → honum
hún → henni, etc.

So:

Endurtekning hjálpar mér. = Repetition helps me. (me = dative mér)
Ég hjálpa þér. = I help you. (you = dative þér)

Using mig (accusative) here would be ungrammatical, because hjálpa never takes accusative for the person helped.

Why is it „að muna reglurnar“ and not something like „að muna eftir reglunum“?

Both muna and muna eftir exist, but they’re used slightly differently.

In this sentence:

að muna reglurnar = to remember the rules
- muna takes a direct object in the accusative → reglurnar.

You’d typically use muna + accusative for:

remembering facts, information, things:
- Ég man nafnið. – I remember the name.
- Manstu reglurnar? – Do you remember the rules?

muna eftir (with dative) leans more towards:

“to remember (to look for / think of) something/someone”, often about recalling something later:
- Manstu eftir honum? – Do you remember him?
- Mundu eftir þessu á morgun. – Remember this tomorrow.

So in this context – “repetition helps me remember the rules” – the natural structure is muna + accusative: muna reglurnar.

What is the form „reglurnar“? How is it built from „regla“?

Base noun:

regla – a rule (feminine)

Indefinite forms:

sg. nom.: regla – a rule
pl. nom.: reglur – rules

Definite forms (with suffixed article):

sg. nom.: reglan – the rule
pl. nom.: reglurnar – the rules

In this sentence:

muna reglurnar → reglurnar is accusative plural definite, but for feminine nouns like regla, the nominative and accusative plural definite look the same: reglurnar.

So „reglurnar“ = “the rules” (direct object, hence accusative, but same form as nominative).

Is the verb „hjálpar“ singular because of „endurtekning“?

Yes. The subject of the second clause is endurtekning (“repetition”), which is singular, so the verb is 3rd person singular:

endurtekning hjálpar – repetition helps
ef endurtekningar hjálpa – repetitions help (subject would then be plural)

Even though in English the idea might feel somewhat general (“repetition helps”), grammatically in Icelandic it’s clearly one noun in the singular, so hjálpar is the correct form.

Why is there „að“ before „muna“? Can I ever drop it?

Here, að is the infinitive marker, like “to” in English:

að muna = to remember

The structure is:

hjálpar mér að [infinitive]
→ hjálpar mér að muna reglurnar – helps me to remember the rules.

You normally cannot drop að before an infinitive in this type of construction in Icelandic. So:

hjálpar mér að muna reglurnar – correct
*hjálpar mér muna reglurnar – incorrect

Some fixed expressions drop að (e.g. after certain modal-like verbs in the past subjunctive), but in standard present-tense constructions like this one, you keep að.

Could I say „Við æfum daglega“ instead of „Við gerum stuttar æfingar daglega“? What’s the difference?

Yes, you can, but there is a nuance:

Við æfum daglega. – We practice daily.
- This is more general: it just states that you engage in practice every day.
Við gerum stuttar æfingar daglega. – We do short exercises daily.
- This highlights the form of the practice: several short exercises, not just “practice” in the abstract.

So við æfum daglega is shorter and more general; við gerum stuttar æfingar daglega makes it clearer that your practice consists specifically of short exercises.