# Icelandic - Grammatical Cases



## draugurinn

Hæ hæ,

Ég er að læra íslensku!

I'm starting to learn Icelandic and am very confused about the grammar. My biggest question is grammatical cases. This is Dative, Nominative, Accusative, and Genitive. I do not know any other languages besides English and this is baffling me because I have never encountered cases before.

My biggest question is-- *how do I know when to use dative, nominative, accusative, or genitive? *Hjálp!

Takk.


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## hanne

First of all, let me say it's brave to start out learning your first foreign language without having a teacher. Whether it's adviseable, I'm not sure...

Where are you learning from? I'm guessing icelandic.hi.is? What do they have to say about it? (I might have read it once, but I don't remember) If you follow their lessons, I'd expect case to be introduced gradually, as needed.

You're generally better off asking quite specific questions on this forum, and the way I read your question it's inviting to a very long reply .

Have you tried other sources, like the wikipedia article on cases? (I didn't read it in detail, but it seems to give the general idea)

Finally, to try and give a short answer to your question after all of the above, case is often decided by the use of prepositions, or by the verbs you use, so looking at these would tell you what to use in a given situation.


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## Outsider

In English cases would be generally expressed with small words (prepositions) which relate nouns. Veeery roughly (because there will be plenty of exceptions and idioms to learn):


Nominative is the neutral form of a noun, used as the subject of a verb, and in isolation.

Accusative is used as the direct object of a verb, the thing or being acted upon.

Dative is used as another kind of object, the recipient of some action. (In English you use the preposition _to_ for this: to me, to you, to him, to James, etc.)

Genitive stands for the source of something of someone, in English denoted by one of the prepositions _from_ or _of_: Robin of Locksley, a friend of mine, etc.


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## Södertjej

Outsider said:


> Genitive stands for the source of something of someone, in English denoted by one of the prepositions _from_ or _of_: Robin of Locksley, a friend of mine, etc.


Genitive is one of the few examples of cases in English, this is, adding an ending to the end of a word to express its function in the sentence. When you learn English as a foreign language you learn it is called Saxon genitive: 's

Ann*'s* mother

In other languages you simply use more endings to express other cases.


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## Outsider

According to linguists, the _'s_ is a clitic of possession, rather than a genitive inflection. But I agree that it can be used as an example to give a rough idea of the genitive.


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## Södertjej

According to what I learned it is (at least was) called Saxon genitive and I was just trying to make a simple comparison for a beginner so that the OP can see there's something similar to cases in her own language, which is always something useful when starting to learn your first foreing language. It's not used only for possession anyway, like "today's show".

If the OP doesn't know what cases are I don't think she will be familiar with the differences between clictic of possession and genitive inflection. Both are "an ending" added to a word to express its function, which is what the OP is struggling to understand, so I hope this simple comparison will be useful for the OP even if it's not a very detailed explanation. Probably not what she's trying to get at this stage of learning.


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## hanne

Outsider said:


> [*]Dative is used as another kind of object, the recipient of some action. (In English you use the preposition _to_ for this: to me, to you, to him, to James, etc.)


If Icelandic is anything like German, which it is iirc, then the dative case is used for a lot more than just "recipients" (which would give the impression that it's not used very often).


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## Outsider

Södertjej said:


> If the OP doesn't know what cases are I don't think she will be familiar with the differences between clictic of possession and genitive inflection. Both are "an ending" added to a word to express its function [...]


The thing is that clitics attach to phrases, rather than individual words. That's the difference between a clitic and an ending (a suffix). But I agree that this is probably too much information for the OP.


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## Sepia

draugurinn said:


> Hæ hæ,
> 
> Ég er að læra íslensku!
> 
> I'm starting to learn Icelandic and am very confused about the grammar. My biggest question is grammatical cases. This is Dative, Nominative, Accusative, and Genitive. I do not know any other languages besides English and this is baffling me because I have never encountered cases before.
> 
> My biggest question is-- *how do I know when to use dative, nominative, accusative, or genitive? *Hjálp!
> 
> Takk.


 
Are you at all familiar with grammatical terminology - if not, the answers you are going to get are probably not doing much good.

Normally your grammar book should give info about what you are asking, but in general, without being specific about the language

nominative is for generic use of nouns and for subjects 
accusative is for direct objects
genitive is for genitive like you'd use in English - for marking possession
dative is for indirect objects.

However, prepositions also trigger certain cases - it is like that in a lot of languages, so I suppose it also is in Icelandic because it is very basic Germanic language.

