Icelandic:Verbs

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Íslenska Icelandic
Family	Sub-family	Language of	Script
Indo-European	Germanic	Iceland	Extended Latin

Icelandic verbs are, both alike and different to other Scandinavian languages (excluding Faeroese). The mainland Scandinavian languages are rather simple and have no conjugation after person. Icelandic verbs however, conjugate after each person, each case and four moods: indicative, imperative, conditional, and subjunctive.

Classification

Classes

Icelandic verbs are often classified into three groups, -ar, -ir and -ur. This refers to the third person singular present. Most verbs end in -a, there are however some ending in á like slá, to hit.

Classes
#Person	-ar	-ir	-ur
#Person	að tala to speak	að lærato learn	að takato take
1I	tala	læri	teka
2you	talar	lærir	tekur
3he, she, it	talar	lærir	tekur
Plural
1we	tölum	lærum	tekum
2you	talið	lærið	tekið
3they	tala	læra	taka

Weak and strong verbs

In Icelandic, as in many other languages, you talk about weak and strong verbs within the language. The weak verbs are those which follow normal conjugation as tala and læra above. Words where a vowel shift occur, however are classified as strong verbs. This includes the irregular verbs. Many -ur verbs are also strong verbs since many of them contain a vowel shift in a stem vowel, for example takato take above. (taka > teka). There are six groups of strong verbs plus auxiliariesWhy aren’t these classified as irregulars rather than strong verbs, does anyone know? Change it if you do.^(conj.), which are classified as strong verbs, and the verb valdato cause^(conj.) which makes its own group due to its regular present but irregular past conjugation.

-ja verbs

There’s a subgroup to the -ur verbs called the -ja verbs which refers to their infinitive ending. The verbs are -ur verbs but contain a ”j” as well which must be removed except for the second person plural and the third person plural which is often the same as the infinitive. In the example below, syngja is a strong verb because it becomes söng in past tense. The -ja ending is not an indicator of a -ja verb however. Sometimes the verb can end in -ja without being a -ja verb, see the second example emja in the table below.

#Person	að syngjato sing	að emjato squeal
1I	syng	emja
2you	syngur	emjar
3he, she, it	syngur	emjar
Plural
1we	syngjum	emjum
2you	syngjið	emjið
3they	syngja	emja

-ri verbs

The -ri verbs are four verbs in Icelandic which have the unusual past ending -ri, hence the name. These verbs have a quite tricky present conjugation as well but the past conjugation is not very complicated if you know that this verb is an -ri verb. However, even though they’re spelled with an e in the past tense they are pronounced as if the e[ɛ]:s were é[jɛ]:s. Sometimes they’re also spelt with é but the Icelandic Ministry of Education recommends the e-spelling. The conjugation after time follows below.

Infinitive	Past tense ^{(1 pers.)}	Past participle
að róato row	ég reriI rowed	ég hef róiðI have rowed
að gróato heal	ég greriI healed	ég hef gróiðI have healed
að snúato turn	ég sneriI turned	ég hef snúiðI have turned
að núato rub	ég neriI rubbed	ég hef núiðI have rubbed

Once again notice that you might encounter réri, gréri, snéri and néri as well since some Icelanders prefer to write it that way.

Conjugation

Here also follows the conjugation of them in the present tense.

#Person	að róa	að gróa	að snúa	að núa
1I	ræ	græ	sný	ný
2you	rærð	grærð	snýrð	nýrð
3he, she, it	rær	grær	snýr	nýr
Plural
1we	róum	gróum	snúum	núum
2you	róið	gróið	snúið	núið
3they	róa	gróa	snúa	núa

As you can see there are two types of conjugation for these four verbs.

The U-shift

In Icelandic, when there’s a word with an A in the stem, and that word gets an ending containing a U, the A will change to an Ö if it’s stressed and to an U if it’s unstressed. You can see an example of this in the table above at tala. This occurs for both verbs and nouns and as a noun it could be a word like saga which would be sögu in accusative, dative and genitive because of the -u ending. The actual shift also occurs in adjectives but not because of the U. Anyway, if we take the verb tala again.

égI	tala
viðwe	tölum.

This occurs whenever there’s an U in the ending, that means it will occur in tala’s other forms as well as in the second person plural past töluðum. There might be an exception in a loanword, but most of the time the rules are applied to borrowed words as well, but it happens in a loanword noun with more than one A that one is unchanged as in banani > banönum and arabi > aröbum. In the latter case aröbum is dative past. Notice in these cases that it’s not örubum^[sic]. Bönunum does occur alongside ”banönum” however.