Diaries in this series: Iceland Calls :: The Icelandic Language :: Tvær Vikur Til Reykjavíkur :: Reykjavík, A City of Lights :: Reykjavík, A City of Drizzle and Dancing Clouds :: Reykjavík, A City of Cats and Gods :: Reykjavík, A City of a Storied Tongue :: Reykjavík, A City of Yuletide :: Reykjavík, A City of Hope :: Frá Reykjavík, Til Hjartans Heimveldisins :: Doldrums and Storms :: Til Kaliforníu, Til Iowa, Til Íslands
Góðan daginn, allir! Today we're going to be talking about íslenska, that living-fossil of a language that we call Icelandic. I don't know how much interest there will be in the topic, and you could probably get a better teacher than a byrjandi like myself! But after the interest I got in my last diary on the subject of my upcoming move to Iceland, I felt that it might be worth a post.
Eigum við að byrja? (shall we begin?) :)
Let's start in the past with a picture. Can you tell what this is saying?
That's a transliterated page of the Peterborough Chronicle, written around 1150, one of the couple hundred remaining documents written in Old English. A modern English speaker can pick out a word here or there, but is largely lost. Yet a modern Icelandic speaker can read the Icelandic sagas (saga is Icelandic for "story"), written in the same time period. While other languages derived from Old Norse, such as Norwegian and Danish, have evolved significantly since then, Icelandic has remained relatively unchanged.
"Relatively". Sometimes this fact is overplayed. There have been significant pronunciation shifts since the days of the Viking settlements (note: what we call a Viking is, in Icelandic, víkingur; víking means "piracy"). There have been some vocabulary and grammar changes as well, some of which have left traces of their history behind.
For example, let's look at the neuter noun, fjall, meaning mountain. You may recognize that from the names of Icelandic volcanoes from the news, such as Eyjafjallajökull (literally, "Island-Mountain-Glacier").
(Above: Eyjafjallajökull, a now-famous eldfjall ("volcano" -- literally, "fire mountain"))
The nominative plural of fjall is fjöll. The rule in Icelandic is that when a word takes on an ending with a "u" in it, any non-blocked "a" in the stem becomes a "ö". Great, except.... there is no 'u' in the ending here. There is no ending at all! Well, it turns out that in Old Norse, there was a "u" ending (fjöllu), which has since been lost. Now only the vowel shift remains.
Despite some notable shifts, however, learning the Icelandic language is like stepping back in time. In many ways, it reminds one more of Old English than modern English does! Let's back up.
Two of the major Indo-European lingustic branches are the West and North Germanic branches:
The two started to diverge from each other several thousand years BC, and by about 200 AD were mutually unintelligible. Not long after, English began to diverge from the mainland West Germanic languages, around 600AD. English then began a period of rapid evolution, taking influences from a number of different languages. One of those, in fact, being a reintersection with Old Norse, during the Viking raids.
While earliest visitors to Iceland were present as early as the 700s AD, the main settlement period began in the late 800s and settlement slowed by the early 900s. These settlers were primarily a mix of Norwegians and some degree of Irish (and to a lesser extent, Scottish) captives. While Iceland maintained (widely varying) diplomatic and trade ties with the rest of the Nordic world, its isolation allowed it to avoid the linguistic shifts underway on the mainland. It even maintained its integrity better than its nearest linguistic relative, Faroese.
(Above: Þingvellir, "assembly fields", where the Mid-Atlantic ridge rises above the water, was the site of (arguably) the world's oldest modern parliament -- Iceland's Alþing)
In English, we might say, "Should we go?" But in Icelandic, you'd say, "Eigum við að fara?" -- literally, "Have we to go?" Sounds old-fashioned, right? Let's do some more.
"Do you sing later?" vs "Syngurðu seinna?" ("Sing you later?")