I don't see any problem in learning languages without a teacher if one is creative and a good researcher. Sometimes it is even better that way. But if your grammar book does not really tell what the cases are for rather than just stating that they exist, that book is probably what you should use as a fire-starter and get a better one. If you are really serious about learning on your own and you are not really into grammatical theory at all, yet, I suggest you spend some time studying the theory of English grammar. In this way you'll get used to understanding how grammar is described and what they are trying to tell you, because you know the language very well already (supposedly - you probably cannot imagine how much you can learn about your native language by studying a foreign language. Because, like I said, you'll need to become a good researcher if you want to learn on your own.


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## draugurinn

> First of all, let me say it's brave to start out learning your first foreign language without having a teacher. Whether it's adviseable, I'm not sure...
> 
> Where are you learning from? I'm guessing icelandic.hi.is? What do they have to say about it? (I might have read it once, but I don't remember) If you follow their lessons, I'd expect case to be introduced gradually, as needed.


Já, I'm learning with that site. I also have a book. I don't think there is anyone near me who could help me learn Icelandic, although that would be nice. When I click the sidelink where I think it will explain this it never loads on that site.

I scoured this book again and it _does_ mention that if you use _um_ (about) it takes the accusative. And the charts for strong feminine nouns and weak and such are scattered *everywhere*. I think if I copy all these down in one place it would be a lot easier for me. 

This is slowly piecing together. I think I need a better book. Anyway, thank you for the explanations. I'll also copy those down. If I study enough sentences this will become more clear, perhaps? I keep thinking I should have learned an easy language first.  

Takk.


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## Södertjej

draugurinn said:


> If I study enough sentences this will become more clear, perhaps? I keep thinking I should have learned an easy language first.


Few languages are as simple as English, I mean grammar, not spelling, so it's a good suggestion to learn the basic grammar terms so that you can understand what you're learning. 

Only kids learn a language just by listening, so it can be very frustrating if you keep on trying hoping to get something when your mother tongue has a very different and more simple structure. But if you know the right terminology, it will help you understand. Just a thought. And good luck!


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## Alxmrphi

Hi,

Hopefully I might be able to help, I was in the same boat as you really not that long ago, I do have a knowledge of Italian but that couldn’t really help me with Icelandic (in all my years of Italian I had never heard of nominative / accusative / dative though I had heard genitive (as part of English’s ‘Saxon Genitive’) but basically it was like a plain English native speaker (which I am) learning from scratch.

I spent months and months and months trying to get my head around it and it eventually started to click, I couldn’t think of a way of learning that was riddled with more problems / barriers so I did overcome it by taking EVERYTHING and analysing it and re-analysing it and I gave up a good few times so hopefully my experience can be helpful to you.

The thing with Icelandic is, there is not a set method to learn it’s grammar, with Italian nearly every website accepts the broad facts of some concepts of grammar and presents them grouped in the same way (different types of verbs, some that take –isc- in a stem and the genders of nouns, then talk about the irregularities).

My experience with Icelandic is, most books and websites treat it their own way, so if in one book you have someone saying a verb is from “Group 2”, that might be “Group 3” in another book or “Group 5” on another website so it’s really not helpful at all.

Another problem I experienced was the simplification, Icelandic is a notoriously difficult language to learn and many books ‘dumb-down’ the grammar and make you think you have achieved something, then they pile on a new level of grammar so they see it as an easy ‘introduction’ to the language, this was the biggest problem for me, what made me give up is the accomplishment I felt when learning something, then realising everything I had learnt wasn’t true and there were many many other things going on that meant I had to completely re-think how I saw its structure, personally for me what I wanted was for someone in an easy way to say “This is everything Icelandic has….” and present it in a way that covered all the exceptions (so when I ran into them I already expected to come across them) instead of me going “What is going on?? I thought I had learnt all this, why is this so different???”

So if we just stick to the cases aspect of grammar now, hopefully the posts above have made a lot of sense in explaining about what each case identifies, just to make it clearer I am going to write some English sentences and colour-code them so you can see the function.

Nominative (subject)
Accusative (direct object (receiver of direct action of a verb))
Dative (indirect object (receiver of an indirect action / recipient))
Genitive (possession case)

(‘dative’ by the way is a lot more vast than that, this is just for basic explanations)

The cat bit the dog.
Mark gave Sandrathe letter.
Bill told me that Mark sent the parcelto China.
The languageof the higher classes is more formal than the rest.
Bill’s pet[The petof Bill] is angry.

*Note* : Although ‘Sandra’ looks like an accusative, in English the letter is given to her so it’s a ‘to + someone’ which is dative.

