Log inSign up

Eru blómin falleg?

Eru blómin falleg?
Are the flowers beautiful?
From Lesson 28:Definite plural nouns (-nir, -nar, -in)·Icelandic

Breakdown of Eru blómin falleg?

vera
to be
fallegur
beautiful
blómið
the flower

Questions & Answers about Eru blómin falleg?

How do we get blómin for "the flowers"?
The base word is the neuter noun blóm (flower). Neuter nouns often don't change their spelling when they become plural, so "flowers" is also just blóm. To say "the flowers", we add the neuter plural definite ending -in, giving us blómin.
Why doesn't the adjective falleg have a plural ending like "-ir" or "-ar"?
Adjectives must match the gender of the noun they describe. Because blóm is a neuter noun, we need the neuter plural form of the adjective fallegur (beautiful). For neuter words, the plural adjective form is actually falleg! It looks exactly like the feminine singular form, but here it is doing a different job.
If the word blóm looks the same in both singular and plural, how can we tell this sentence is plural?
You can spot the plural from three different clues in this sentence! The verb eru means "are" (plural), the definite ending -in in blómin is specifically for neuter plural nouns, and the adjective falleg (instead of the singular fallegt) confirms we are talking about more than one flower.
Why does the verb Eru come at the very beginning of the sentence?
Just like in English, you can turn a basic statement into a yes/no question by moving the verb to the front. The statement would be Blómin eru falleg (The flowers are beautiful), so swapping the first two words gives us the question Eru blómin falleg?.

Learn Eru blómin falleg and more in Icelandic

All course content and exercises are completely free — no paywalls, no trial periods, no signup needed.

  • ✓ Practice with interactive exercises
  • ✓ Track your progress with spaced repetition
  • ✓Learn at your own pace — completely free
Start learning Icelandic →