Sparnaðurinn minn er ekki mikill enn, en hann verður smám saman stærri.

Because Icelandic sparnaður is usually a singular noun meaning savings as a whole, or the amount someone has saved.

So in this sentence, Icelandic treats it as:

• one singular noun: sparnaður
• masculine gender
• therefore singular agreement: minn, mikill, hann

That is why Icelandic says sparnaðurinn minn where English naturally says my savings.

It is the definite article attached to the noun.

• sparnaður = savings / saving
• sparnaðurinn = the savings / the saving

Icelandic usually puts the at the end of the noun instead of using a separate word.

So sparnaðurinn minn is literally something like the savings of mine, but in natural English that is just my savings.

That is very common in Icelandic, especially when the noun is definite.

• sparnaðurinn minn = my savings

This word order is the normal neutral pattern. Putting the possessive first is possible in some contexts, but it is usually more emphatic or contrastive.

So:

• sparnaðurinn minn = neutral, ordinary my savings
• minn sparnaður = more like my savings, as opposed to someone else’s

Because the adjective has to agree with sparnaðurinn.

Sparnaður is:

• masculine
• singular
• nominative here

So the adjective must also be masculine singular nominative:

• mikill

If the noun were neuter, you would expect mikið, but sparnaður is not neuter.

Also, with abstract nouns like sparnaður, mikill often means large or a lot of, so er ekki mikill enn means something like is not very large yet.

Here it works like yet.

In a negative sentence, ekki ... enn often corresponds to not ... yet:

• er ekki mikill enn = is not large yet

In a positive sentence, enn often means still:

• hann er enn lítill = it is still small

So the meaning of enn depends a lot on whether the clause is positive or negative.

Yes, in many situations you could.

• Sparnaðurinn minn er ekki mikill enn
• Sparnaðurinn minn er ekki mikill ennþá

Both are understandable and natural. Ennþá can feel a bit fuller or slightly more colloquial in some contexts, while enn is shorter and very common.

For a learner, it is useful to remember:

• enn = often still / yet
• ennþá = also still / yet, often interchangeable

Because hann refers back to sparnaðurinn, and pronouns in Icelandic match the grammatical gender of the noun.

Since sparnaður is masculine, the pronoun is:

• hann

So:

• sparnaðurinn → hann

This can feel strange to an English speaker because English savings is not normally referred to as he, but Icelandic pronouns regularly follow grammatical gender, not biological sex.

That is normal in Icelandic.

Verður is the 3rd person singular present tense of verða, which often means become. Icelandic very often uses present-tense forms to talk about the future when the context makes that clear.

So:

• hann verður stærri = it becomes larger / it will become larger

In this sentence, the natural meaning is future-oriented: the savings will grow over time.

It is a fixed expression meaning:

• gradually
• little by little
• step by step

So:

• verður smám saman stærri = becomes gradually larger

It is best learned as one chunk. Even though the words have an internal structure historically, a learner can safely treat smám saman as a set adverbial phrase.

Good question. Stærri is the comparative of stór, while meiri is the comparative of mikill.

So strictly speaking:

• stór → stærri
• mikill → meiri

In this sentence, Icelandic chooses stærri because the idea is that the savings are becoming larger. That is a natural way to describe an amount growing.

If you used meiri, the focus would be more directly on more in quantity. In practice, both kinds of wording can appear with money or savings depending on nuance, but stærri here is perfectly idiomatic.

Also, the comparison is implicit. It means:

• larger than it is now

There is no need to add an explicit than phrase.

Because Icelandic normally states the subject again in a new clause like this.

The sentence has two coordinated clauses:

• Sparnaðurinn minn er ekki mikill enn
• en hann verður smám saman stærri

Repeating hann makes the structure clear and natural. It is the normal way to say it.

There is also a word-order reason: Icelandic is a verb-second language, so once hann appears first in the second clause, the finite verb verður comes next. That pattern is very typical:

• en hann verður ...

So the repeated pronoun is not redundant; it is part of normal Icelandic sentence structure.