Word
Ég rugla þeim báðum oft saman af því að þeir eru svipaðir.
Meaning
I often confuse both of them because they are similar.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of Ég rugla þeim báðum oft saman af því að þeir eru svipaðir.
vera
to be
ég
I
saman
together / on end (after a dative plural time noun)
þeir
they (m)
Questions & Answers about Ég rugla þeim báðum oft saman af því að þeir eru svipaðir.
Why is it báðum here instead of báðir?
The verb phrase að rugla einhverju saman (to confuse something) requires its object to be in the dative case. Because of this, both the pronoun þeim and the word for both take the dative, giving us báðum. The form báðum is very handy because it is exactly the same for masculine, feminine, and neuter words.
Why is saman used in this sentence?
It belongs to the phrasal verb að rugla einhverju saman, which literally means to mix something together. In English, you just say you confuse two things, but in Icelandic, you need saman to complete the meaning of mixing them up with each other.
Why does the word oft come right in the middle of the phrase?
In Icelandic main clauses, adverbs of time or frequency like oft typically appear after the main verb and its direct object. The object here is the full phrase þeim báðum, so oft gets placed immediately after it, just before the verbal particle saman.
Can we tell the gender of the things being confused from this sentence?