Breakdown of Þeir rýmdu bygginguna um leið og þeir heyrðu sýrenuna.
þeir
they (m)
heyra
to hear
byggingin
the building
um leið og
as soon as
sýrenan
the siren
rýma
to evacuate
Questions & Answers about Þeir rýmdu bygginguna um leið og þeir heyrðu sýrenuna.
What does um leið og literally mean, and how does it work in this sentence?
Literally, the phrase translates to around the path and. However, used together it is a fixed subordinating conjunction meaning as soon as or the moment that. It connects the two events to show that the evacuation happened immediately upon hearing the siren.
The verb rýmdu means evacuated. Is it related to the word rými (space)?
Yes! The verb að rýma comes directly from the noun rými (space or room). To evacuate a building in Icelandic is literally to clear the space or empty it. Here it is conjugated in the third-person plural past tense to match the subject þeir.
Both bygginguna and sýrenuna end in -una. What does this ending tell us?
Both bygging (building) and sýrena (siren) are feminine nouns. Since they are the direct objects of their respective verbs, they are in the accusative case. The -una suffix is the feminine singular accusative definite article, giving us the building and the siren.
Does the conjunction um leið og force any special word order in the second half of the sentence?
No, Icelandic subordinate clauses introduced by um leið og generally follow standard Subject-Verb-Object word order. That is why we see the normal subject-verb order þeir heyrðu immediately following the conjunction.
Can um leið og also be used to mean while?
It is much closer to as soon as or at the exact moment that for discrete events. If you want to say while for a continuous, ongoing background action, you would use á meðan. Since hearing a siren is a sudden trigger event here, um leið og is the perfect fit.
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