Breakdown of Þeir eru hvorki ljóshærðir né bláeygir.
vera
to be
þeir
they (m)
hvorki
neither
né
nor
ljóshærður
blonde-haired
bláeygur
blue-eyed
Questions & Answers about Þeir eru hvorki ljóshærðir né bláeygir.
How is the compound adjective ljóshærðir formed from its root words?
It combines the adjective ljós (light) with the noun hár (hair). In these descriptive compounds, the noun often undergoes a vowel shift. The á in hár shifts to æ, creating the stem hær-. We then add the suffix -ður to make it an adjective, which declines to -ðir to match the masculine plural subject Þeir.
What vowel shift happens when forming bláeygir from auga (eye)?
Do we always drop the adjective endings in the first half of these compounds, like in bláeygir?
Yes, when combining an adjective with a noun stem to form a new compound, you use the bare root of the first adjective. So instead of the full nominative blár, you use the root blá- before attaching the shifted noun stem.
Does using hvorki ... né (neither ... nor) affect the word order of the sentence?
No, hvorki ... né is a correlative conjunction pair that simply connects the two adjectives. It behaves exactly like bæði ... og (both ... and) and does not trigger any verb inversion or special word order changes in this predicative position.
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