Plural case endings across the genders: -um in the dative, -a in the genitive, and the u-umlaut behind börnum.
I can put a noun into any plural case, with or without the article (í fjöllunum, milli húsanna).
Look at these examples. Can you spot the grammar pattern?
Við gistum í tjaldi milli fjallanna.
We stayed in a tent between the mountains.
Börnunum finnst gaman í Nauthólsvík á sumrin.
The children enjoy Nauthólsvík in the summer.
Hann talar við gestina á þremur tungumálum.
He talks to the guests in three languages.
Verð á bókum hefur hækkað.
The price of books has gone up.
Pay attention to the highlighted parts. What do they have in common?
Two endings hold across every gender and every declension class:
That is two of the four cases learned in one line.
| Fall | hestur (kk) | borg (kvk) | barn (hk) | kona (kvk, veik) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nefnifall | hestar | borgir | börn | konur |
| Þolfall | hesta | borgir | börn | konur |
| Þágufall | hestum | borgum | börnum | konum |
| Eignarfall | hesta | borga | barna | kvenna |
| Fall | Karlkyn | Kvenkyn | Hvorugkyn |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nefnifall | hestarnir | borgirnar | börnin |
| Þolfall | hestana | borgirnar | börnin |
| Þágufall | hestunum | borgunum | börnunum |
| Eignarfall | hestanna | borganna | barnanna |
Before an -um ending a stem a turns into ö: barn - börnum, dagur - dögum, hattur - höttum. This is u-hljóðvarp, and it is the reason the dative plural often looks unfamiliar. The same change explains the neuter nominative and accusative plural, where the -u has since dropped but the ö stayed: barn - börn - börnum, land - lönd.
Apply this grammar in A2 course exercises
Practice ExercisesLeaving the stem vowel unchanged before -um: *barnum instead of börnum, *dagum instead of dögum. - Forgetting the extra n in the definite genitive plural: hestanna, borganna, barnanna. - Using the singular article endings in the plural: *hestunum is right, but *hestinum is the singular. - Assuming the genitive plural of kona is *kona; it is kvenna.
Við gistum í tjaldi milli fjallanna.
We stayed in a tent between the mountains.
milli takes the genitive, and the definite genitive plural is fjallanna.
Börnunum finnst gaman í Nauthólsvík á sumrin.
The children enjoy Nauthólsvík in the summer.
Dative plural with the article: börnunum, with the a of barn turned into ö. Nauthólsvík is the geothermally warmed beach in Reykjavík.
Hann talar við gestina á þremur tungumálum.
He talks to the guests in three languages.
Accusative plural with the article gestina after við, then the dative plural tungumálum after á.
Verð á bókum hefur hækkað.
The price of books has gone up.
á + dative plural bókum. Icelanders buy books in quantity before Christmas, in the jólabókaflóð.
Sögur kvennanna í þorpinu voru skráðar.
The women's stories in the village were written down.
kvennanna is the definite genitive plural of kona, with the old kven- stem.
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Practice in course
Apply this grammar in A2 course exercises
The national inflection database; the inflection tables on this page are checked cell by cell against its entries.