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Icelandic grammar is the set of structural rules that describe the use of the Icelandic language.. Icelandic is a heavily inflected language.Icelandic nouns are assigned to one of three grammatical genders (masculine, feminine, or neuter), and are declined into four cases (nominative, accusative, dative, and genitive).
In Icelandic grammar, the ri-verbs (Icelandic: ri-sagnir) are the four verbs in the language that have a -ri suffix in the past tense as opposed to a suffix containing a dental consonant such as /d/, /ð/, or /t/. Along with the preterite-present verbs (e.g. kunna and eiga), they are the only verbs which inflect with a mixed conjugation
Like other Germanic languages, Icelandic words have a tendency to be compounded. This means that many small component words can be connected together to create a word with a new meaning. Take the example to right, hlutabréfamarkaður (‘stock market’), which is made from the words hluti (‘share’), bréf (‘paper’) and markaður ...
Almost all Icelandic verbs have the ending -a in the infinitive, some with á, two with u (munu, skulu) one with o (þvo: "wash") and one with e. Many transitive verbs (i.e. they require an object), can take a reflexive pronoun instead. The case of the pronoun depends on the case that the verb governs.
[j] occurs before a vowel, and [ç] occurs in a few words at the end of a word following [p t k s]. The velars and alternating palatals are distributed as follows: Initially or at beginning of syllable: Only the four stops [kʰ k cʰ c] can appear. After [s] that begins a syllable: only [k c]. Between vowels: only [k ɣ c j].
In the old language the verbs forming past tense with the dental suffix (corresponding to -d in English) were apart in the first and third person, ending with -a in the first person but -i in the third person. The first person took the form of the third person and are now identical.
It provides a set of symbols to represent the pronunciation of Icelandic in Wikipedia articles, and example words that illustrate the sounds that correspond to them. Integrity must be maintained between the key and the transcriptions that link here; do not change any symbol or value without establishing consensus on the talk page first.
Alternatively, new compound words such as veðurfræði ("meteorology") can be formed from old words (in this case veður "weather", and fræði "science"). [2] Thus speakers of Icelandic can easily deconstruct many words to find their etymologies ; indeed compound words are very frequent in the Icelandic language.