Breakdown of Frumkvæði er einmitt eiginleikinn sem okkur vantar.
vera
to be
okkur
us
vanta
to need (to lack)
sem
who / which / that
einmitt
exactly, precisely
frumkvæðið
the initiative
eiginleikinn
the quality (attribute)
Questions & Answers about Frumkvæði er einmitt eiginleikinn sem okkur vantar.
Why do we use okkur vantar instead of "við vantar"?
The verb vanta (to lack / to need) is an impersonal verb. It requires the "subject" (the person who needs something) to be in the accusative case, not the nominative. The accusative form of við (we) is okkur.
If vanta requires the thing being needed to be accusative, why is eiginleikinn nominative?
Eiginleikinn (the quality) gets its nominative case from the first half of the sentence, where it follows the verb er (is). In the second half, the relative particle sem (that) invisibly steps in to act as the accusative object for vantar.
This lesson covers demonstrative pronouns like "sá sem" and "það sem". Why is only sem used here?
Phrases like sá sem (the one who) or það sem (that which) act as placeholders when a noun is omitted. Because we specifically name the noun here (eiginleikinn), we just link it with sem. If we dropped the noun, we would use a demonstrative pronoun: Frumkvæði er einmitt það sem okkur vantar (Initiative is exactly that which we need).
How does the word eiginleikinn break down?
It comes from the weak masculine noun eiginleiki (quality, characteristic), which is built from eigin (own) and leiki (a common suffix for attributes or states). In this sentence, the definite article -nn is attached to the end to mean "the quality".
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