Osobní zájmena

Icelandic has personal pronouns in three persons and two numbers, like English. The difference shows up in the third person, where gender is grammatical, and in the plural, where English "they" splits into three words.

"It" follows the noun, not the thing

English uses "it" for every object. Icelandic picks the pronoun by the gender of the noun it replaces, so a car is "he" and a book is "she":

• Hvar er bíllinn? Hann er úti. - Where is the car? It's outside. (bíll is masculine)
• Hvar er bókin? Hún er á borðinu. - Where is the book? It's on the table. (bók is feminine)
• Hvar er húsið? Það er í Hafnarfirði. - Where is the house? It's in Hafnarfjörður. (hús is neuter)

Three words for "they"

Þeir is for a group of men or masculine nouns, þær for women or feminine nouns, and þau for neuter nouns and for any mixed group. A couple, a man and a woman, is þau: Jón og Sigrún eru á Akureyri. Þau búa þar. - Jón and Sigrún are in Akureyri. They live there.

One word for formal "you"

There is an old polite þér, but you will hardly hear it outside speeches and church. Icelanders say þú to a shop assistant, a doctor and the prime minister alike. Note that við is also a preposition ("by, at"), so read it in context.