Word
Þau tala sænsku heima hjá sér.
Meaning
They speak Swedish at home.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of Þau tala sænsku heima hjá sér.
heima
at home
þau
they (n)
tala
to speak
hjá
next to / at (someone's) place, with
Questions & Answers about Þau tala sænsku heima hjá sér.
Can I just say Þau tala sænsku heima instead of adding hjá sér?
Yes, you can! Heima alone means 'at home'. However, adding hjá sér (literally 'by themselves') is a very common, idiomatic way to specify 'at their place' or 'at their own home'.
Why do we use the reflexive pronoun sér here instead of þeim?
The reflexive pronoun sér always points back to the subject of the sentence, which is Þau. If you said heima hjá þeim, it would mean they are speaking Swedish at somebody else's home. Because it is their own home, we must use the reflexive form.
Why does the word for Swedish, sænska, change to sænsku here?
The verb tala (to speak) forces the language being spoken into the accusative case. Most languages in Icelandic are feminine nouns ending in -a, like sænska. In the accusative case, that -a changes to -u, giving us sænsku.