Breakdown of Síminn er í vasa.
vera
to be
í
in / into / to (before the hour, in telling time) / per (in frequency expressions)
síminn
the telephone
vasinn
the pocket
Questions & Answers about Síminn er í vasa.
Why does the word for pocket change from vasi to vasa here?
Vasi (pocket) changes to vasa because it comes directly after the preposition í (in). When í describes a static location—where something is right now, rather than where it is moving to—the noun that follows it must be in the dative case.
Where is the word for 'a' in 'in a pocket'?
Icelandic doesn't have words for 'a' or 'an'. You just use the bare noun. Because of this, í vasa translates perfectly to 'in a pocket'.
If í forces the dative case, why doesn't síminn change?
Prepositions like í only affect the nouns that belong to their specific phrase—in this case, the location (vasa). Síminn (the phone) is the main subject of the sentence, so it stays in the default nominative case.
How does síminn mean 'the phone' instead of 'a phone'?
Instead of using a separate word for 'the' in front of a noun, Icelandic attaches a suffix to the end of the word. The base word is sími (a phone), and adding -nn makes it síminn (the phone).