beygingin

Beygingin is the Icelandic term for inflection, the system by which word forms change to express grammatical relationships. It covers how nouns, adjectives, pronouns and verbs adjust their form to indicate case, number, gender, tense, mood, voice, person and definiteness.

Etymology: The word is derived from beygja, meaning to bend or turn, with the suffix -in forming a noun that denotes the process or system of forming different shapes of a word.

In Icelandic grammar, beygingin includes noun declension, adjective inflection, pronoun inflection and verb conjugation. Nouns are declined for four cases (nominative, accusative, dative, genitive) and three genders (masculine, feminine, neuter) in singular and plural. Adjectives agree with the noun in case, number and gender, and have distinct strong and weak forms depending on definiteness. Pronouns inflect for case and number. Verbs conjugate for person and number across tenses and moods and inflect for voice; Icelandic preserves a distinction between strong and weak verb classes and retains many archaic endings.

The beygingin system is central to learning and understanding Icelandic, shaping syntax, agreement, and word order in both contemporary usage and historical texts. Learners often rely on grammar guides and dictionaries to navigate the full paradigm, as irregular forms and older inflectional patterns remain common in everyday and literary Icelandic.