Breakdown of Ég var leiður í skólanum í gær.
vera
to be
ég
I
skólinn
the school
í
in / into / to (before the hour, in telling time) / per (in frequency expressions)
í gær
yesterday
leiður
sad
Questions & Answers about Ég var leiður í skólanum í gær.
Since this lesson is about the past tense of 'vera', why do we use var here?
The word var is the simple past tense of vera (to be) for the pronouns 'I', 'he', 'she', and 'it'. Because the subject is Ég (I), we use var. If the subject were plural, like 'we', you would use vorum instead.
Why does the adjective leiður end in -ur? Does it change if a woman is speaking?
In Icelandic, adjectives change to match the gender of the person they describe. The -ur ending on leiður tells us that the speaker is male. If a woman were speaking, she would drop the ending and say Ég var leið.
Why is the word for school skólanum and not just skóli?
The ending -num does two jobs here. First, the preposition í (meaning 'in' or 'at' a location) forces the noun into the dative case. Second, it has the definite article ('the') attached to the end of it. So while skóli is 'a school', í skólanum means 'at the school'.
Why does the word í appear twice in this sentence?
They belong to two completely different phrases! The first í means 'at' and connects to the school. The second one is a built-in part of the fixed phrase í gær, which simply means 'yesterday'. You will often see í used in time expressions where it doesn't translate literally to 'in' or 'at'.
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