Breakdown of Strákurinn er sterkari en maðurinn.
vera
to be
strákurinn
the boy
maðurinn
the man
sterkur
strong / spicy, hot (of food)
en
than
Questions & Answers about Strákurinn er sterkari en maðurinn.
How do we get sterkari from the basic adjective for strong?
The basic word for strong is sterkur. To make it comparative (stronger), you drop the regular ending -ur and add -ari. This -ari suffix is the standard way to form comparative adjectives in Icelandic.
Would sterkari change if we were talking about a girl (stelpan) instead of a boy?
No, and that makes comparative adjectives much easier to use! Unlike basic adjectives that change to match gender, comparative adjectives ending in -ari stay exactly the same for masculine, feminine, and neuter nouns in the nominative case.
Doesn't the word en usually mean but?
It often does! You have probably seen en used to mean but in earlier lessons. However, whenever it is used in a comparison with a comparative adjective like sterkari, it translates to than.
Why is maðurinn in the nominative case here?
When you compare two things using en (than), they both need to be in the same grammatical case. Because the boy (strákurinn) is the subject of the sentence and in the nominative case, the man (maðurinn) must also be in the nominative case.
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