Word
Verkefnið er í tveimur skrefum.
Meaning
The project is in two steps.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of Verkefnið er í tveimur skrefum.
vera
to be
í
in / into / to (before the hour, in telling time) / per (in frequency expressions)
tveir
two
verkefnið
the assignment
Questions & Answers about Verkefnið er í tveimur skrefum.
Why is the number two written as tveimur instead of the normal tvö?
The preposition í (in) requires the words that follow it to be in the dative case when describing a state or location. The number two changes its form based on the case, and tveimur is the dative form.
Since the word for step (skref) is neuter, shouldn't the number match its gender?
Why does skrefum end in -um?
Because there are two steps, the word must be plural. The preposition í forces it into the dative case. In Icelandic, the dative plural ending for almost all nouns is -um.
What is the -ð at the end of Verkefnið?
It is the definite article, meaning "the". The base noun for project is verkefni. Since Icelandic attaches "the" to the end of the noun, and verkefni ends in a vowel, it simply takes the ending -ð to become "the project".