Word
Strákurinn er stór en stelpan er lítil.
Meaning
The boy is big but the girl is small.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Questions & Answers about Strákurinn er stór en stelpan er lítil.
Why do the adjectives take the forms stór and lítil here?
In Icelandic, adjectives must match the gender of the noun they describe. Strákurinn (the boy) is a masculine noun, so it uses the masculine form stór. Stelpan (the girl) is a feminine noun, so it uses the feminine form lítil.
If I look up "small" in a dictionary, will I find lítil?
You will usually find the masculine form, which is lítill. To make it feminine to match stelpan, it drops one of the Ls at the end to become lítil.
Where is the word for "the" in strákurinn and stelpan?
Icelandic attaches "the" to the end of the noun instead of using a separate word before it. For the masculine noun strákur (boy), we add -inn to get strákurinn (the boy). For the feminine noun stelpa (girl), we add -n to get stelpan.
Does en mean "but" or "and"?
En translates to "but", which makes sense here because we are contrasting big and small. You might sometimes see it translated as "and" in English when comparing two things, but it always carries a sense of contrast, unlike og (and).