Word
Ég vildi að hafið væri lygnt í dag.
Meaning
I wish the ocean were calm today.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of Ég vildi að hafið væri lygnt í dag.
vera
to be
ég
I
í dag
today
vilja
to want (to will, be willing)
Questions & Answers about Ég vildi að hafið væri lygnt í dag.
Why use vildi (past tense) when I am wishing for something right now?
To express a hypothetical wish about the present, Icelandic uses the past subjunctive. Vildi is the past subjunctive form of vilja (to want). You can think of it as saying 'I would want that...' to mean 'I wish...'.
Why is the verb væri used here instead of er?
The phrase ég vildi að creates a hypothetical, unreal situation, which requires the past subjunctive in the next part of the sentence. Væri is the past subjunctive of vera (to be). It works exactly like English when we say 'I wish the ocean were calm' instead of 'is calm'.
Why does the adjective lygnt have a -t at the end?
Adjectives must agree with the noun they describe. Hafið (the ocean) is a neuter word, so the base adjective lygn (calm) takes the neuter ending -t to become lygnt.
Does the word hafið have anything to do with the verb hafa (to have)?
No, they are completely unrelated even though they look alike! Here, hafið is the neuter noun haf (ocean) with the definite article -ið attached to the end, meaning 'the ocean'.