Breakdown of Vindillinn er dýr. Ég reyki hann aldrei.
vera
to be
ég
I
hann
he
aldrei
never
dýr
expensive
reykja
to smoke
vindillinn
the cigar
Questions & Answers about Vindillinn er dýr. Ég reyki hann aldrei.
Why does the pronoun hann come before the adverb aldrei?
This is called object shift. When the object of a main clause is an unstressed pronoun like hann, it moves before sentence adverbs like aldrei or ekki. If the object were a regular noun, the adverb would come first, as in Ég reyki aldrei vindilinn (I never smoke the cigar).
Why use hann (he) to mean 'it' here?
Icelandic pronouns must match the grammatical gender of the noun they replace. Because vindill (cigar) is a masculine noun, you refer back to it using the masculine pronoun hann, even though it is an inanimate object.
Is the pronoun hann in the nominative or accusative case here?
It is in the accusative case. The verb reykja (to smoke) requires its direct object to be accusative. For the third-person masculine pronoun, the nominative and accusative forms happen to be exactly the same (hann).
Why does dýr not have a masculine ending like -ur?
Dýr is the masculine singular nominative form, agreeing with vindillinn. While many masculine adjectives end in -ur, dýr belongs to a group of adjectives whose stem already ends in -r, so it does not add an extra -ur in the nominative.
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