Breakdown of Sambekkingurinn er helmingi eldri en ég.
vera
to be
ég
I
gamall
old
en
than
helmingi
by half
sambekkingurinn
the classmate (m)
Questions & Answers about Sambekkingurinn er helmingi eldri en ég.
How is the word sambekkingurinn built using the prefix sam-?
The prefix sam- means "shared" or "co-". Here, it attaches to the root bekkur (class/grade) and the person-forming suffix -ingur. Together, a sambekkingur is literally a "co-class-person" or classmate. The -inn at the end is just the attached definite article ("the").
Wait, helmingur means "half." Why does helmingi eldri mean "twice as old"?
This is a very common but tricky Icelandic idiom! In English, we multiply ("twice as"), but Icelandic uses fractions to state the difference. Saying someone is "older by a half" (helmingi eldri) means they are double the age. If you wanted to say they are half your age, you would say they are "younger by a half": helmingi yngri.
Why does the word for half end in an -i here (helmingi)?
It is in the dative case. When comparing things, Icelandic uses the dative to express the amount of difference between them (sometimes called the dative of difference). Because the classmate is older by a half, the masculine noun helmingur takes its dative form, helmingi, right before the comparative adjective eldri.
Why does the sentence end with the nominative ég instead of an accusative like the English "than me"?
The word en (than) is a conjunction, not a preposition, which means it doesn't force the word after it into a specific case. Instead, the two things being compared have to match cases. Since the classmate (sambekkingurinn) is the subject and in the nominative case, the pronoun ég must also be in the nominative.
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