Breakdown of Björgunarsveitin hjálpaði okkur mest þegar lífshættan var mikil.
vera
to be
mikið
a lot
okkur
us
hjálpa
to help
mikill
great, much (adjective: snjórinn er mikill)
þegar
when
björgunarsveitin
the rescue team
lífshættan
the mortal danger
Questions & Answers about Björgunarsveitin hjálpaði okkur mest þegar lífshættan var mikil.
Both björgunarsveitin and lífshættan are compound words. How do we determine their gender?
In Icelandic, compound words always take the gender of their final root word. Sveit (team or squad) and hætta (danger) are both feminine nouns, so the compounds björgunarsveit and lífshætta are also feminine. You can see this reflected in their feminine definite article suffixes -in and -n.
Why is okkur (us) in the dative case here?
The verb hjálpa (to help) always takes a dative object in Icelandic. So, even though we are the direct recipients of the help, the nominative pronoun við (we) must change to its dative form, okkur.
Why do we use mikil to mean great here, instead of a word like stór?
While stór means big in a physical or literal size sense, mikill is used to describe the intensity, amount, or greatness of abstract concepts. For abstract nouns like hætta (danger), áhugi (interest), or þörf (need), you will use forms of mikill. Here, it is in the feminine nominative form mikil to agree with lífshættan.
Is mest acting as an adjective or an adverb in this sentence?
It acts as an adverb here. Mest is the superlative form of mikið (much or a lot). Instead of describing a noun, it directly modifies the verb hjálpaði, indicating that the rescue team helped us the most out of all times or possible groups.
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