Icelandic

Hello everyone, I am interested in carrying out a university exchange at the university of Iceland but I would need to learn Icelandic. I would like to know how difficult/different it is for English speaking people (I also am fairly fluent in Spanish and can communicate in Russian so that might help). I don't know much about Scandinavian languages so any info about the language, what the grammar is like etc would be great!

Thanks,
Dom

Icelandic is a typical "old" Germanic language, due to its closeness to Old Norse. Hence, it has four cases, nominative, accusative, dative, and genitive, three genders, masculine, feminine, and neuter, and three numbers, singular, plural, and to a limited extent, dual. But unlike, say, New High German, where nouns themselves do not inflect for case in most cases, in Icelandic nouns in general are specifically marked for case, no matter their gender and number, even without articles or adjectives. Note that there is only a definite article, not an indefinite article, in Icelandic.

Furthermore, verbs in Icelandic are conjugated for tense, mood, voice, person, and number, and have two tenses, past and present. This is unlike, say, New High German, which expresses voice through analytic constructions, and which in practice only has limited conjugation for voice, and while technically it does have conjugation past subjunctive and present subjunctive, in many verbs these coincide with the past and present tenses for most numbers, and in most verbs in speech the past subjuctive is expressed via analytic constructions rather than inflections.

For more information, you can check out:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_language

Dom,

I read even back in the 1970's that English was well known in Iceland and that you can get by for the most part using English. Of course, foreigners worldwide usually appreciate you more if you attempt to learn their native language.

I would say that Icelandic is a moderately difficult language to learn. About as hard as Romanian and Russian but still less hard than Gaelic or Hungarian .

The country was settled between 860 and 1150 A.D. mostly by colonists from Norway and Sweden. There appears to be some Irish blood in the population too but how much is still a matter of debate. Because of its isolation, the Icelandic language has remained very close to Old Norse, even closer than neighboring Faroese which still had some economic links to the Norwegian city of Bergen during the Middle Ages. .

But, as has been discussed earlier on this forum, Icelandic has certainly gone thru its own changes, especially significant vowel changes and some consonant changes from Old Norse, even tho spelling has largely been the same for centuries.

Kirk,

We'll have to politely agree to disagree on this one.

Firstly, it is rather obvious that changes in Icelandic from the Old Norse are trivial at best compared to changes that have occured in the Continental Scandinavian languages (Danish, Norwegian & Swedish). Secondly, Icelandic orthography is pretty phonetic, I doubt that there is much discrepancy between spelling and pronunciation. In fact, people in general don't write much differently from the way they speak regardless of the language.

In short, I agree with the writer below whose view is by far the most commonly held one about Icelandic:

"Icelandic is one of the parent languages of English, but, unlike English, it has changed very little since the ninth century. Modern Icelandic has changed so little from its parent language, Old Norse, in the course of the centuries that Icelanders today read the Eddas and sagas of Old Norse literature more easily than speakers of English read Shakespeare."

Source: Icelandic Canadian Club of Toronto

Brennus, I'd politely disagree with you if there were some opinion to disagree with about, but this isn't an opinion. An opinion would be about disagreeing over whether Icelandic sounded pretty or not. What I've mentioned is solid linguistic fact. So, I'll go over your arguments:

"Firstly, it is rather obvious that changes in Icelandic from the Old Norse are trivial at best compared to changes that have occured in the Continental Scandinavian languages (Danish, Norwegian & Swedish)."

--I think you're paying too much attention to writing here. All languages change, regardless of how little their writing systems change (this is assuming they have writing systems...the majority of human languages don't have writing). Icelandic has indeed changed since the Old Norse days, but not in the same ways the continental Scandinavian languages have, which have gone on their own quite different path of development.

"Secondly, Icelandic orthography is pretty phonetic, I doubt that there is much discrepancy between spelling and pronunciation."

--I'm not arguing about how effective Icelandic orthography is in relating to how well it corresponds spelling and pronunciation. In that respect, it does a pretty good job, actually. For example, the fact that Icelandic orthographical "au" is quite effective and very consistent in rendering the sound [2y], that "á" is consistent in representing [au], and that "æ" is consistent in representing [ai], doesn't have anything to do with the fact that those vowels have changed dramatically, altho consistently, from their Old Norse equivalents. I've used this example below before:

"kaupmaður" [k2ymaDYr]

The fact that the pronunciation of the word is actually pretty consistent with its spelling according to Icelandic spelling rules doesn't change the fact that the word used to be /kaupmaDur/, maybe a millennium or so ago. Icelandic is full of examples like these. You can keep the spelling the same all you want, but language will still change.

"In fact, people in general don't write much differently from the way they speak regardless of the language."

