Breakdown of Nemandinn sagði að hann skammaðist sín fyrir hrokann.
nemandinn
the student
hann
he
að
that (conjunction)
fyrir
for (fyrir þig)
segja
to say
skammast sín
to be ashamed
hrokinn
the arrogance
Questions & Answers about Nemandinn sagði að hann skammaðist sín fyrir hrokann.
Why do we use the genitive pronoun sín after skammaðist instead of the usual accusative sig?
The middle voice verb skammast belongs to a specific group of verbs being taught in this lesson that govern the genitive case. To express being ashamed in Icelandic, you always use the fixed phrase skammast sín, which conceptually translates to being ashamed of oneself.
What is the relationship between the middle-voice skammaðist and its active form?
The active verb skamma means "to scold" or "to reprimand." By adding the middle voice -st suffix and pairing it with the genitive sín, the meaning shifts to "being ashamed"—you can think of it historically as scolding oneself.
Why is the preposition fyrir used here when the English translation says "ashamed of"?
Prepositions rarely map one-to-one between languages. In Icelandic, the correct collocation is skammast sín fyrir eitthvað (to be ashamed of something). In this phrase, fyrir governs the accusative case, which is why we see the accusative form hrokann instead of the dative.
Why is the verb skammaðist in the past tense in this context?
This is an example of the sequence of tenses in reported speech. Because the introductory verb sagði (said) is in the past tense, the verb in the subordinate að clause must also take the past tense (skammaðist) to match, exactly as it does in English.
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