Breakdown of Eiginkonan hans vinnur á sjúkrahúsinu.
hann
he
á
onto / on / in (static location) / on (a day of the week)
vinna
to work (general labor, to do work)
sjúkrahúsið
the hospital
eiginkonan
the wife
Questions & Answers about Eiginkonan hans vinnur á sjúkrahúsinu.
Why is it eiginkonan hans (the wife his) instead of just eiginkona hans?
In Icelandic, when you use a possessive pronoun like hans (his) after a noun, that noun almost always takes the definite article. So, eiginkona (wife) becomes eiginkonan (the wife) before adding hans.
Does hans change its form to match the feminine noun eiginkonan?
No. While words for my (minn) and your (þinn) change to match the gender, number, and case of the noun, third-person possessives like hans (his), hennar (her), and þeirra (their) are fixed. They are actually just the genitive (possessive) case of the pronouns hann, hún, and þau, so they never change shape.
Why do we use the preposition á instead of í for working at or in the hospital?
Icelandic frequently uses á (on/at) for public institutions, workplaces, and places of service. You will commonly see vinna á sjúkrahúsi (work at a hospital) or vera á veitingastað (be at a restaurant).
Why is sjúkrahúsinu in the dative case here?
The preposition á governs the dative case when it describes a static location, meaning where someone or something currently is. Because the wife is working at the hospital rather than traveling to it, sjúkrahús takes its dative definite form, sjúkrahúsinu.
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