Breakdown of Hjúkrunarfræðingurinn þrífur sár sjúklingsins.
þrífa
to clean
sjúklingurinn
the patient
hjúkrunarfræðingurinn
the nurse
sárið
the wound
Questions & Answers about Hjúkrunarfræðingurinn þrífur sár sjúklingsins.
How do we get the ending -sins in sjúklingsins?
The base word is the masculine noun sjúklingur (patient). To say "the patient's" or "of the patient", we need the genitive case. The genitive singular of sjúklingur is sjúklings. When we make it definite ("the" patient), we add the definite genitive article -ins, giving us sjúklingsins.
Why does sjúklingsins come after sár instead of before it, like in English?
In Icelandic, possession usually comes after the thing being owned. So instead of saying "the patient's wound" like in English, Icelandic phrases it as "wound the patient's" (sár sjúklingsins).
Why doesn't sár have a definite ending here, since we are talking about a specific wound?
When a noun is followed by a genitive possessor like sjúklingsins, the owned object (sár) almost always drops its definite article. Even though we translate it as "the patient's wound" or "the wound of the patient", the word sár stays in its indefinite form.
Hjúkrunarfræðingurinn is a massive word! How is it built?
It is a compound word. The first part is hjúkrunar (the genitive form of hjúkrun, meaning "nursing"). The second part is fræðingur (meaning "specialist" or "scholar"), followed by the definite article -inn (the). Literally, it translates to "the nursing specialist".
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