Breakdown of Foreldrar nemendanna komu á fundinn.
nemandinn
the student
koma
to come
á
onto / on / in (static location) / on (a day of the week)
fundurinn
the meeting
foreldrarnir
the parents
Questions & Answers about Foreldrar nemendanna komu á fundinn.
Why doesn't the word foreldrar (parents) have a definite article attached to it?
In Icelandic, when a noun is followed by a possessor in the genitive case (like nemendanna, "of the students"), the first noun usually drops the definite article. So instead of saying foreldrarnir nemendanna, you just say foreldrar nemendanna, even though we translate it with "the" in English.
How do we get the form nemendanna for "of the students"?
This is the genitive plural form with the definite article attached. The root word is nemandi (student), which changes to nemendur in the plural. The genitive plural (of students) is nemenda. To make it "of the students", we add the genitive plural definite article suffix -nna, giving us nemendanna.
Wait, isn't the word for parent foreldri, which is a neuter noun? Why does it look masculine here?
Why does the preposition á take the accusative case (fundinn) instead of the dative?
The preposition á can take either the accusative or the dative case depending on the context. Here it takes the accusative because it describes motion toward a destination—they came to the meeting. If the sentence described a static location (for example, they were sitting at the meeting), you would use the dative case instead (á fundinum).
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