Við leggjum spilin á hvolf.

Leggja is the dictionary form, the infinitive, meaning to lay / to put / to place. In the sentence, the subject is við meaning we, so the verb has to be conjugated.

So:

við leggjum = we lay / we put

This is the 1st person plural present tense form of leggja.

In this sentence, leggja means something like lay, put, or place. With cards, natural English often uses lay:

Við leggjum spilin á hvolf.
= We lay the cards face down.

So it is not a special verb just for cards; it is a general verb for placing something down.

Spilin means the cards.

The base noun is spil, a neuter noun. Icelandic usually adds the definite article to the end of the noun instead of using a separate word like the.

So:

spil = cards
spilin = the cards

That -in is the definite article here.

Here spilin is the direct object of the verb leggjum, so it is in the accusative case.

However, there is an important detail: with many neuter nouns in Icelandic, the nominative and accusative look the same. So even though spilin is accusative here, the form is identical to the nominative plural.

In other words, the job it does in the sentence tells you the case more than the ending does.

Á hvolf is a common expression meaning upside down or, with cards, more naturally face down.

So in this sentence:

leggja spilin á hvolf = lay the cards face down

It is best to learn á hvolf as a fixed phrase rather than trying to translate each part too literally every time.

Not exactly. English often says face down, where down does a lot of the work. Icelandic uses the expression á hvolf, which refers to something being turned over or upside down.

So the two languages package the idea differently:

• English: face down
• Icelandic: á hvolf

That is why a word-for-word translation can sound strange even though the full sentence means the same thing.

This sentence has a very normal Icelandic word order:

Við + leggjum + spilin + á hvolf
subject + verb + object + adverbial phrase

So for a learner, this is a good basic pattern.

One useful extra point is that Icelandic is a verb-second language in main clauses. That means if you move another element to the front, the verb still usually stays in second position:

Núna leggjum við spilin á hvolf.
= Now we lay the cards face down.

A rough English-friendly approximation is:

vith LEGG-yum SPIH-lin ow kvolv

A few helpful notes:

• á sounds roughly like ow in cow
• hv in modern Icelandic is usually pronounced like kv
• ð in við is not pronounced like a strong English d; it is closer to a soft th sound

This is only an approximation, but it is a useful starting point for an English speaker.