Breakdown of Skólinn er lokaður í maí og júní.
vera
to be
og
and
skólinn
the school
lokaður
closed
í
in / into / to (before the hour, in telling time) / per (in frequency expressions)
maí
May
júní
June
Questions & Answers about Skólinn er lokaður í maí og júní.
Why are maí and júní not capitalized?
In Icelandic, the names of the months—along with days of the week, languages, and nationalities—are always written with lowercase letters, unless they are the very first word of a sentence.
Do month names change their endings depending on their role in the sentence?
For the most part, no! Month names like maí and júní do not change their spellings in the accusative or dative cases. This means when you use prepositions like í (in), the month looks exactly like it does in the dictionary. They only take a special ending in the genitive (possessive) case.
Why does the word for "closed" (lokaður) end in -ur here?
Because adjectives in Icelandic must match the noun they describe. Skólinn (the school) is a masculine, singular noun in the nominative case, so the adjective takes the masculine singular ending -ur. If you were talking about a neuter noun like húsið (the house), you would drop the ending: húsið er lokað.
How does the word skólinn break down?
The base noun is skóli, which means "school". In Icelandic, the word for "the" is typically attached directly to the end of the noun as a suffix. Adding -nn gives us skólinn, meaning "the school".
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