Verða is one of the most common verbs in the Icelandic language, so it is perhaps not surprising that it can take on a number of roles. We won’t cover every possible meaning of verða here: that is a job for a dictionary, and it would take friggin’ ages. Instead, let’s just talk about four important and common meanings (which people tend to get confused).
I’ll be using dictionary shorthand in this article, so you might want to brush up on that if you’re confused by e-ð, e-u.
You can refer to this table for how to conjugate verða in the present and past of the indicative mood, as well as the supine. For full conjugation tables of this (and any) word, check out bin.arnastofnun.is.
This is probably the most quintessential meaning of verða. Icelandic doesn’t have a future tense, but verða serves as being sort of the future version of vera, usually equivalent to will be. You can read more about the future meaning of verða in my article on the future.
Verða (just like vera) doesn’t assign a case, so what comes after it stays in the nominative. Or you can think of it as assigning the nominative, whatever floats your boat.
This is a very common use of verða, as well.
You’ll always recognise this meaning because it comes with að + noun. If you’re wondering how this is different from að verða > become, I’m also wondering how become is different from turn into. I mean, it CLEARLY is different - you can’t just turn into a doctor when you grow up - but it’s still hard to put your finger on it. Language is weird, man.
A synonym for this would be að breytast í e-ð.
You’ll always recognise this meaning because it comes with að + verb.
To read about how this is different from things like eiga að gera e-ð or þurfa að gera e-ð, check out the article on Obligation and Necessity.
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