Breakdown of Farþeginn hlustar á hátalarann í biðsalnum.
hlusta
to listen
í
in / into / to (before the hour, in telling time) / per (in frequency expressions)
á
to/at (with verbs of perception: hlusta á, horfa á)
farþeginn
the passenger
hátalarinn
the loudspeaker
biðsalurinn
the waiting room
Questions & Answers about Farþeginn hlustar á hátalarann í biðsalnum.
Why does hlustar á take the accusative case for hátalarann instead of the dative?
The verb phrase hlusta á (to listen to) strictly governs the accusative case for the object being listened to. Even though the preposition á can sometimes take the dative when describing physical location, here it is locked into the accusative by the verb hlusta.
Why is biðsalnum in the dative case?
The preposition í (in) takes the dative case when it describes a static location, meaning no movement from one place to another is happening. The action of listening is happening entirely inside the waiting room.
Both farþeginn and hátalarann end in -nn, but one is the subject and the other is the object. How does that work?
Both of these are weak masculine nouns, which end in -i in the dictionary (farþegi, hátalari). For the nominative subject, we add the definite article -nn to the base word, giving farþeginn. For the accusative object, the noun itself changes its ending to -a (hátalara), and then we add the accusative definite article -nn, resulting in hátalarann.
How can I make sense of long compound words like hátalarann and biðsalnum?
Breaking them into their parts makes them much easier to learn! Hátalari comes from há- (high, loud) + talari (speaker). Biðsalur combines bið (a wait, waiting) + salur (a hall, room).
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