Breakdown of Kennarinn fær okkur til að skrifa sömu sögn fyrst í nútíð og svo aftur í framtíð.
Questions & Answers about Kennarinn fær okkur til að skrifa sömu sögn fyrst í nútíð og svo aftur í framtíð.
This is a very common Icelandic pattern:
fá + object + til að + infinitive
It means to get/make someone do something.
So:
- Kennarinn fær okkur til að skrifa ...
- literally: The teacher gets us to write ...
Here, fær is the present tense of fá.
On its own, fá can mean things like get, receive, or obtain, but in this construction it means get someone to do something.
Because -inn is the suffixed definite article in Icelandic.
- kennari = a teacher
- kennarinn = the teacher
So Kennarinn means the teacher. It is also in the nominative singular because it is the subject of the sentence.
Because við is the subject form (we), but here the meaning is us, not we.
Compare:
- við = we (nominative)
- okkur = us (object form)
In this sentence, the teacher is getting us to do something, so Icelandic uses okkur.
In the pattern fá einhvern til að gera eitthvað, the person being made/gotten to do something is the object.