Breakdown of Húsið er hvítt og bíllinn er nýr.
vera
to be
bíllinn
the car
húsið
the house
og
and
nýr
new
hvítur
white
Questions & Answers about Húsið er hvítt og bíllinn er nýr.
Does the word og count as the first position for the verb-second word order rule?
No, it doesn't. Coordinating conjunctions like og (and), en (but), and eða (or) act like a bridge connecting two independent sentences. They don't count as a position themselves. The second half of this sentence starts a brand new countdown, so the subject bíllinn is in position one, and the verb er is correctly in position two.
Why does the word for white end in a 't' (hvítt), while the word for new ends in an 'r' (nýr)?
In Icelandic, adjectives must match the gender of the noun they describe. Hús (house) is a neuter noun, so its adjective takes the neuter form hvítt. Bíll (car) is a masculine noun, so its adjective takes the masculine form nýr.
Why does hvítt have two 't's at the end?
The standard dictionary form of the word white is hvítur. To make the neuter form, we drop the masculine -ur ending and add a -t. Because the root word (hvít-) already ends in a 't', adding the neuter -t gives us the double consonant in hvítt.
I don't see a separate word for 'the' here. How do we know it means 'the house' and 'the car'?
Icelandic usually doesn't use a separate word for 'the'. Instead, it attaches an ending directly to the end of the noun. For the neuter word hús, we add -ið to get húsið (the house). For the masculine word bíll, we add -inn to get bíllinn (the car).
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