Language/Icelandic/Grammar/Nouns

Nouns in Icelandic

Modern Icelandic is still a heavily inflected language with four cases: nominative, accusative, dative, and genitive.

Icelandic nouns can have one of three grammatical genders: masculine, feminine or neuter. There are two main declension paradigms for each gender: strong (i.e. root ending in consonant) and weak (root ending in a vowel) nouns, and these are further divided into subclasses of nouns, based primarily on the genitive singular and nominative plural endings of a particular noun.

The gender of a noun can often be surmised by looking at the ending of the word:

• masculine nouns often end in -, -i, -ll or -nn

• feminine nouns often end in -a, -ing or -un

• neuter nouns usually have no ending or have a final accented vowel

Icelandic nouns also inflect for number (singular and plural) and definitiveness (definite and indefinite).

Take some time to dive into these other pages after completing this lesson: Negation, Conditional Mood & Articles.

Sources

Book: Learn to Speak Icelandic: without even trying, Stephen Hernandez

Other Lessons

• Possession
• Plurals
• Prepostitions
• Adjectives
• Prepositions
• Icelandic Articles
• Verbs
• Articles
• Negation
• Definite Article
• Adverbs
• Pronouns
• Conditional Mood
• Questions