Anyway, I hope that has cleared more than it has confuded.
Icelandic has 74 classes of nouns in total (don’t panic!)
There are ‘strong nouns’ and ‘weak nouns’, the weak ones are nice, they’re very regular and not a problem.

Icelandic has 3 genders, Masculine, Feminine, Neuter, each one of these have subgroups of strong / weak nouns.

The masculine group has 3 sets of strong nouns (there is a 4th but it only consists of about 8 words) and it has 3 sets of weak nouns. Basically all the nouns within each gender group behave similarly so it’s just the way they are formed in the genitive singular and nominative plural that define them.

For example if we look at the masculine subgroup of strong nouns, let’s look at a noun from each type:

*Singular*
_Nominative: diskur (plate)_
_Accusative: disk_
_Dative: diski_
_Genitive: disk*s*_

*Plural:*
_Nominative: disk*ar*_
_Accusative: diska_
_Dative: diskum_
_Genitive: diska_

So this word has this declension pattern, notice the bold, the ending in the genitive singular and the nominative plural, it is (s, ar) and this is how you will see words in the dictionary (see example) so this is what I label as Group 1 (strong) in the masculine gender.

Now here are the other two:

*Singular*
_Nominative: glæpur (crime)_
_Accusative: glæp_
_Dative: glæp_
_Genitive: glæp*s*_

*Plural:*
_Nominative: glæp*ir*_
_Accusative:. glæpi_
_Dative: .......glæpi_
_Genitive: ......glæpa_
……………………………………….. (s, ir)

*Singular*
Nominative: ávöxtur (fruit)
Accusative: ávöxt
Dative: ......ávexti
Genitive: ....ávaxt*ar*

*Plural:*
Nominative: ávext*ir*
Accusative: ávexti
Dative:...... ávöxtum
Genitive: ....ávaxta
……………………………………… (ar, ir)

The last group is subject to regular vowel shifts (it looks random but once you know the rule then you’ll understand exactly what is going on).

So the 3 groups in the masculine strong gender are (s, ar), (s, ir), (ar, ir) and these are the way that they get categorised, but besides that fact, you can see how vastly similar they are, the only differences there are to be spotted is that the dative “glæp” doesn’t end in an –i- but that happens in some of the sub-groups (these differences are what make up the 74 groups, but as you can see an extremely minor difference constitutes a new group.

Anyway now, the weak ones are regular, there are 3 groups but the main words you learn are nearly always in the first 1 or 2 groups.. basically they look like this in the singular

N: sími
A: síma
D: síma
G: síma


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## Alxmrphi

That’s true for all weak masculine nouns, the different groups depend on some vowel shifts and what they do in the plural but they’re very similar (and easy).
I know I have confused you a lot but that’s meant to happen, once you start to map it out it’s a lot easier (I am going to create something to illustrate my point but I don’t have the time right now) because once you see it mapped out you can get a much better idea of it.

That’s how the noun system works for the masculine, and the feminine nouns are the same they just follow a different pattern of rules, the neuter ones are quite regular and not a problem to worry about when it comes to memorising rules.

When you learn a new verb you need to memorise what case it takes, usually if you think it’s just a plain direct object in English it will take the accusative (direct object case) in Icelandic, though there are some tricky exceptions.

For example with ‘to wait for’ (að bíða) it takes the genitive so ‘to wait for a plate’ (random example because we can refer to the example above) or better “I wait (am waiting) for a plate” is “Ég bíð disks”, because you go to the ‘singular dative’ of ‘plate’ because the verb að bíða takes the genitive.

 Like the way in English people memorise the prepositions that go with verbs like “*to wait **for **someone*”.

 If you are confused just ask any questions, I was going to try and explain verbs and some more examples of how nouns change cases depending on the verbs but I haven’t got anymore time, I’m happy to explain anything you’re not sure about!

 - Alex

 _p.s studying sentences without the knowledge of what is going on will only confuse you, there's a lot to take in to understand the grammar before you can start on basic sentences, but once you understand it I guarentee it's worth it!_


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## Sepia

draugurinn said:


> ...I keep thinking I should have learned an easy language first.
> 
> Takk.


 

That would probably be more fun to start with - something easy like Danish or Swedish. However, if you are serious about theoretical grammar you'll have a head start when learning other languages. Which brings me to the next point: Wanting to learn such a complex language that is spoken by such a small group of people must be motivated by something special - or it is really part of a plan ... like wanting to learn several languages that belong to that group. An easier choice would definitely have been Danish or Swedish. If you'd like to tell me why you chose Icelandic, PM me. I surely makes me curious.


