Icelandic (Íslenska)
Icelandic is the official language of the Republic of Iceland and about 300,000 people know Icelandic, most of them living in Iceland and the Nordic countries (also in Canada). Icelandic has been spoken in Iceland since the country was settled in the latter part of the 9th C and has changed relatively little since then.
Icelandic belongs to the Indo-European family of languages, the northern branch of Germanic languages. Icelandic is most closely related to Faroese and various West Norwegian dialects and a little less to Danish and Swedish.
Even though the country is large (103.000 km2) and sparsely populated the language is without dialects, which is one of the language characteristics, along with resistance to change (Icelanders today can easily read the 12th C sagas of Old Norse literature). However, the pronunciation has changed considerably, especially of vowels, with little effect on the written language.
Most common words in the language look exactly the same today as they did about thousand years ago, i.e. words such as höfuð (head), auga (eye), himinn (sky), haf (ocean), þú (you), móðir (mother) and faðir (father).
Today there is a influential purist movement - new words are created instead of adopting foreign ones. This activity is not at all tied to institutions or government decisions and many people enjoy trying to create new Icelandic words. As examples may be mentioned 'sími' for telephone, 'tölva' for computer, and 'þota' for jet.
To learn more about Icelandic, visit
http://bella.mrn.stjr.is/utgafur/enska.pdf
Icelandic is the official language of the Republic of Iceland and about 300,000 people know Icelandic, most of them living in Iceland and the Nordic countries (also in Canada). Icelandic has been spoken in Iceland since the country was settled in the latter part of the 9th C and has changed relatively little since then.
Icelandic belongs to the Indo-European family of languages, the northern branch of Germanic languages. Icelandic is most closely related to Faroese and various West Norwegian dialects and a little less to Danish and Swedish.
Even though the country is large (103.000 km2) and sparsely populated the language is without dialects, which is one of the language characteristics, along with resistance to change (Icelanders today can easily read the 12th C sagas of Old Norse literature). However, the pronunciation has changed considerably, especially of vowels, with little effect on the written language.
Most common words in the language look exactly the same today as they did about thousand years ago, i.e. words such as höfuð (head), auga (eye), himinn (sky), haf (ocean), þú (you), móðir (mother) and faðir (father).
Today there is a influential purist movement - new words are created instead of adopting foreign ones. This activity is not at all tied to institutions or government decisions and many people enjoy trying to create new Icelandic words. As examples may be mentioned 'sími' for telephone, 'tölva' for computer, and 'þota' for jet.
To learn more about Icelandic, visit
http://bella.mrn.stjr.is/utgafur/enska.pdf