Ég las bók í gærkvöldi.

I

Breakdown of Ég las bók í gærkvöldi.

• bók: the book
• lesa: to read
• í gærkvöldi: last night

Questions & Answers about Ég las bók í gærkvöldi.

What does ég mean, and what case is it in?

Ég means I. It is the first-person singular pronoun, and here it is in the nominative case because it is the subject of the sentence — the person doing the action.

Why is las used instead of lesa?

Lesa is the infinitive form, meaning to read.
Las is the past tense form, so it means read in the sense of I read / I was reading in the past.

The verb is:

• lesa = to read
• ég las = I read

This is not a regular-looking past tense from an English point of view, because lesa is a strong verb, so its vowel changes in the past tense.

Does las itself mean I read, or do I need ég to show that?

You normally need ég here.

In this sentence, las is the past singular form, but it is not uniquely marked for I alone — the same form is also used with he/she/it:

• ég las = I read
• hann las = he read
• hún las = she read

So ég is what makes it clearly .