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Icelandic (; is, íslenska, link=no ) is a
North Germanic language The North Germanic languages make up one of the three branches of the Germanic languages—a sub-family of the Indo-European languages—along with the West Germanic languages and the extinct East Germanic languages. The language group is also ...
spoken by about 314,000 people, the vast majority of whom live in
Iceland Iceland ( is, Ísland; ) is a Nordic island country in the North Atlantic Ocean and in the Arctic Ocean. Iceland is the most sparsely populated country in Europe. Iceland's capital and largest city is Reykjavík, which (along with its s ...
, where it is the national language. Due to being a West Scandinavian language, it is most closely related to Faroese, western
Norwegian dialects Norwegian dialects (''dialekter'') are commonly divided into four main groups, 'Northern Norwegian' (), 'Central Norwegian' ('' trøndersk''), 'Western Norwegian' (''vestlandsk''), and 'Eastern Norwegian' (). Sometimes 'Midland Norwegian' () and ...
, and the
extinct language An extinct language is a language that no longer has any speakers, especially if the language has no living descendants. In contrast, a dead language is one that is no longer the native language of any community, even if it is still in use, l ...
,
Norn Norn may refer to: *Norn language, an extinct North Germanic language that was spoken in Northern Isles of Scotland *Norns, beings from Norse mythology *Norn Iron, the local pronunciation of Northern Ireland * Norn iron works, an old industrial c ...
. The language is more
conservative Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy that seeks to promote and to preserve traditional institutions, practices, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civilization in ...
than most other Germanic languages. While most of them have greatly reduced levels of
inflection In linguistic morphology, inflection (or inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical categories such as tense, case, voice, aspect, person, number, gender, mood, animacy, and defin ...
(particularly noun
declension In linguistics, declension (verb: ''to decline'') is the changing of the form of a word, generally to express its syntactic function in the sentence, by way of some inflection. Declensions may apply to nouns, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, and ...
), Icelandic retains a four- case synthetic grammar (comparable to
German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) ** Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...
, though considerably more conservative and synthetic) and is distinguished by a wide assortment of irregular declensions. Icelandic vocabulary is also deeply conservative, with the country's
language regulator This is a list of bodies that consider themselves to be authorities on standard languages, often called language academies. Language academies are motivated by, or closely associated with, linguistic purism and Prestige (sociolinguistics), presti ...
maintaining an active policy of coining terms based on older Icelandic words rather than directly taking in
loanword A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because th ...
s from other languages. Since the written language has not changed much, Icelandic speakers can read classic
Old Norse Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is a stage of development of North Germanic languages, North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and t ...
literature created in the 10th through 13th centuries (such as the ''
Edda "Edda" (; Old Norse ''Edda'', plural ''Eddur'') is an Old Norse term that has been attributed by modern scholars to the collective of two Medieval Icelandic literary works: what is now known as the ''Prose Edda'' and an older collection of poems ...
s'' and sagas) with relative ease. Icelandic is closely related to Faroese; the written forms of the two languages are very similar, but their spoken forms are not mutually intelligible. It is not mutually intelligible with the continental Scandinavian languages (
Danish Danish may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to the country of Denmark People * A national or citizen of Denmark, also called a "Dane," see Demographics of Denmark * Culture of Denmark * Danish people or Danes, people with a Danish a ...
,
Norwegian Norwegian, Norwayan, or Norsk may refer to: *Something of, from, or related to Norway, a country in northwestern Europe * Norwegians, both a nation and an ethnic group native to Norway * Demographics of Norway *The Norwegian language, including ...
, and
Swedish Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...
) and is more distinct from the most widely spoken Germanic languages,
English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...
and
German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) ** Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...
. Aside from the 300,000 Icelandic speakers in Iceland, Icelandic is spoken by about 8,000 people in Denmark, 5,000 people in the United States, Based on 2000 US census data. and more than 1,400 people in Canada, notably in the region known as
New Iceland New Iceland ( is, Nýja Ísland ) is the name of a region on Lake Winnipeg in the Canadian province of Manitoba which was named for settlers from Iceland. It was settled in 1875. Background In 1875, over 200 Icelanders immigrated to Manitoba es ...
in
Manitoba Manitoba ( ) is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada at the Centre of Canada, longitudinal centre of the country. It is Canada's Population of Canada by province and territory, fifth-most populous province, with a population o ...
which was settled by Icelanders beginning in the 1880s. The state-funded
Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies The Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies ( is, Stofnun Árna Magnússonar í íslenskum fræðum ) is an institute of the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture of Iceland which conducts research in Icelandic and related academic s ...
serves as a centre for preserving the medieval Icelandic manuscripts and studying the language and its literature. The Icelandic Language Council, comprising representatives of universities, the arts, journalists, teachers, and the Ministry of Culture, Science and Education, advises the authorities on language policy. Since 1995, on 16 November each year, the birthday of 19th-century poet
Jónas Hallgrímsson Jónas Hallgrímsson (16 November 1807 – 26 May 1845) was an Icelandic poet, author and naturalist. He was one of the founders of the Icelandic journal Fjölnir (journal), ''Fjölnir'', which was first published in Copenhagen in 1835. The mag ...
is celebrated as
Icelandic Language Day Icelandic Language Day ( is, dagur íslenskrar tungu, English: "day of the Icelandic tongue") is a festival celebrated on 16 November each year in Iceland to celebrate the Icelandic language. This date was chosen to coincide with the birthday of the ...
.