--Sorry, but that's quite untrue. Even in languages known for pretty consistent phonemic sound-writing correspondences ("phonemic" is the key word) in their writing systems, like Spanish and Korean, huge differences exist between writing systems and the actual (spoken) languages, with powerful forces of speech such as place assimilation, cliticization, leveling, intonation, and the like that aren't marked by the comparatively vague writing systems. These are some of the very areas where language changes, but goes unmarked by writing systems. The changes add up significantly over time.

"Icelandic is one of the parent languages of English, but, unlike English, it has changed very little since the ninth century. Modern Icelandic has changed so little from its parent language, Old Norse, in the course of the centuries that Icelanders today read the Eddas and sagas of Old Norse literature more easily than speakers of English read Shakespeare."

--Ah!!! This is a veritable minefield of absolute myths with no linguistic validity whatsoever! Icelandic was *not* a "parent language" of English, whatever that's supposed to mean. English did not branch off of Icelandic, altho the two are both somewhat distantly related as Germanic languages (but even then English is a Western Germanic language; Icelandic is in the Northern Germanic subgroup). And, as I've said before, Icelandic has most definitely changed from the days of Old Norse. The fact that its orthography hasnt changed much is completely irrelevant in talking about actual language change. The above comment is a perfect example of the cardinal sin of equating the written language with the actual spoken language, and betrays a deep lack of understanding on the part of the speaker on the nature of languages and language change.

All that being said, back to the original post, Icelandic shouldn't necessarily be any harder to learn because of these changes that have gone on. Essentially what I'm trying to dispel here is the myth that it's possible for certain dialects or languages to not change much or even "fossilize." That is absolutely untrue, and is a common misconception about languages like Icelandic, which have gone merrily along their way in normal language change over the millennia as have all other human languages.

Travis : "But unlike, say, New High German, where nouns themselves do not inflect for case in most cases, in Icelandic nouns in general are specifically marked for case, no matter their gender and number, even without articles or adjectives".

I don't understand. In German, substantive endings may vary according to case and declension-type (strong, weak, mixed, masculines, feminines, neutrals and exception as <das Herz>) and even the radical may be subject to apophony. Not that the stock of endings available is highly diversified (mostly : <er>, <en>, <e> etc), but casual variation does affect nouns in German. And I'm not including substantivated adjectives.

Kirk:

Your last posting - well said!

greg, the only noun case-marking that one will encounter is the marking of genitive case in masculine and neuter nouns, differentiation of nominative case from accusative, dative, and genitive cases in some masculine nouns, and the marking of dative case in some plurals. That in no fashion is full case marking, as one cannot rely on that alone to indicate case, when one does not also have articles and adjectives to help also mark cases for nouns. That is unlike, say, Icelandic and Old High German, where each noun is pretty much explicitly marked for case in a systematic fashion, and doesn't need articles and adjectives to clear up what case it has.

"Kirk:

Your last posting - well said!"

Thanks :) I hoped I could nip the "Icelandic-almost-never-changes" notions right in the bud.

Kirk:

French Canadians put up with similar tosh about their French.

The usual refrain is that they speak an "antiquated" form of French.

"French Canadians put up with similar tosh about their French.

The usual refrain is that they speak an "antiquated" form of French."

Haha, yeah I'm always amazed by comments about certain languages or dialects being "antiquated" or "archaic" as if it were possible for living languages to slow down or just plain stop in development. Now, of course I understand that in certain dialects certain features may be retained that have since passed out of other dialects, but the fact that they're still alive and well makes you wonder just how exactly they're "antiquated."

Besides individual features being given misnomers such as "archaicisms," it's even more ludicrous to describe an entire dialect or language on a whole as being "archaic" or even largely "unchanged." The logic just isn't there, and is of course entirely contradictory to basic, proven linguistic fact. My favorite are the arguments that North American English is "archaic." Compared to what, exactly? Once again, I do understand that several prominent features and some words in NAE are indeed no longer used in other parts of the Anglosphere. But, if roughly 75% of the world's native English speakers are still speaking an "archaic" dialect, I would beg we find a new definition for "archaic" :)

Kirk, especially because in some areas spoken NAE is quite the opposite, such as with respect to modals and cliticization. However, though, as these are generally not expressed much in writing as they are in speech, they are easily overlooked by many.

By the way, when I spoke of "old" Germanic languages, I did not actually mean such are specifically old per se, but rather I was speaking of the general characteristics of historical Germanic languages which are for the most part not present in most modern Germanic languages, of which Icelandic is the most notable exception, specifically significant noun case-marking and full-fledged use of a case system consisting of nominative, accusative, dative, and genitive cases, with potentially instrumental or vocative cases as well. While modern Standard High German does have that four-case system, it is not as fully utilized as such because case-marking on nouns themselves is rather limited in it.

You people are real nerds.