Word
Kötturinn borðar í stofu.
Meaning
The cat is eating in a living room.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of Kötturinn borðar í stofu.
kötturinn
the cat
borða
to eat
í
in / into / to (before the hour, in telling time) / per (in frequency expressions)
stofan
the living room
Questions & Answers about Kötturinn borðar í stofu.
Why is the word for living room stofu here instead of its dictionary form stofa?
The preposition í means "in" or "inside". Because the cat is just staying in the living room (a static location) rather than moving into it, í forces the following noun into the dative case. The bare dative form of the feminine noun stofa is stofu.
How do we know it translates to "in a living room" rather than "in the living room"?
In Icelandic, the word for "the" is usually attached to the end of a noun. Stofu is just the bare noun without this ending, so it means "a living room". If you wanted to say "in the living room", you would add the definite suffix to make it í stofunni.
If "the" attaches to the end of words, is that what is happening in Kötturinn?
Exactly! The dictionary form for "a cat" is köttur. To say "the cat", we add the masculine definite ending -inn, giving us Kötturinn. Since the cat is doing the action, it is the subject of the sentence and stays in the default nominative case.
Why is "is eating" translated as just one word, borðar?
Icelandic does not have a direct equivalent to the English "is doing" (continuous) tense for everyday actions. The simple present tense verb borðar covers both "eats" as a habit and "is eating" right now.