Breakdown of Ég sker laukinn smátt, en ég sker kartöflurnar ekki svona smátt.
Questions & Answers about Ég sker laukinn smátt, en ég sker kartöflurnar ekki svona smátt.
Because sker is the 1st person singular present tense form of the verb að skera (to cut/slice). Icelandic verbs conjugate, so the verb changes with the subject:
- ég sker (I cut)
- þú skerð (you cut)
- hann/hún/það sker (he/she/it cuts)
- við skerum, þið skerið, þeir/þær/þau skera
Laukur is the basic/dictionary form (indefinite nominative singular) meaning (an) onion.
Laukinn is the onion: it’s definite (has the “the-” meaning) and it’s in the form needed here as a direct object (accusative singular masculine). Icelandic usually attaches the definite article to the end of the noun (often with a small change in the ending).
Because they differ in number and gender, and Icelandic marks those on the noun (and its endings):
- laukinn = the onion (singular, masculine, accusative)
- kartöflurnar = the potatoes (plural, feminine, accusative)
Both are direct objects of sker, but the endings differ because the nouns are different types.
In this sentence, skera takes a direct object: you cut something. That “something” is put in the accusative case. So laukinn and kartöflurnar are the things being cut, and they appear in accusative forms.
Here smátt functions as an adverb meaning finely / into small pieces, not as an adjective describing the noun directly. In Icelandic, many adverbs are identical to the neuter singular form of an adjective. So smátt is basically “in a small way / finely,” and doesn’t change for gender/number here.
It’s being used as an adverb (describing how you cut). You can think of it as “finely.” If it were an adjective describing a noun directly, it would typically agree in gender/number/case with that noun, but that’s not what’s happening here.
En means but and introduces a contrast: you cut the onion finely, but you don’t cut the potatoes that finely.
Og would just add information (“and”), without highlighting the contrast.
It’s often repeated for clarity and rhythm: …, en ég sker …
You can omit it in many contexts, especially in casual speech, if it’s obvious the subject is the same:
- Ég sker laukinn smátt, en sker kartöflurnar ekki svona smátt. Both are possible; repeating ég is simply very common and natural.
Ekki (not) typically goes before what it negates. Here the negation targets the manner/degree phrase svona smátt (“this finely/this small”), so you get:
- … sker kartöflurnar ekki svona smátt = “doesn’t cut the potatoes this finely”
In natural English, it’s usually best understood as not this finely / not so finely.
Svona points to a degree or manner (“like this / this kind of / this much”), and the whole phrase means the potatoes are cut less finely than the onions.
Svona means something like like this / this way / this (degree of). With an adverb such as smátt, it commonly means this finely (often implying “as finely as that / to that extent”).
Yes:
- smá is typically an adjective meaning small (and it can also show up in other fixed uses).
- smátt is the neuter form, and very often used as an adverb meaning finely / in small pieces.
So in this sentence, smátt is the natural choice to express “finely.”
The comma separates two independent clauses joined by en (but):
1) Ég sker laukinn smátt
2) ég sker kartöflurnar ekki svona smátt
This is standard punctuation for a contrastive conjunction like en.
Yes, that can also be grammatical and means essentially the same thing: “I don’t cut the potatoes this finely.”
The given order … sker kartöflurnar ekki svona smátt is very natural when you want kartöflurnar (the object) stated early, and then you add the negated manner afterward.