Breakdown of Ég bursta tennurnar fyrst, svo fer ég að sofa.
Questions & Answers about Ég bursta tennurnar fyrst, svo fer ég að sofa.
tennurnar is tennur (teeth, plural) with the definite article attached (-nar), so it literally means the teeth. In everyday Icelandic, body parts are often expressed with the definite form where English would use a possessive: bursta tennurnar = brush (my) teeth.
Icelandic commonly skips the possessive with body parts when it’s obvious whose they are, especially with everyday actions:
- Ég bursta tennurnar. = I brush my teeth. If you want to be explicit or contrastive, you can add a possessive:
- Ég bursta tennurnar mínar. = I brush my teeth (as opposed to someone else’s / for emphasis). Another very common pattern is:
- Ég bursta mér tennurnar. (lit. I brush the teeth for myself) — this strongly signals they’re your own.
It’s the direct object of bursta (to brush), so it’s in the accusative. For tennur, the plural accusative form happens to look the same as the nominative (tennur), but the definite accusative plural is tennurnar (and it matches what you’d also see as nominative definite plural in many nouns—context tells you the role).
Because you have two independent clauses, each with its own verb:
1) Ég bursta tennurnar fyrst
2) svo fer ég að sofa
In Icelandic, it’s normal (and usually necessary) to include the subject in each full clause like this.
Icelandic follows the V2 (verb-second) rule in main clauses: the finite verb tends to come second, even if something else (like svo) comes first.
- Svo fer ég að sofa. (correct: Then go/am-going I to sleep)
- Svo ég fer að sofa. sounds wrong as a normal main clause word order (it can show up in other structures, but not here).
Here svo means then/after that and links the sequence of actions. Alternatives include:
- síðan = then/afterwards
- þá = then (often when referring back to a condition or earlier point) All are common, but svo is very natural in casual sequencing.
It’s fara (to go) + að + infinitive, a very common construction.
- að sofa = to sleep (infinitive phrase) Depending on context, fara að + infinitive can mean go and do something or begin to do something. With sofa, it naturally corresponds to go to sleep / go to bed.
Not always, but it is required in many constructions, including fara að + infinitive. Some verbs (especially modals) typically take a bare infinitive (no að), e.g. ég get sofið (I can sleep). But with fara in this pattern, að is the normal choice: fer að sofa.
Icelandic uses the present tense for habits and routines just like English:
- Ég bursta… = I brush… / I’m brushing… (context decides)
- svo fer ég… = then I go… So the present tense is the default for “what I do (usually).”
Yes. fyrst (first) is flexible, but word order rules still apply:
- Ég bursta tennurnar fyrst. (very natural)
- Fyrst bursta ég tennurnar. (also natural; note the verb is still second: bursta) Both mean the same thing; the second version emphasizes first a bit more.
The comma separates two main clauses and makes the sequence clearer:
- Ég bursta tennurnar fyrst, svo fer ég að sofa. It’s a natural punctuation choice when one clause follows another and svo introduces the next step. You’ll see both comma and no comma in informal writing, but the comma is very common.
A rough guide (accent varies by speaker/region):
- Ég: like yeh(g) (the g is often soft/very light in many contexts)
- tennurnar: roughly TEN-nur-nar (with rolled/tapped r)
- að: the ð is often very soft; in að sofa it can sound almost like a quick a
- the next word: a sofa
- svo: roughly svoh
- sofa: roughly SOH-va