Breakdown of Sveiflan var hröð en skotið lenti hinum megin borðsins.
vera
to be
borðið
the table
en
but
hraður
fast (adjective)
hinn
the other
lenda
to land
megin
side (in spatial phrases)
sveiflan
the swing (f)
skotið
the shot (n)
Questions & Answers about Sveiflan var hröð en skotið lenti hinum megin borðsins.
Why is borðsins in the genitive case here?
The phrase hinum megin (on the other side) acts as a prepositional phrase of location that directly governs the genitive case. Because we are stating what the shot landed on the other side of, borðið (the table) takes the genitive suffix, becoming borðsins.
The lesson talks about the pair öðru megin... hinum megin (on one side... on the other side). Why is öðru megin missing in this sentence?
You only need to use the full pair when you are explicitly contrasting two things happening at the same time on opposite sides. Here, the context implies the shot was hit from one side and landed on the other, so hinum megin (on the other side) works perfectly on its own.
Why is the adjective for "fast" written as hröð instead of the dictionary form hraður?
Adjectives must agree in gender, number, and case with the noun they describe. Sveiflan (the swing) is a feminine, singular, nominative noun. The masculine base form hraður drops its ending and undergoes U-shift (a changes to ö) to become the feminine form hröð.
What case is the phrase hinum megin in itself?
It is in the dative case. Hinum is the dative form of the free-standing definite article hinn, and megin is a "frozen" dative noun (historically meaning "way" or "side"). While it dictates the genitive case for the noun that follows it, the phrase itself is dative to show a fixed location.
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