"Thank you, mother." vs "Ég þakka þér mamma mín." ("Thank you, mother-mine")
"I go here." vs "Ég fer heðan." ("I go hither")
"I leave here." vs "Ég fer hingað." ("I go thither")
"Goodbye." vs "Vertu blessaður/blessuð." (equivalent to "Blessed-be" -- one of a number of ways to say goodbye in Icelandic.)
And so forth.
Icelandic still retains letters that we've lost from English -- Æ and æ (pronounced "aye"), Ð and ð (pronounced like the "th" in "that"), and Þ and þ (pronounced like the "th" in "thin"). The latter example, the thorn (Icelandic: þorn, pronounced more like "thord"), has been lost from all languages worldwide except Icelandic.
Iceland's naming system, too, is a throwback which has largely been lost outside the country. In America, if you see a person with the last name "Carlson", you don't expect their father to actually be named "Carl". But an Icelander with the föðurnafn "Karlsson" would literally have a father named "Karl". Föðurnöfn are not passed down between generations, but are more of a descriptive term to help distinguish people with the same fornafn (first name). Indeed, phone books in Iceland are sorted by first name, and you don't ever address people by just their föðurnafn (such as "Mr. Karlsson"). Even the prime minister of Iceland, Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir, is properly addressed as "Jóhanna".
Icelandic is famous for being a difficult language to learn. I like to describe it thus: it has a grammatical complexity worse than Latin and greater irregularity than English. Let me give you an example: here is how you decline the word "good" (góður):
Frumstig
Stark beyging Eintala Fleirtala
(karlkyn) (kvenkyn) (hvorugkyn) (karlkyn) (kvenkyn) (hvorugkyn)
Nefnifall góður góð gott góðir góðar góð
Þolfall góðan góða gott góða góðar góð
Þágufall góðum góðri góðu góðum góðum góðum
Eignarfall góðs góðrar góðs góðra góðra góðra
Veik beyging Eintala Fleirtala
(karlkyn) (kvenkyn) (hvorugkyn) (karlkyn) (kvenkyn) (hvorugkyn)
Nefnifall góði góða góða góðu góðu góðu
Þolfall góða góðu góða góðu góðu góðu
Þágufall góða góðu góða góðu góðu góðu
Eignarfall góða góðu góða góðu góðu góðu
Miðstig
Eintala Fleirtala
(karlkyn) (kvenkyn) (hvorugkyn) (karlkyn) (kvenkyn) (hvorugkyn)
Nefnifall betri betri betra betri betri betri
Þolfall betri betri betra betri betri betri
Þágufall betri betri betra betri betri betri
Eignarfall betri betri betra betri betri betri
Efsta stig
Stark beyging Eintala Fleirtala
(karlkyn) (kvenkyn) (hvorugkyn) (karlkyn) (kvenkyn) (hvorugkyn)
Nefnifall bestur best best bestir bestar best
Þolfall bestan besta best besta bestar best
Þágufall bestum bestri bestu bestum bestum bestum
Eignarfall bests bestrar bests bestra bestra bestra
Veik beyging Eintala Fleirtala
(karlkyn) (kvenkyn) (hvorugkyn) (karlkyn) (kvenkyn) (hvorugkyn)
Nefnifall besti besta besta bestu bestu bestu
Þolfall besta bestu besta bestu bestu bestu
Þágufall besta bestu besta bestu bestu bestu
Eignarfall besta bestu besta bestu bestu bestu
That is, adjectives must match case, gender, and number with their nouns and have separate comparative and superlative declensions (a few English adjectives have this latter facet, but most do not). Furthermore, there are "strong" and "weak" declensions, depending on whether the noun is modified by a definite article or not.