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## Pteppic

Alxmrphi said:


> Nominative (subject)
> Accusative (direct object (receiver of direct action of a verb))
> Dative (indirect object (receiver of an indirect action / recipient))
> Genitive (possession case)
> 
> Bill told me that Mark sent the parcelto China



Um, I'm not sure this was the best example sentence. The direct object of "telling" is the information that is communicated (in this case "that Mark sent the parcel to China"). "Me", on the other hand, is the recipient of that information, and thus the indirect object (with the attatched dative case).

Also, within the subordinate clause, unless the parcel is addressed to the Chinese state, China is really the location of the unnamed recipient. Thus, "to China" is an adverbial phrase, not an object, and "China" should be in whatever case is taken by the Icelandic preposition (I'm guessing it's "til", which wikipedia says takes the genitive case). Of course, I don't speak Icelandic, but I've had a fair ammount of exposure to German and Russian, which also have complicated case systems, and the principles seem to be the same across the languages. I still expect someone to come along and point out some embarrassing mistake I've made, though 

Anyway, best of luck to you, draugurinn!


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## Alxmrphi

Yeah I agree, I got mixed up, I just couldn't think of any example sentences and in the end I kind of just thought of something and went with it without really analysing it, I didn't actually realise I put "me" in 'blue', I thought it was orange (but I was rushing).

Regarding the 'China' thing, I couldn't write in Icelandic (it'd be too confusing for the OP) so I was trying to use English as an example (and labelling _functionality_ of Icelandic over it) and I can see your point, in English it's an adverbial phrase, though I don't remember calling it an _object_? I just implied it was in the genitive case (which it would be in Icelandic), since English doesn't have a case system I hoped that would have been understood that I'm not saying "to China" is genitive in English, but it would be in Icelandic. That was the point I was trying to make.



> and "China" should be in whatever case is taken by the Icelandic preposition (I'm guessing it's "til", which wikipedia says takes the genitive case)


Basically I _was_ trying to imply this (through use of English as if it were Icelandic), and I did say it takes the genitive. I should have made that clearer in my post though!

The case systems (though I don't know much about other languages in detail) do seem to be similar across other, what's the word... _synthetic languages _(?) , actually I know nothing about the case system in Russian, I think I saw the alphabet once and I ran for the hills.... though you've made me want to do some reading about it!


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## draugurinn

Alxmrphi said:


> If you are confused just ask any questions, I was going to try and explain verbs and some more examples of how nouns change cases depending on the verbs but I haven’t got anymore time, I’m happy to explain anything you’re not sure about ...


Frábært! Takk!

This has helped a lot. As far as questions go, I'll ask them in this thread but I'm new and have no idea if that's okay to do. If not, you can message me a reply or something, perhaps?

Adjectives. Are these effected in any way by case? I know they change depending on the gender of the person being described and how that is handled... does this apply also to the gender of objects?
_
Tepotturinn er rauður. _(The teapot is red). Since teapot is masculine, it works like that, já eða nei? 

_The cat is talking to the dog._ (Kötturinn er að tala hundinn). (I changed it to að tala simply because I know that verb, even though cats do not talk to dogs).  Since the cat is nominative, the dog is accusative so I would subtract the -ur because the dictionary says it's (-s, ar). -inn is defininite article for singular masculine nouns.

Ókei, and for feminine and neutur nouns. There would be different patterns for these. And basically what you are saying is there is no lesson you have found that shows all these rules/patterns at once? And there is no way to know what category of noun it falls into without memorization and dictionary lookup?



> That would probably be more fun to start with - something easy like Danish or Swedish. ...


I love the way Icelandic looks written out. I also love the way it sounds. All other languages do not seem as special to me. This is why I want to learn Icelandic, even if learning another language like Swedish first would be easier.


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## Alxmrphi

> _The cat is talking to the dog._ (Kötturinn er að tala hundinn). (I changed it to að tala simply because I know that verb, even though cats do not talk to dogs).  Since the cat is nominative, the dog is accusative so I would subtract the -ur because the dictionary says it's (-s, ar). -inn is defininite article for singular masculine nouns.


Great start! You've got the right words for "the cat is talking", but when it comes to "to the dog" it's a bit different, the English word "to" is "til" in Icelandic (which as we saw before takes the genitive case) so what you need now is to take "hundur" and make it "the dog" in the genitive case..

