Breakdown of Lögreglan er að hjálpa henni vegna slyssins.
vera
to be
hún
she
að
to (infinitive marker)
hjálpa
to help
lögreglan
the police
slysið
the accident
vegna
because of
Questions & Answers about Lögreglan er að hjálpa henni vegna slyssins.
Why does the Icelandic word for the accident end in -sins?
The preposition vegna (because of) is one of the prepositions in Icelandic that forces the following noun into the genitive case. The base word is the neuter noun slys (accident). To make it definite (the accident) in the genitive case, it gets the ending -sins, becoming slyssins.
Wait, does not slys just add an -s in the genitive? Where did the extra -sins come from?
You might be thinking of the indefinite genitive! The indefinite genitive is just slyss (of an accident). But here we want the definite form (the accident). For neuter words, the definite article in the genitive case is -ins. So, slyss plus -ins becomes slyssins.
Why is the pronoun henni (her) in the dative case here?
In Icelandic, certain verbs demand that their object be in a specific case. The verb að hjálpa (to help) always requires its object to be in the dative case. That is why we use the dative form henni instead of the accusative form hana.
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