Breakdown of Kötturinn sefur á baðherberginu.
kötturinn
the cat
sofa
to sleep
á
onto / on / in (static location) / on (a day of the week)
baðherbergið
the bathroom
Questions & Answers about Kötturinn sefur á baðherberginu.
How do we get the ending -nu in baðherberginu?
The base word for bathroom is the neuter noun baðherbergi. Because it follows the preposition á to show a stationary location, it goes into the dative case. To say THE bathroom, we add the definite ending for dative neuter nouns. Since the word already ends in a vowel, we just add -nu to the end.
Why does the bathroom have to be in the dative case here?
The preposition á triggers the dative case when you are describing a fixed location where an action happens without movement toward a new destination. Since the cat is just resting in one place, the bathroom takes the dative case.
Doesn't á usually mean 'on'? Why is it translated as 'in' the bathroom?
Prepositions rarely match up perfectly between languages! In Icelandic, it is just the standard rule to say you are 'on' the bathroom (á baðherberginu) rather than 'in' it (í). You will just need to memorize this pairing for bathrooms.
Kötturinn and baðherberginu both have 'the' attached. Why are their endings different?
The attached 'the' ending changes depending on the noun's gender and its grammatical case. Köttur is a masculine word doing the action (nominative case), so it takes the ending -inn. Baðherbergi is a neuter word following a location preposition (dative case), so it takes the ending -nu.
The dictionary word for 'to sleep' is sofa, so why is it spelled sefur here?
Icelandic verbs often change their core vowel when they are conjugated. For the verb sofa, the vowel changes to an e for singular subjects in the present tense. Because the cat is a singular subject (he/she/it), we use sefur.
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