Questions & Answers about Ég er hress í dag.
Hress is a bit broader than any single English word. In Ég er hress í dag, it usually combines ideas like:
- feeling well
- being in good spirits / cheerful
- being lively / energetic
So depending on context, it might best be translated as:
- I’m feeling good today.
- I’m in a good mood today.
- I’m feeling energetic today.
It does not usually mean healthy in a medical/serious sense (for that you’d talk more specifically about health), but it can suggest you’re not sick, you’re fresh and well.
Icelandic often uses vera (að vera = to be) plus an adjective to talk about how you feel:
- Ég er hress. – I’m feeling good / I’m cheerful.
- Ég er þreyttur / þreytt. – I’m tired.
- Ég er svangur / svöng. – I’m hungry.
There is a verb about feeling, að líða, but you use it differently:
- Mér líður vel. – I feel well.
- Literally: To-me feels well.
So both Ég er hress and Mér líður vel can answer How are you?, but the construction in your sentence is simply “I am + adjective”, not I feel + adjective.
Generally, no. Ég er góður / góð is understood more as:
- I am good (a good person)
- I am good (at something)
- I am behaving well
When responding to How are you?, to say I’m good / I’m fine, you’d normally use:
- Ég er hress. – I’m good / in good spirits.
- Mér líður vel. – I feel good.
- Ég hef það gott. – I’m doing well / life is good.
So Ég er hress í dag is a natural, idiomatic way to say I’m feeling good today.
Breakdown:
- Ég – I (subject, 1st person singular, nominative)
- er – am (present tense of að vera, to be)
- hress – adjective describing the subject (predicate adjective)
- í dag – today (literally in day, a fixed time expression)
Basic structure: Subject – Verb – Complement – Time expression
So the pattern is:
[Ég] [er] [hress] [í dag]. → [I] [am] [feeling good] [today].
In principle, predicate adjectives in Icelandic agree with the subject in gender, number, and case. For example:
- A man: Ég er þreyttur. – I am tired.
- A woman: Ég er þreytt. – I am tired.
With hress, though, masculine and feminine nominative singular have the same form:
- Masculine singular: hress
- Feminine singular: hress
- Neuter singular: hresst
So:
- A man says: Ég er hress.
- A woman says: Ég er hress.
No visible change, because both genders use hress in this case. It would change in other cases or numbers (e.g. neuter: barnið er hresst – the child is lively).
Yes. You just change the pronoun and keep hress in plural:
- Við erum hress í dag. – We are feeling good today.
Here the agreement is:
- við – we
- erum – are (1st person plural of að vera)
- hress – plural of the adjective (masc/fem plural nominative is hressir/hressar, but in predicate position with mixed groups it’s usually just hress in everyday speech; formal grammar may show more full paradigms, but you’ll often hear just hress colloquially in the predicate).
Learners typically say Við erum hress í dag, and it’s understood and natural.
Í dag is a fixed phrase meaning today. Literally it’s in day, but you should learn it as one unit:
- í dag – today
- í gær – yesterday
- á morgun – tomorrow
You cannot say *Ég er hress dag; that’s ungrammatical.
So you need the preposition í with dag to get the time expression í dag.
Yes. Both are correct, but the emphasis changes slightly:
Ég er hress í dag.
Neutral: I’m feeling good today. (Focus more on me being good, with the time as an extra detail.)Í dag er ég hress.
Slight emphasis on today: Today I’m feeling good (as opposed to other days).
Word order is fairly flexible with time expressions, but when you front í dag, the verb still has to be in second position:
- Í dag er ég hress. – not *Í dag ég er hress.
No. Ég is only capitalized at the beginning of a sentence (or in all-caps text, titles, etc.), just like any other Icelandic word.
- Ég er hress í dag. – at the start of a sentence → capital É
- Hann sagði að ég væri hress. – here ég is not capitalized.
English I is always capitalized; Icelandic ég is not special in that way.
Approximate guide for an English speaker:
- Ég – roughly like yeh with a short, open e and a very soft final consonant; often closer to [yeh] than to yay.
- er – like ehr with a tapped r (quick single r sound).
- hress – breathe out a bit on the hr, so it’s like h
- rolled/tapped r, then ress with a short e. Kind of like h-ress in one quick burst.
- í – long ee sound, like see.
- dag – da with a long a (closer to daa), and the final g is soft and often sounds somewhere between g and a lightly fricative sound; many learners approximate it as dahg or daahk, and that’s usually understood.
Said at normal speed, the sentence flows as one phrase:
Ég er hress í dag. – [yeh ehr hress ee daahg] (very roughly).
It’s neutral and everyday, suitable in almost any casual or polite context.
Typical use:
- Someone asks: Hvernig hefurðu það? – How are you?
- You answer: Ég er hress í dag. – I’m feeling good today.
It’s fine with friends, colleagues, even in relatively polite conversation. In very formal writing you might choose something like Mér líður vel í dag, but spoken Icelandic uses Ég er hress (í dag) a lot.
Yes.
- Ég er hress. – I’m feeling good / I’m in good spirits.
- Ég er hress í dag. – I’m feeling good today.
Adding í dag just specifies the time frame. Without it, you’re making a more general statement about how you are right now, without highlighting today in particular.