Questions & Answers about Kötturinn fer oft til Önnu.
Why is Anna's name spelled Önnu in this sentence?
The preposition til (to) requires the noun following it to be in the genitive case, which we are learning to use for destinations. For female names ending in -a, the genitive form almost always changes that ending to -u.
I see the ending changed to -u, but why did the first letter change to Ö?
This happens because of a very common Icelandic spelling rule called the U-shift. When a word gets a -u ending, an a in the main part of the word usually changes to an ö. That is why Anna becomes Önnu.
How does kötturinn mean 'the cat'?
In Icelandic, 'the' is not a separate word that comes before the noun. Instead, it gets attached to the end. The base word for 'a cat' is köttur, and the ending -inn acts as 'the', making it kötturinn.
Why is the word order fer oft (goes often) instead of 'oft fer' (often goes)?
In simple Icelandic sentences, the verb prefers to be in the second position. Because of this, adverbs like oft (often) generally come right after the verb, which is the opposite of how we usually say it in English!
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