# Icelandic: Definite Article



## Alxmrphi

From this page : http://www.samkoma.com/mimir/mimart.htm#decline

There is this entry:



> Singular
> 
> M		F		N
> 
> N	hinn		hin		hið
> A	hinn		hina		hið
> D	hinum		hinni		hinu
> G	hins		hinnar		hins
> 
> 
> Plural
> 
> M		F		N
> 
> N	hinir		hinar		hin
> A	hina		hinar		hin
> D	hinum		hinum		hinum
> G	hinna		hinna		hinna



M F N I know are Masculine, Singular and Neuter, but what are the 
letters down the side? What do they represent?


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## Joannes

They represent cases: nominative, accusative, dative and genitive


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## Alxmrphi

> *Nominative*
> 
> Nominative case is simply a fancy name for the subject of a sentence. Consider the sentence:
> 
> The dog bit the boy.
> 
> The subject of the sentence is the dog. It's the part of the sentence that is performing the action (verb). Therefore we say that "The dog" is in nominative case.


How can the subject of the sentence be a definite article?



> *Accusative*
> 
> Accusative is also a fancy name for the object of a sentence. The object receives the action from the verb. So in our sentence above, the boy is the object.



Same question here and for the other two cases, I know I am very uneducated on Icelandic grammar but everywhere I start seems to have a leap that I just have to know something else, so I want to work on the definite article first, but I really don't understand how the definite article can be in a nominative/dative/accusative/genetive case?


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## Lemminkäinen

Alex_Murphy said:


> How can the subject of the sentence be a definite article?



Not *only* the definite article, but def. article + noun.

As in:

*The horse* ran.

Which would be:

*Hestur-inn* [ran]

In the accusative, it would be like this:

I rode *the horse*

_ [rode] *hest-inn*

I don't know Icelandic, so I couldn't translate the things in brackets. The main point is just that the definite article is used together with a noun, and *both the article and the noun* are in the required case._


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## Alxmrphi

Oh so the definite article _*combines and follows*_ the noun/pronoun that can be the object/subject/possesive thing, I see!

I scrolled down on the page and found the "Postpositive use", which explains what you're talking about:



> The Definite Article follows the noun when:
> The noun has no adjective, or
> The adjective follows the noun.
> Masculine
> 
> S		P
> 
> N	hestur-inn		hestar-nir
> A	hest-inn		hesta-na
> D	hesti-num		hestu-num
> G	hests-ins		hesta-nna



And I can see, with the word horse, and with no adjective, then it qualifies for the postpositive use, and there we go "hest-inn" like you said.


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## Alxmrphi

So using "the" plus "horses" in a dative case would be:

_ [gave] [it] *hestu-num* ? ("to" implied by the fact it is the dative case)

Right?_


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## Lemminkäinen

That sounds correct to me, yes.

If you wanted to say: "I gave it to the strong horses", it'd be:

_ [gave] [it] hinum [sterki-pl.D.] [hestur-pl.D.]_


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## Alxmrphi

I see, are your "-pl D." additions shown there to mean whatever has to be changed to fit the number and gender etc?

But generally, I understood, noun has an adjective, so has an independant definite article that preceeds the noun and it is plural in the dative case, and the adjective and noun that follows are two seperate words.

Yeah makes sense, you've cleared a lot of this up for me, thanks!


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## Lemminkäinen

Alex_Murphy said:


> I see, are your "-pl D." additions shown there to mean whatever has to be changed to fit the number and gender etc?



That's right; they need to be in the dative plural, and as I don't know Icelandic, I wouldn't know what that is  

Anyway, glad I helped clear it up, and hope I didn't say anything that turned out to be wrong.


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