Questions & Answers about Er sonur minn hér?
Why does the sentence start with Er instead of the subject?
In Icelandic, to turn a statement into a yes/no question, you swap the subject and the verb. The statement is Sonur minn er hér (My son is here). By moving the verb er to the front, it becomes the question Er sonur minn hér? (Is my son here?).
Why is the word order sonur minn (son my) instead of minn sonur (my son)?
In Icelandic, possessive words like minn usually come right after the noun they belong to. While you can sometimes put them before the noun for special emphasis, putting them after is the standard and most natural way to speak.
Why do we use minn here instead of mín or mitt?
Possessive words have to match the gender of the noun they describe. Because sonur is a masculine noun, we must use the masculine form minn. If we were talking about a feminine noun like a daughter (dóttir), we would use mín, and for a neuter noun like a child (barn), we would use mitt.
I have seen other nouns get an attached "the" when using a possessive. Why is it just sonur minn and not sonurinn minn?