# Icelandic: Genitive



## Alxmrphi

Hæ,

I have a question about the genitive, and the amount I have tried to read about grammar in this annoyingly complicated language has been a lot recently, and I can't even focus sometimes on the most basic of questions!

When a word is in the genitive, like "John's shoe", "Kyle's paper plate", or "Susan's wig", whatever it is.

The person to which the noun belongs would be in the genitive, but what about the other word?

The example I am talking about is from a previous chapter in my book which has "*miðbæ Reykjavíkur"*, translating as "Reykjavik's city centre / The city centre of Reykjavik"

I know the feminine noun "*Reykjavík*" is irregular in the genitive, (something that confused me even more before I found it out), because most of the genitive endings are in "*-s*" like in English.

So the genitive ending for *Reykjavík* is *Reykjavíkur*, but the noun for "city centre" (miðbær) has the last letter taken off.

When I tried to look up the declension of masculine strong nouns (ones that don't end in *-i*) I still saw that other words that ended in *-r* still had an *-s* to show that they had been declined into the genitive.

My question is, what happens to the noun that belongs to the posessor, does it just take it's stem and use that, or does it get declined into a different case, maybe the dative, or is this just another irregularity?

To sum up the question:

Reyjkavík - Reykjavik
Miðbær - City Centre

*Miðbæ* Reykjavíkur - Reykjavik's city centre

Reykjavik -> Reykjavikur = Moves to genitive, to show posession
Miðbær -> Miðbæ = *What has happened here?*

Thanks for the help.


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## TarisWerewolf

The noun that's possessed is put into whatever case is required in the sentence. So, for example, "In Reykjavík's city centre" would be "í miðbæ Reykjavíkur" (with miðbaær in the dative). "of Reykjavík's city centre" would be "miðbæjar Reykjavíkur" (with miðbær in the genitive)

Let´s take another phrase: Kári's dog -> hundur Kára

Nominative: Kári's dog is black. -> Mamma Kára er kanadísk.
Accusative: I saw Kári's dog. -> Ég sá hund Kára.
Dative: I give Kári's dog fish. -> Ég gef hundi Kára fisk.
Genitive: Kári's dog's name is Bó. -> Nafn hunds Kára er Bó.

So, the Genitive word doesn't change as you change the case of the thing possessed. It's just another noun that modifies the other one. *Miðbær* lacks an ending in the accusative and dative cases, but carries one in the genitive.

Nominative *miðbær*
Accusative *miðbæ*
Dative *miðbæ*
Genitive *miðbæjar* (which is perfectly explainable as miðbæ-ar. It's just the writing out of a natural phonological process)


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## Alxmrphi

TarisWerewolf said:


> Nominative: Kári's dog is black. -> Mamma Kára er kanadísk.
> Accusative: I saw Kári's dog. -> Ég sá hund Kára.
> Dative: I give Kári's dog fish. -> Ég gef hundi Kára fisk.
> Genitive: Kári's dog's name is Bó. -> Nafn hunds Kára er Bó.



Ok so the noun that is posessed would be the same without a posessor in a normal sentence, if you took out the genitive word (Like Kára in your example) the words being posessed would still be the same?  /  *?

*The second thing is, I think you made a mistake in the nominative example, you have "dog" in the English but "mamma" in the Icelandic, right?

Ahh, those examples really helped, seeing the direct object with the verbs and the indirect object dative etc.

The only thing that is making me think something is missing, is, when you use the posessive genitive, I thought you needed an article to go with it, the definite article.

It's not used for most of the family but for words like "wife/kona" you'd use it, *konan mín - My wife*.

So shouldn't the examples be:

 Nominative: Kári's dog is black. -> Hundur*inn* Kára er kanadísk.
 Accusative: I saw Kári's dog. -> Ég sá hund*inn* Kára.
 Dative: I give Kári's dog fish. -> Ég gef hundi*num* Kára fisk.
 Genitive: Kári's dog's name is Bó. -> Nafn hund*ins* Kára er Bó.

??
Thanks for the help again, it made a lot of things click in my head!


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## TarisWerewolf

Alex_Murphy said:


> Ok so the noun that is posessed would be the same without a posessor in a normal sentence, if you took out the genitive word (Like Kára in your example) the words being posessed would still be the same?  /  *?*


* 


*


> The second thing is, I think you made a mistake in the nominative example, you have "dog" in the English but "mamma" in the Icelandic, right?


  

I just realized this now. I was a bit tired last night, and my original example was Kari's mother, not Kari's dog... then I realized that "mamma" doesn't change between the Accusative, Dative and Genitive. So I changed it to a noun that did have different endings.



