Det isländska språket

As I mentioned earlier, I lived in Iceland for a year and learnt to speak the Icelandic language. So how did it go with the Icelandic language when we visited Iceland then? Well, it went very well! I felt that I had forgotten a bit, but a lot came back in just a few days. In everyday situations, I speak Icelandic as well as English. If you want to talk about politics and world news, I'm probably better at English though ...

Innehållsförteckning

More about the Icelandic language

For those who are interested in languages, here's a little more about the Icelandic language. I usually say that Icelandic is both difficult and easy. It is difficult because the grammar is quite complicated and easy because so much of the vocabulary is similar to Swedish.

READ MORE: What do you eat in Iceland? - 15 Icelandic specialities
READ MORE: Facts about Iceland - 30 things you (maybe) didn't know

Icelandic grammar

There are four cases (nominative, accusative, dative, genitive) in Icelandic and three genders (masculine, feminine, neuter). Nouns are inflected according to case, and even personal names are inflected! For example, Helena becomes "Helenu" when it comes after a preposition.

Adjectives are also inflected by case, but also by gender. A man is þreyttur (tired), while a woman is þreytt (tired). Verbs are conjugated by person, as in French and German. There are also subjunctive forms for all verbs, both in the present and imperfect tense ...

Icelandic words

Old words have a common origin and are often very similar to Swedish words, such as borð (table), hús (house) and hestur (horse). When it comes to new words, Icelandic has refrained from borrowing words and has instead made its own constructions, such as sjónvarp ('sight-throwing', i.e. TV), sálfræði ('soul knowledge', i.e. psychology) and myndavél ('picture machine', i.e. camera).

Icelandic pronunciation

Icelandic may not be known for being easy to pronounce, but the volcanic eruption in Iceland a few years ago gave the world's reporters a challenge. We're told that one Italian newsreader gave up and said "The volcano with the unpronounceable name continues to cause problems..." Others bravely took on the task, although the results weren't always crazy good...

Despite the fact that all the newsreaders had a very hard time saying "Eyjafjallajökull" in ash cloud times, I would say that Icelandic is relatively easy to pronounce. Once you learn a few basic rules, it's pretty straightforward and consistent. One such rule is that all words (without exception!) are emphasised on the first syllable. Another important rule is that "au" is pronounced "öj". And then it is actually suddenly easier to understand that "rauður" means red ...