Breakdown of Mágkona mín hefur aldrei hitt guðföður þinn.
hitta
to meet
minn
my (m, f, n: minn, mín, mitt)
þinn
your (m, f, n: þinn, þín, þitt)
aldrei
never
hafa
to have
mágkonan
the sister-in-law
guðfaðirinn
the godfather
Questions & Answers about Mágkona mín hefur aldrei hitt guðföður þinn.
Why is it Mágkona mín and not Mágkonan mín?
This is the main focus of this lesson! Words for close family members (kinship terms) usually drop the definite article when they are used with a possessive pronoun. So, instead of adding the article to make it Mágkonan mín, we just use the bare noun Mágkona followed by mín.
Why does the word for godfather change to guðföður instead of staying guðfaðir?
The verb hitta (to meet) forces the person being met into the accusative case. The core word faðir (father) is irregular and changes to föður in the accusative, dative, and genitive cases. Therefore, the compound word guðfaðir becomes guðföður here.
Since guðföður is in the accusative case, why doesn't the pronoun þinn change?
It actually has changed, but it just looks exactly the same! The pronoun must agree with the noun's case, gender, and number. For the masculine singular pronouns minn, þinn, and sinn, the nominative and accusative forms happen to be identical. So þinn here is formally the masculine accusative singular.
Why do we use the form hitt instead of að hitta?
This is the supine form of the verb hitta (to meet). Whenever you use the auxiliary verb hafa (here conjugated as hefur) to say that someone "has done" something, the main verb must be in this special supine form, just like "has met" in English.
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