Útgáfa
Every Icelandic noun is one of three genders, and the ending in the nominative usually tells you which. Hvað er þetta? — the answer decides whether the word is hann, hún or það. The endings below are the pattern; the exceptions are worth knowing early, because the common words are where most of them live.
Every Icelandic word for a thing is a boy word, a girl word or a neither word. Look at the end of the word — that is the clue. Then you know whether to say hann, hún or það.
Karlkyn
masculine
Kvenkyn
feminine
Hvorugkyn
neuter
-/ = engin ending · no ending at all
Bíllinn er nýr. Hann er blár.
The car is new. He is blue — a KK word is always hann, even when it is a thing.
Borgin er stór. Hún er falleg.
The city is big. She is beautiful — a KVK word is hún.
Húsið er gamalt. Það er hvítt.
The house is old. It is white — a HK word is það.
The adjective moves with the gender too — nýr / ný / nýtt — and so does the article stuck on the end of the noun: bíllinn, borgin, húsið. That is the next page: Greinirinn.
Undantekningar — the ones that break the rule
- -ir goes both ways. dóttir, systir, móðir are kvenkyn, but læknir, hellir are karlkyn. The ending alone will not settle it.
- -i goes both ways. sími, kennari are karlkyn; epli, kaffi, herbergi are hvorugkyn.
- -a is nearly always kvenkyn — but auga, eyra, hjarta, lunga are hvorugkyn, and herra is karlkyn.
- norður ends in -ur and is hvorugkyn all the same (Wikipedia gives this one as the standard warning about -ur).
- maður is karlkyn, and its plural is menn — irregular from the start.
- Some words have no singular. hjón (a married couple) and buxur (trousers) exist only in the plural.
- Names follow the same music. -a tends to be a woman (Anna, Halla, Sigrún is the odd one out), -i a man (Óli, Palli, Orri).
Tvær reglur sem svindla — two sneaky rules
- Words that end in -i can be boy words (sími) or neither-words (epli). You have to learn those two by heart.
- auga and hjarta end in -a but they are neither-words, not girl words. Eyes and hearts are special.
Orðaforði
Word list · by gender
A hundred words, sorted by gender. Every one of them is also in the drill below, so the quiz teaches this list rather than a different one — learn the column, pass the drill.
Æfing 1 — hvaða kyn?
Drill · the words
All hundred words, in a different order every time. Pick the gender; every answer says why, and a wrong one stays on screen until you press Áfram — nothing jumps forward on its own. The tally, the percentage and the miss list at the end are there to show where the gaps are.
Hvaða kyn er orðið?
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Æfing 2 — endingar
Drill · the pattern
No words this time, only endings. Some of them point at one gender and some at two — where an ending goes both ways, either answer is counted right, and the feedback tells you which words go which way. That overlap is the whole difficulty of Icelandic gender.
Here you only see the END of a word. Which gender does that ending usually mean? Some endings can be two genders — then both answers are right.
Hvaða kyn bendir endingin á?
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Heimildir · Sources
- Wikipedia — Icelandic grammar · masculine -ur / -i / -ll / -nn, feminine -a / -ing / -un, neuter usually no ending; and norður as the -ur that is not masculine.
- Icelandic Grammar Reference — Nouns · Gender · the strong/weak ending lists and the note that nearly every noun in -a is feminine.
- BÍN — Beygingarlýsing íslensks nútímamáls (Árnastofnun) · look up any single noun to confirm its gender and its full declension.