Breakdown of Hann veltir gagnslausum sófa út úr húsinu.
húsið
the house
hann
he
sófinn
the sofa
úr
out of
út
out (motion outwards)
gagnslaus
useless
velta
to roll
Questions & Answers about Hann veltir gagnslausum sófa út úr húsinu.
Why is sófa in the dative case rather than the accusative, since it's the direct object of the verb?
Why is the adjective gagnslaus (useless) written as gagnslausum?
Adjectives must agree with the noun they describe in gender, number, and case. Because sófa is a masculine noun in the dative singular, the adjective takes the strong masculine dative singular ending -um, making it gagnslausum.
The word for sofa is sófi. Why does it become sófa here?
Sófi is a weak masculine noun. A handy rule for weak masculine nouns ending in -i is that they change that ending to -a for all other singular cases (accusative, dative, and genitive).
Why do we use both út and úr to say 'out of'?
Út is an adverb showing the general direction of movement (outwards), while úr is a preposition meaning out of or from that connects the movement to a specific place. It is very common in Icelandic to pair a directional adverb with a preposition for precision. The preposition úr then forces the following noun, húsinu, into the dative case.
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