Word
Björninn svaf í hellinum í allan vetur.
Meaning
The bear slept in the cave all winter.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of Björninn svaf í hellinum í allan vetur.
sofa
to sleep
í
in / into / to (before the hour, in telling time) / per (in frequency expressions)
allur
all / everything / everyone
hellirinn
the cave
Questions & Answers about Björninn svaf í hellinum í allan vetur.
Why is the preposition í followed by the dative case in í hellinum but the accusative case in í allan vetur?
The preposition í takes the dative case when talking about a static, stationary location, like resting inside a cave (hellinum). However, when í is used to express a duration of time, such as "for all of winter", it takes the accusative case.
What is the infinitive form of svaf, and why does it look so different?
Svaf is the past tense of the verb sofa (to sleep). It is a strong verb, meaning it changes its core vowel to show the past tense instead of adding a standard past-tense ending like -aði or -di.
Why is the word for "all" written as allan in this sentence?
The word vetur (winter) is a masculine noun. Because the phrase indicating time duration is in the accusative case, the adjective must match it. The masculine accusative form of allur is allan. Notice that the word vetur itself is slightly unusual because its spelling doesn't change across the nominative, accusative, and dative cases!
How exactly is the word hellinum built?
The base word is hellir (a cave), which is a masculine noun. Because of its location after the preposition í, it drops the -r to become the dative form helli. Finally, the dative masculine definite article -num is attached to the end to mean "the cave", giving us hellinum.