Questions & Answers about Kaffið er svart og teið er heitt.
Do we need to change the word order in the second half of the sentence after og?
No, the word order stays exactly the same. Og (and) is a coordinating conjunction, which means it simply glues two complete sentences together without altering them. The second part, teið er heitt, keeps its normal Subject-Verb order just like the first part.
Why are the adjectives svart and heitt instead of svartur and heitur?
Adjectives in Icelandic must match the gender of the noun they describe. Both kaffi (coffee) and te (tea) are neuter nouns. Because of this, we drop the masculine endings you might have learned first and use the neuter forms of the adjectives: svart (black) and heitt (hot).
Where is the word for 'the' in this sentence?
Icelandic doesn't use a separate word for 'the' like English does. Instead, it gets attached as a suffix to the end of the noun. Because kaffi and te are neuter nouns that end in a vowel, we just add -ð to make them kaffið (the coffee) and teið (the tea).