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Barnið er stórt en kötturinn er lítill.

Barnið er stórt en kötturinn er lítill.
The child is big but the cat is small.
From Lesson 3:Singular adjective agreement·Icelandic

Questions & Answers about Barnið er stórt en kötturinn er lítill.

Why does the sentence use stórt instead of just stór?
In Icelandic, adjectives change their endings to match the gender of the noun they describe. Because barn (child) is a neuter noun, the adjective stór (big) gets a -t added to the end to become stórt.
Why is the word for small lítill here?
Just like with the child, the adjective has to match its noun. Köttur (cat) is a masculine noun. For masculine nouns, the adjective lítill stays in its base dictionary form. If we were describing the neuter barn as small, it would change to lítið.
How can I easily remember the genders of barnið and kötturinn?
The endings attached to the nouns give it away! In Icelandic, the word for "the" is attached to the end of the noun. The ending -ið in barnið is the neuter ending, while the ending -inn in kötturinn is the masculine ending.
Does the word en affect the grammar of the rest of the sentence?
No, en simply means "but" and is used to connect two contrasting ideas. It is a coordinating conjunction, which means the word order in the second half of the sentence (kötturinn er lítill) stays exactly the same as a normal standalone sentence.

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