Icelandic?

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Has anyone ever tryed to learned Icelandic?

I would be happy to hear some experiences.
Because I'm interested in it, so I wanna know how difficult it actually is!?

Great place for a quiet life: the BBC today reports police special forces members are receiving counselling after the first time police have ever shot someone!

I'm into languages at the moment, and learning some languages at the same time. Because of my ADD I've sometimes difficulties focusing on one task, so I decided to trick my ADD in bying more than one learn book and in fucusing in more than one task and my autism helps me to have special interests, so that's the methode I ended up with.

I'm right now into Danish and Japanese, but mostly Danish I guess, because I learn it at university at the moment. So I noticed several similarities between Icelandic and Danish and was quite fascinated about that.

Oh and I found this great side online to learn Icelandic: http://icelandiconline.is/

I'm not language orientated, but I find the Icelandic language interesting because it is so very similar to Gaelic. In fact, I know a native Gaelic speaker who told me that she can actually understand spoken Icelandic! Icelandic is considered to be difficult for a native English speaker.

All the best with learning Icelandic - you've chosen an interesting language.

Wow interesting, I didn't know that
So Gaelic is actually related to Scandinavian languages?



Well it's true that Icelandic is more difficult for an English speaker than Danish or Swedish for example, but I guess it's a bit overrated. When I read it the first time, years ago I was shocked by all the extra lettlers they have and also by the pronounciaton, so I wasn't much interested in studying it and also I wasn't that much into languages at that time. But now, knowing some Danish I'm used to the "ð" sound, eventhough the danish don't have an own letter for it, they also have this sound. It's simmilar to the english "th", but softer, more like a "d". The Icelandic also have: "þ" what's identical with the english "th". So the main thing is, you have to get used to the way it sounds and also to all the special letters and stuff, so it's a bit more difficult than other Scandinavian languages, but it's also not that highly difficult than some ppl claim it to be. I'm not so sure about the grammar though, but so far it looks mostly similar to Danish, eventhough it seems to be a bit more complex. It's more that not many foreigners learn it I guess. It's also a language who hasn't changed much. So the Icelanders can still easily read old Icelandic Sagas that are 800 years old.
In comparison, Shakespear is just 400 years old and is already a bit difficult to understand.

Last edited by Raziel on 03 Dec 2013, 2:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.

That's so interesting. Icelandic seems to be really distinctive with letters/sounds unlike other European languages. Maybe once you've learned these unique symbols, grammar patterns will be relatively easy to learn. I don't know if Gaelic is related to Scandinavian languages.

I have a Hungarian friend/colleague - Hungarian's closest language is actually Finnish! I was really surprised to learn this, but evidently they share the same linguistic roots.

I really can't say that much now, but what I've read, Icelandic also kept a lot from it's original structure, so you still find a lot of similarities in grammar to Old Germanic and even to Latin.
It has some difficult parts, yes, but I just did an entire chapter in Icelandic and just went through, because there were so many similarities especially to Danish. I noticed that the grammar whas a bit more difficult, but not that much and I guess you need more time figuring out the spelling and the correct pronounciation, but with French the spelling is also difficult.

I guess Icelandic just looks "scarry", because of all the extra letters. But on the other hand I'm really thankfull that they have the letter "ð". In Danish you don't have that letter, but the sound and they write it with a normal "d" and so you have to know when it is pronounced like a normal "d" and when it is pronounced like the soft "d" and it just freaks me out. Icelandic has a lot of extra letters, but it is lot more regular in it's spelling than Danish. But Icelandic has a more difficult pronounciation, so I guess, I've to spent a lot of time listening to it.

Last edited by Raziel on 04 Dec 2013, 1:48 am, edited 1 time in total.

Concerning the pronounciation of a foreign language, I found that video clip, were you can see how difficult the english pronounciation can be for a foreigner.


[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvpikUEIaLI#t=50[/youtube]

... so I'm not that worried about an accent in a foreign language, so long I'll be understood and that's just practice.

^ Hah hah, but I'm sure that if he ordered in a restaurant he would be understood anyway. Funny to watch him struggle with the pronunciation

Yes I really liked that too.

Compared to my other foreign languages: French, Italian, Danish and Japanese. English was the language that was the most difficult to pronounce for me i would say. The first years I studied it at school I had a terrible accent.

There is an interesting ranking about the difficulty of foreign languages for English speakers:
http://www.effectivelanguagelearning.co ... difficulty

Swedish, Danish, Italian, French and so on are in the easiest category with about 600 hours time spend learning it.
Icelandic is nearly twice as much with about 1100 hours, the same as Hebrew, Greek, Russian, Hindi, Finnish, Czech and so on
But it's by far not the hardest. In the last category are Arabic, Chinese, Japanese and so on with about 2200 hours.

Icelandic fascinates me, the pronunciation is the most beautiful thing! I'm learning by myself, so... Not easy, not easy at all, hahaha.
But one day I gonna read all my beloved sagas in Icelandic, HA!