Word
Þetta er söguleg dagsetning í október.
Meaning
This is a historical date in October.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of Þetta er söguleg dagsetning í október.
þetta
this
vera
to be
í
in / into / to (before the hour, in telling time) / per (in frequency expressions)
október
October
Questions & Answers about Þetta er söguleg dagsetning í október.
Why do we use í before október?
When talking about things happening in a specific month, Icelandic uses the preposition í. This works exactly like using the word in for months in English, making month expressions quite straightforward to remember.
Why is október written with a lowercase letter?
In Icelandic, names of months, days of the week, and seasons are always written with lowercase letters. You only capitalize them if they happen to be the very first word of a sentence.
Why is the word for historical söguleg instead of sögulegur?
Adjectives must match the gender of the noun they describe. The word for date, dagsetning, is a feminine noun, so the adjective drops the masculine -ur ending and takes the feminine form söguleg.
Since dagsetning is a feminine noun, why does the sentence start with the neuter pronoun Þetta?
When you are broadly introducing or pointing something out by saying this is or that is, Icelandic always uses the fixed neuter phrase Þetta er. You do not change the pronoun to match the gender of the noun that comes later in the sentence.