At least there are only about a dozen adjective declension patterns, all related to each other, with a relatively small number of exceptions. Here's a typical masculine noun declension:
Nefnifall Þolfall Þágufall Eignarfall
Eintala bíll bíl bíl bíls
Eintala ákveðin bíllinn bílinn bílnum bílsins
Fleirtala bílar bíla bílum bíla
Fleirtala ákveðin bílarnir bílana bílunum bílanna
That is, it's split up by case, number, and whether or not it has the definite article ("the") attached to it. But while there are
some common, regular patterns of nouns -- the so-called "weak nouns" -- and there are some groupings of ways in which strong nouns are declined -- overall, it's quite chaotic, and really, you just have to memorize the declensions. For example, here's the declension for another masculine noun,
björn (bear):
Nefnifall Þolfall Þágufall Eignarfall
Eintala björn björn birni bjarnar
Eintala ákveðin björninn björninn birninum bjarnarins
Fleirtala birnir birni björnum bjarna
Fleirtala ákveðin birnirnir birnina björnunum bjarnanna
You'll note some things are handled similarly (most notably, the definite article suffixes, but also some of the stem endings). But some changes are quite random. That's just the nature of Icelandic. And even for the consistent stuff (weak nouns, definite article suffixes, etc), each gender of nouns (masculine, feminine, or neuter) has its own different patterns for them.
In English, we have two types of verbs -- "weak" and "strong" verbs. Weak verbs are made into past tense by adding a suffix (-ed) -- for example, "jump" -> "jumped". Strong verbs are made into past tense with a stem vowel shift: "run" -> "ran".
Icelandic has just the same. Only you don't need to memorize just a couple things about each verb -- there's a whole host of things that aren't necessarily linked to each other!
* Infinitive
* Present-singular stem
* Past-singular stem
* Past-plural stem
* Past participle
* Present-perfect stem
* Past-perfect stem
* Present-singular suffix pattern (1st, 2nd, and 3rd person endings)
* Past-singular suffix pattern (like above)
For example, let's look at how to decline "að finna" -- to find. To fill in the blanks for the above:
* Finna
* Finn
* Fann
* Fund
* Fundið
* Finn
* Fynd
* -, -ur, -ur
* -, -st, -
For weak verbs, all of those correlate with each other predictably. For strong verbs, like finna, it's all chaos; you just have to memorize it. At least some things are predictable, like first-person plural (with only the occasional exception).
Not everything is difficult about Icelandic. Some adjectives don't decline -- whenever you see them, æðislegt! (awesome!). Same with a few nouns. Adverbs, thankfully, never decline. Icelandic is rich in compound words (including very long ones, like in German); it makes it easier to guess a word you don't know. It's also very rich the use of idioms and short phrases instead of verbs. For example, instead of "return", you say "koma aftur" (come again). Instead of bring, it's "koma með" (come with). Etc.
One final convenience is due to how closely related the languages are, linguistically; the vocabulary hasn't diverged too greatly. To grab the first lyrics from a random Sigur Rós song:
Nú vaknar þú.
Allt virðist vera breytt.
Let's look at those words:
Nú = Now
Vaknar = Wake
Þú = You
Allt = Everything
Virðist = Seems (from virða, "to evaluate" or "to honor"; same proto-germanic root that led to the English word "worth")
Vera = To be (same root as "are")
Breytt = Changed (from breyta, "to change", which is from the same root as brjóta, "to break", which stems back to the same root as the English "break" and "brittle")
The relationships are quite clear. :)
Well, this just about concludes our primer diary on the Icelandic language. Let's close on one little fun fact. The Icelandic word for Iceland is "Ísland" (pronounced "EES-land"), which literally means Iceland (or "Ice country"). However, in modern parliance, if you're in a restaurant and you ask for "ís", you're likely to be given ice cream. If you go to the store and buy a bag of ice, it's most likely labelled using some form of the word "klaki". So in a way, in modern parliance, the country's name could be better thought of as, "Ice Cream Land."
And yes, their ice cream is quite tasty. ;)
----
Update: By request, here's an Icelandic pronunciation guide for those of you who want to try your hand at it. :) A tip for the "ll" sound: it's formed by putting the tip of the tongue on the top of your mouth near the teeth, letting air pressure build between the tongue and the roof of the mouth, then letting the air spill out to the side of the tongue with a "click" (keep the tip of the tongue in place).
Sorry, I can't help you roll your Rs; I'm not very good at it myself! :P