If you looked in a dictionary you would see 'hundur' is masculine, it doesn't end in -i so it's not weak (therefore it is strong), and it falls into the category (s, ar) which is what I call Group 1 masculine strong. The distinction is made by genitive singular and nominative plural, so you can instantly see we need the 's' ending.
So we chop off the ending of the word -ur- so we're left with the stem (hund) and add the genitive ending -s- :

Kötturinn er að tala til hunds.

Now before we go on to the rest I want to address something else you mentioned:


> *-inn is defininite article for singular masculine nouns*.


This is true of the nominative and accusative masculine nouns, but not true of the dative and genitive. If we decline 'hundur' like we did before and I'll add in the definite articles (which are the same for all words in the masculine gender so once you know these you know how it words for all masculine nouns, and a lot of neuter as well as they use some of the same definite articles)

*Singular*
_Nominative: hundur -inn_
_Accusative: hund -inn_
_Dative: hundi -num_
_Genitive: hund*s* -ins_

*Plural:*
_Nominative: hund*ar*_ -nir
_Accusative: hunda_ -na
_Dative: hundum_ -num
_Genitive: hunda_ -nna

So the definite article reflects case as well, so if we're using 'till' which requires the genitive, then we need "hundsins", and you can see what is the genitive form of the noun and what is the genitive definite artilce. There's your correct answer!



> And basically what you are saying is there is no lesson you have found that shows all these rules/patterns at once?


Nope. What I love about Icelandic is its massive detailed complexity, once you've memorised things and they're in your head it is a lot easier but it's so detailed that is what fascinates me about it, I think my experience learning it has been more effective and more challenging than any brain teaser that has ever existed. Something you will come to recognise is, there is method in its madness, you might see a new set of patterns and instantly go "_that's the same as how the definite article is laid out!_" so it's not _as random_ as it seems..



> _
> Tepotturinn er rauður. _(The teapot is red). Since teapot is masculine, it works like that, já eða nei?


Correct 

I'm not sure if you know about this website (I could not learn without it, seriously!) it's here, you need to put in your dictionary form of the word and it gives you its patterns, i.e. if it's a verb it will tell you what the forms are, if it's an adjective then it will give you all the declensions, if it's a noun it will give you the declensions and the articles.

The trouble is though it is all in Icelandic but it's very helpful.
Just to give you an idea (I have to get ready for work soon!) about adjectives I'll add some in to your example above. Basically, you can have a strong declension or a weak declension.

If the noun is in its definite form (with a definite article) then the adjective you use before the noun is declined 'weak' (just like weak nouns, they are easy to remember and similar) but I think it's better to learn the strong declension first, and the strong declension exists in 3 genders and 2 numbers and 4 cases (it's probably the most complicated aspect of Icelandic grammar, adjectives (In my opinion)).

So in 'The cat is talking to the dog' you know the cat is in the nominative and the dog is in the genitive (because of 'til') so if we say there is a red cat and a red dog, look up the adjective 'red' at the site I gave you.... (here) and look in the 'Sterk' box (strong), both words are masculine so you need to look in the *Karlkyn* box (masculine) and we're in the singular so it's only the row on the left.

As we're dealing with strong adjectives we can't have the definite article (remember what I said before?) so the English would be "a red cat is talking to a red dog." so we're leaving out the definite article here:

Rauður  köttur er að tala til rauðs  hunds.

Notice it's sort of similarity with masculine nouns? The nominative of the word ends in -ur- and so does the ending of the adjective, while the ending of the genitive is -s- and this is how it is in the genitive, there are patterns and you will come to realise them!

Why don't you look to the chart under 'sterk' on that website, have a look at 'veik', and see if you can make the sentence "_the red cat is talking to the red dog_" ?  (remember to put the definite articles back in).


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## draugurinn

I think it's:
Rauður kötturinn er að tala til rauðs hundsins.
or
Rauði kötturinn er að tala til rauða hundsins.

i'm a bit confused becuase you said that it's a strong adjective, so you couldn't use a definite article and to look under both sterk and veik.


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## Alxmrphi

draugurinn said:


> I think it's:
> Rauður kötturinn er að tala til rauðs hundsins.
> or
> Rauði kötturinn er að tala til rauða hundsins.
> 
> i'm a bit confused becuase you said that it's a strong adjective, so you couldn't use a definite article and to look under both sterk and veik.



Strong adjectives are used with words when there is no definite article.
Weak adjectives are used with words when there is a definite article.

You also use weak adjectives with words like '*this / these*' (defining what is being talked about) but that's not something to worry about right now.
You don't look under both (strong & weak), it just depends on if there is a definite article (= defined) or not.

So:

Rauður köttur er að tala til rauðs hunds.
Rauði kötturinn er að tala til rauða hundsins.


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