Breakdown of Hér er bakarinn sem er mjög hjálpsamur.
vera
to be
hér
here
mjög
very
bakarinn
the baker
sem
who / which / that
hjálpsamur
helpful
Questions & Answers about Hér er bakarinn sem er mjög hjálpsamur.
Why do we use sem for "who" instead of a question word like hver?
In Icelandic, sem is a connecting word (a relative pronoun) used to mean "who," "which," or "that" when describing a noun in a sentence. You only use hver when you are asking an actual question.
How does bakarinn get its "the" ending?
The base word for a baker is bakari. To say "the baker," we add the masculine definite article ending -nn directly to the end of the word, giving us bakarinn.
Why does the adjective hjálpsamur end in -ur?
Adjectives must agree with the noun they describe. Because bakarinn is a masculine, singular noun acting as the subject (nominative case), the adjective for "helpful" takes the matching masculine singular ending -ur.
Since this lesson focuses on location, does hér always translate to "here"?
Hér is used specifically for a fixed location, like pointing out where the baker is standing right now. If you were talking about movement towards a place, like telling someone to "come here", you would use the motion word hingað instead.
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