Questions & Answers about Kaffið er allt of kalt.
Kaffi is the indefinite form, meaning coffee in a general sense.
Kaffið is the definite form, meaning the coffee. In Icelandic, the definite article is usually added to the end of the noun as a suffix rather than written as a separate word.
So:
- kaffi = coffee
- kaffið = the coffee
In this sentence, the speaker is talking about a specific coffee, so kaffið is the natural form.
You usually learn Icelandic nouns together with their grammatical gender. Kaffi is a neuter noun.
There are a few clues here:
- the definite form is kaffið, and -ið is a common neuter definite ending
- the adjective is kalt, which is the neuter singular form of cold
One important warning: you cannot always guess gender safely just from the ending of the noun. Even though patterns help, gender is something you often just have to learn with each word.
Er is the present tense of vera, which means to be.
So here:
- er = is
Because kaffið is singular, Icelandic uses singular er, not plural eru.