Demonstrative pronouns
A demonstrative pronoun🇮🇸 ábendingarfornafn in Icelandic is used to:
- 👉 point to a specific thing or person, usually nearby or in visual range,
- 🗄 distinguish an item in a set from other things in that set.
Icelandic has three demonstratives: þessi, sá and hinn. Let’s look at some examples:
Ég hef aldrei séð þessa konu á ævi minni.
Nennirðu að rétta mér þessum bolla þarna?
Hann er sá sem keypti húsið.
Enginn skilur það sem hann segir.
Settu þennan kassa í bílinn og ég sæki alla hina kassana.
þessi
Usage
The first demonstrative, þessi, is used to point to a specific thing or person – usually something within the visual range of the speaker. It can either stand on its own or be used before an indefinite noun:
Ertu búin að sjá þetta?
Þessi gaffall hérna er skítugur.
Þessi covers both “this” and “that” – Icelandic doesn’t care as much about how far away something is from you, although if you want to emphasise the distance of something, you can use þessi hér(na) and þessi þar(na):
Þessi kjóll hérna er ansi flottur, en þessi þarna er ennþá flottari.
Inflection
Þessi has a somewhat irregular inflection, although in many forms the endings are the same as the strong declension of adjectives:
| Singular | Plural | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Masculine | Feminine | Neuter | Masculine | Feminine | Neuter | |
| Nom. | þessi | þessi | þetta | þessir | þessar | þessi |
| Acc. | þennan | þessa | þessa | |||
| Dat. | þessum | þessari | þessu | þessum | ||
| Gen. | þessa | þessarar | þessa | þessara | ||
Just like an adjective, þessi agrees in gender, number and case with the noun it modifies. If used to refer to something unknown, then the neuter singular þetta is used:
Þessar myndir eru virkilega fallegar.
Hvað á ég að gera við þetta?
This agreement carries on between sentences. This is efficient, as it saves you having to repeat nouns or whole phrases, however it can sometimes be tricky to keep track of in a long conversation:
Vantar þig nýja sokka? Þú mátt bara eiga þessa.
Hvernig líst þér á bláa bílinn? En þennan?
If þessi is used by itself in the masculine, then like indefinite pronouns, it refers to a person or people:
Hvað heitir þessi?
Ekki tala við þessa, þeir eru hættulegir.
sá
Usage
The second demonstrative, sá has a couple of uses, but it most often means “the one”:
Ég vil ekki vera sá sem kvartar.
Taktu þann sem liggur upp í hillunni.
Það er ekki það sem hann er að segja.
In this meaning, it often comes right before the conjunction sem.
When used in the masculine singular on its own, sá refers to a person, like in the first example above: sá sem kvartar “the one [i.e. the person] who complains”. If the speaker is female, she may use sú instead.
It can also be used with an adjective:
Hvaða köku viltu? Þá stærstu!
Hvern þessara bíla á hann? Þann rauða.
So þá stærstu means “the biggest one”. And like other demonstrative pronouns, sá requires the weak form of the adjective after it.
When used with a noun, the meaning is “that”:
Hann ætlar ekki að svara þeirri spurningu.
This usage has a formal air to it. In more everyday speech, þessi can be used in this context instead.
Inflection
Sá has a highly irregular inflection. Having said that, you should recognise the plural forms from elsewhere:
| Singular | Plural | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Masculine | Feminine | Neuter | Masculine | Feminine | Neuter | |
| Nom. | sá | sú | það | þeir | þær | þau |
| Acc. | þann | þá | þá | |||
| Dat. | þeim | þeirri | því | þeim | ||
| Gen. | þess | þeirrar | þess | þeirra | ||
That’s right, the plural inflection is exactly the same as the personal pronoun þeir. Also, the neuter singular is exactly the same as the personal pronoun það.
hinn
Usage
The final demonstrative, hinn, means “the other (one)” and is often used contrastively with þessi:
Þessi bíll er flottur, en hinn bíllinn er flottari.
Ég tek þetta sæti, þú tekur hitt sætið.
However, it doesn’t have to be used with þessi:
Við bíðum í hinu herberginu.
Viltu fá þessa skó eða hina?
Hvar eru hinir?
Hann býr hinum megin við götuna.
Just like indefinite pronouns, hinn can be used in the masculine plural to refer to a group of people, i.e. hinir “the others”.
As you may have noticed from the above examples, hinn requires the noun that follows it to have the definite article ending.
Annar always means “another” or “other” and never “the other” (even if you put the definite article on the noun). If what you mean is “the other”, you have to use hinn.
Inflection
Hinn inflects similarly to the number einn:
| Singular | Plural | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Masculine | Feminine | Neuter | Masculine | Feminine | Neuter | |
| Nom. | hinn | hin | hitt | hinir | hinar | hin |
| Acc. | hina | hina | ||||
| Dat. | hinum | hinni | hinu | hinum | ||
| Gen. | hins | hinnar | hins | hinna | ||
The inflection of the pronoun hinn “the other” is almost identical to the rarely used freestanding definite article, hinn. In fact, all the forms are the same except the neuter singular nominative/accusative, which is hitt for the pronoun and hið for the article.
How can you tell them apart? The pronoun hinn always requires the suffixed definite article on the noun that follows it, e.g. hitt hvíta húsið. The freestanding article hinn doesn’t require this, as it is the definite article, e.g. hið hvíta hús.