Hvenær kemur þú heim í kvöld?

Hvenær means when. It is a question word, so it naturally comes first in a direct question.

A native English speaker may expect something like When do you come home tonight?, and Icelandic works similarly in that the question word comes first:

• Hvenær = when

So Hvenær kemur þú heim í kvöld? literally begins with When... ?

This is because Icelandic follows a verb-second pattern in many main clauses.

When a question word like Hvenær comes first, the finite verb usually comes next:

• Hvenær kemur þú ... ?
• literally: When comes you ... ?

English uses do-support in many questions:

• When do you come home?

Icelandic does not use an extra verb like do here. Instead, the main verb kemur moves into that second position.

Kemur is the 3rd person singular / 2nd person singular present form of the verb koma, which means to come.

In this sentence, it means you come / are coming / will come, depending on context.

Some present-tense forms of koma are:

• ég kem = I come
• þú kemur = you come
• hann/hún/það kemur = he/she/it comes
• við komum = we come
• þið komið = you (plural) come
• þeir/þær/þau koma = they come

So here:

• kemur þú = do you come / are you coming / will you come

Icelandic often uses the present tense to talk about the future, just like English can.

So:

• Hvenær kemur þú heim í kvöld?

can mean:

• When are you coming home tonight?
• When will you come home tonight?

The time phrase í kvöld makes it clear that the action is in the future, so Icelandic does not need a separate future tense form here.

This is a very common learner question.

• heim means homeward / to home
• heima means at home

So:

• Ég fer heim. = I’m going home.
• Ég er heima. = I’m at home.

In your sentence, kemur þú heim means are you coming home, because the idea is movement toward home.

If you used heima, it would suggest location rather than motion, which would not fit as well here.

Because heim already includes the directional idea of to home / homeward.

English says:

• come home

not usually:

• come to home

Icelandic works in a similar way. You do not need a separate preposition before heim.

So:

• koma heim = come home
• fara heim = go home

Í kvöld means tonight.

Literally, it is made up of:

• í = in
• kvöld = evening

So the literal sense is something like in the evening / tonight.

This is a fixed and very common expression:

• í dag = today
• í kvöld = tonight
• í nótt = tonight / in the night

In this sentence, í kvöld tells you when the action is expected to happen.

After certain time expressions, Icelandic uses the accusative form, and í kvöld is a standard fixed expression.

With many common time phrases, learners are best off first learning them as chunks:

• í dag
• í morgun
• í kvöld
• í nótt

Later, you can study the case patterns in more detail, but for now it is most helpful to remember í kvöld as the normal way to say tonight.

Not exactly. The sentence more specifically means When are you coming home tonight? or When will you come home tonight?

The focus is on the act of arriving home, because of:

• koma = come
• heim = homeward / home

If you wanted to ask When will you be home?, that would focus more on being at home rather than coming home.

So the sentence is about the time of arrival, not just the state of being at home.

In normal Icelandic, þú is usually included, so kemur þú is the natural form here.

Unlike some languages, Icelandic does not regularly drop subject pronouns in ordinary speech just because the verb ending makes the subject clear.

So:

• Hvenær kemur þú heim í kvöld? = natural
• leaving out þú would usually sound incomplete or unusual in this kind of sentence

A rough learner-friendly pronunciation might be:

KVE-nahr KEM-ur thoo haym ee kvohld

A few helpful notes:

• Hv in Hvenær is often pronounced close to kv
• þ in þú is like th in thin
• ei in heim sounds roughly like ay
• kvöld can be tricky; the ö is a rounded vowel not found in standard English

If you want to sound more natural, listen especially for the rhythm:

• Hvenær kemur þú heim í kvöld?

Not freely. The given word order is the normal and correct one for this question.

Because Icelandic is a verb-second language in main clauses, once Hvenær is placed first, the verb kemur normally comes next:

• Hvenær kemur þú heim í kvöld?

A version like:

• Hvenær þú kemur heim í kvöld?

would sound wrong in standard Icelandic main-clause word order.

So this sentence is a very good example of the normal pattern:

• question word + finite verb + subject + rest