> The only thing that is making me think something is missing, is, when you use the posessive genitive, I thought you needed an article to go with it, the definite article.
> 
> 
> So shouldn't the examples be:





> Nominative: Kári's dog is black. -> Hundur*inn* Kára er svartur.
> Accusative: I saw Kári's dog. -> Ég sá hund*inn* Kára.
> Dative: I give Kári's dog fish. -> Ég gef hundi*num* Kára fisk.
> Genitive: Kári's dog's name is Bó. -> Nafn hund*ins* Kára er Bó.
> 
> ??
> Thanks for the help again, it made a lot of things click in my head!



No problemo, and you're probably right about the articles. Again, I'd just gotten home from a long, boring day at work, so a lot of things weren't processing right in my head.

Taris


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## Alxmrphi

Hahaaha absolutely no problem, I'm just so happy there is someone here that has an insight and a good manner of explaining the seemingly inexplicable Icelandic grammar.

Normally in long boring days my mind drifts to grammar questions and I like to test myself on what I know and what I have tried to memorise recently and when I get home I usually dash right to here to ask a load of questions that I have thought about throughout the long and boring day.

In a bit I would like to try three sets of examples like the ones you have set out for me and see if I can write any coherant Icelandic, would it be ok if you checked it for me? 

Thanks a lot!


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## Alxmrphi

I have a similar question based on the same thing about words that qualify other words and what they've been changed in to

Fullur - full (adj)
Nafn - name (neuter noun)

Hvað heitirðu fullu nafni? - What's your full name?
(lit. What are called you full name)

Ok.. neuter nouns that don't end in -a are called strong neuter nouns and "nafn" here is "nafni" so my book says it has been changed to the dative case.

The logic of why it needs to be in the dative doesn't make sense to me, can anyone explain it?

As for what's going on to change "fullur" to "fullu" I have absolutely no idea.


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## TarisWerewolf

Alex_Murphy said:


> I have a similar question based on the same thing about words that qualify other words and what they've been changed in to
> 
> Fullur - full (adj)
> Nafn - name (neuter noun)
> 
> Hvað heitirðu fullu nafni? - What's your full name?
> (lit. What are called you full name)
> 
> Ok.. neuter nouns that don't end in -a are called strong neuter nouns and "nafn" here is "nafni" so my book says it has been changed to the dative case.
> 
> The logic of why it needs to be in the dative doesn't make sense to me, can anyone explain it?
> 
> As for what's going on to change "fullur" to "fullu" I have absolutely no idea.



I believe what's happening is that Icelandic says "What are you called *for a full name?*" 

And you're right about *nafn* becoming *nafni*. *Fullur*, being an adjective, is just changing to agree with *nafn*. *Nafn* is neuter and is used here in its dative form, *nafni*. Fullur is in its neuter dative form too: *fullu*.


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## Alxmrphi

I looked for that but my book has no mention of the neuter form of an adjective being "fullu", they all end in -um, I'll have to try more sources to find out about it.

Sorry to not get it but what exactly about "for a full name" has a correspondance with the dative, it seems to me to have as much in common with the genitive or accusative?


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## TarisWerewolf

Alex_Murphy said:


> I looked for that but my book has no mention of the neuter form of an adjective being "fullu", they all end in -um, I'll have to try more sources to find out about it.
> 
> Sorry to not get it but what exactly about "for a full name" has a correspondance with the dative, it seems to me to have as much in common with the genitive or accusative?



The declension for "fullur, full, fullt" in the neuter looks like this:

N  fullt  full
A  fullt  full
D  fullu  fullum
G  fulls  fullra

And the dative is usually used to express "for" or "to". I suspect it's just an idiomatic use of the dative.


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## Alxmrphi

I need to start thinking more in that way, but it's so hard before someone explains it to you!!

Is there a place you check the declensions or do you just know them? If there is a place I can check, fancy sharing the secret?


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## TarisWerewolf

I think I gave it to you in another post, but here it is again:
Icelandic online dictionary

It shows a lot of idiomatic phrases, and you can click on a button (that never loads for me, but the ALT text is there) to view the declension paradigm for most words. Adjectives are shown in the masculine, feminine and neuter, strong and weak declension, and with the fully-declined comparative and superlative. It's a good site.


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## Alxmrphi

Only in my brand spanking new version of firefox that I've ignored for months can I now see the "Paradigm available" option which gives me the option to see how it is declined, I didn't ever get that option with the old version I used to use.


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