The Quirky Verb "þykja"
To judge a cooking competition, you need a way to express subjective opinions. In Icelandic, expressing a personal opinion or finding something to be a certain way is done using the verb þykja.
| to find (have an opinion) | þykja |
þykja is a "quirky" experiencer verb. This means the person having the opinion is in the dative case. Because the person is dative, the verb does not conjugate to match them. Instead, it takes a third-person form (like þykir in the present tense) to match the thing being judged.
Here is a quick reminder of the personal pronouns in the dative case:
mér (I / me)þér (you)honum / henni / því (he / she / it)okkur (we)ykkur (you plural)þeim (they)
Because the experiencer takes the dative, "I find the food tasty" starts with mér:
Judging Others
To talk about someone else's opinion, put their name or title in the dative case. For example, "the jury" (dómnefndin) becomes dómnefndinni.
Adjective Agreement
While the person having the opinion is dative, the thing being judged is in the nominative case. Any adjectives used to describe it must agree with this nominative noun in gender and number.
Notice that with plural experiencers like "we" (okkur) and "they" (þeim), the verb þykir remains completely unchanged because the thing being judged is still singular:
Past Opinions
To express an opinion held over time, use þykja in the present perfect tense. The dative experiencer stays the same, the helping verb defaults to the third-person singular (hefur), and þykja takes its supine form: þótt.
