Word
Skiptineminn er heima hjá okkur í kvöld.
Meaning
The exchange student is at our place tonight.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Lesson
Breakdown of Skiptineminn er heima hjá okkur í kvöld.
vera
to be
heima
at home
við
we
í
in / into / to (before the hour, in telling time) / per (in frequency expressions)
Questions & Answers about Skiptineminn er heima hjá okkur í kvöld.
Why is okkur used after hjá?
The preposition hjá requires the following pronoun or noun to be in the dative case. okkur is the dative form of við (we). In this context, hjá okkur translates to "at our place" or "with us".
Is heima necessary here, or could we just say hjá okkur?
You could just say hjá okkur, which means "with us" or "at our place". However, adding heima (at home) to make the phrase heima hjá is the most common and natural way to specifically say "at someone's house" in Icelandic.
How is the word skiptineminn (the exchange student) built?
It is a compound word made of skipti (exchange) and nemi (student or learner). Because it is the subject of the sentence, it is in the nominative case. The -nn at the very end is the attached definite article, making it "the" exchange student instead of just "an" exchange student.
I know kvöld means evening. Why does í kvöld translate to tonight?
Icelandic uses the preposition í (in) plus certain time words to refer to the current or upcoming time. Just like í dag means today, í kvöld is the standard fixed phrase for tonight or this evening.