History

The oldest preserved texts in Icelandic were written around 1100 AD. Many of the texts are based on poetry and laws traditionally preserved orally. The most famous of the texts, which were written in
Iceland Iceland ( is, Ísland; ) is a Nordic island country in the North Atlantic Ocean and in the Arctic Ocean. Iceland is the most sparsely populated country in Europe. Iceland's capital and largest city is Reykjavík, which (along with its s ...
from the 12th century onward, are the
sagas of Icelanders The sagas of Icelanders ( is, Íslendingasögur, ), also known as family sagas, are one genre of Icelandic sagas. They are prose narratives mostly based on historical events that mostly took place in Iceland in the ninth, tenth, and early el ...
, which encompass the historical works and the ''
Poetic Edda The ''Poetic Edda'' is the modern name for an untitled collection of Old Norse anonymous narrative poems, which is distinct from the ''Prose Edda'' written by Snorri Sturluson. Several versions exist, all primarily of text from the Icelandic med ...
''. The language of the sagas is Old Icelandic, a western dialect of
Old Norse Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is a stage of development of North Germanic languages, North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and t ...
. The
Dano-Norwegian Dano-Norwegian ( Danish and no, dansk-norsk) was a koiné/mixed language that evolved among the urban elite in Norwegian cities during the later years of the union between the Kingdoms of Denmark and Norway (1536/1537–1814). It is from thi ...
, then later Danish rule of Iceland from 1536 to 1918 had little effect on the evolution of Icelandic (in contrast to the Norwegian language), which remained in daily use among the general population. Though more archaic than the other living Germanic languages, Icelandic changed markedly in pronunciation from the 12th to the 16th century, especially in vowels (in particular, ', ', ', and ''/''). The modern
Icelandic alphabet Icelandic refers to anything of, from, or related to Iceland and may refer to: * Icelandic people *Icelandic language * Icelandic alphabet *Icelandic cuisine See also * Icelander (disambiguation) * Icelandic Airlines, a predecessor of Icelandai ...
has developed from a standard established in the 19th century, primarily by the Danish linguist
Rasmus Rask Rasmus Kristian Rask (; born Rasmus Christian Nielsen Rasch; 22 November 1787 – 14 November 1832) was a Danish linguist and philologist. He wrote several grammars and worked on comparative phonology and morphology. Rask traveled extensively to ...
. It is based strongly on an
orthography An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation. Most transnational languages in the modern period have a writing system, and mos ...
laid out in the early 12th century by a document referred to as the ''
First Grammatical Treatise The First Grammatical Treatise ( is, Fyrsta málfræðiritgerðin ) is a 12th-century work on the phonology of the Old Norse or Old Icelandic language. It was given this name because it is the first of four grammatical works bound in the Icelandic ...
'' by an anonymous author, who has later been referred to as the First Grammarian. The later Rasmus Rask standard was a re-creation of the old treatise, with some changes to fit concurrent Germanic conventions, such as the exclusive use of ' rather than '. Various archaic features, as the letter ', had not been used much in later centuries. Rask's standard constituted a major change in practice. Later 20th-century changes include the use of ' instead of ' and the replacement of ' with ' in 1973. Apart from the addition of new vocabulary, written Icelandic has not changed substantially since the 11th century, when the first texts were written on
vellum Vellum is prepared animal skin or membrane, typically used as writing material. Parchment is another term for this material, from which vellum is sometimes distinguished, when it is made from calfskin, as opposed to that made from other anima ...
. Modern speakers can understand the original sagas and
Edda "Edda" (; Old Norse ''Edda'', plural ''Eddur'') is an Old Norse term that has been attributed by modern scholars to the collective of two Medieval Icelandic literary works: what is now known as the ''Prose Edda'' and an older collection of poems ...
s which were written about eight hundred years ago. The sagas are usually read with updated modern spelling and footnotes, but otherwise are intact (as with recent English editions of
Shakespeare's William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...
works). With some effort, many Icelanders can also understand the original manuscripts.


Legal status and recognition

According to an act passed by the
Parliament In modern politics, and history, a parliament is a legislative body of government. Generally, a modern parliament has three functions: representing the electorate, making laws, and overseeing the government via hearings and inquiries. Th ...
in 2011, Icelandic is "the national language of the Icelandic people and the official language in Iceland"; moreover, " blic authorities shall ensure that its use is possible in all areas of Icelandic society". Iceland is a member of the Nordic Council, a forum for co-operation between the Nordic countries, but the council uses only Danish, Norwegian and Swedish as its working languages (although the council does publish material in Icelandic). Under the
Nordic Language Convention The Nordic Language Convention is a convention of linguistic rights that came into force on 1 March 1987, under the auspices of the Nordic Council. Under the Convention, citizens of the Nordic countries have the opportunity to use their native lang ...
, since 1987 Icelandic citizens have had the right to use Icelandic when interacting with official bodies in other Nordic countries, without becoming liable for any interpretation or translation costs. The convention covers visits to hospitals, job centres, the police and social security offices. It does not have much effect since it is not very well known, and because those Icelanders not proficient in the other Scandinavian languages often have a sufficient grasp of English to communicate with institutions in that language (although there is evidence that the general English skills of Icelanders have been somewhat overestimated). The Nordic countries have committed to providing services in various languages to each other's citizens, but this does not amount to any absolute rights being granted, except as regards criminal and court matters.Language Convention not working properly
, ''Nordic news'', March 3, 2007. Retrieved on April 25, 2007.
Helge Niska
"Community interpreting in Sweden: A short presentation"
International Federation of Translators The Fédération Internationale des Traducteurs (English: International Federation of Translators) is an international grouping of associations of translators, interpreters and terminologists. More than 100 professional associations are affiliate ...
, 2004. Retrieved on April 25, 2007.


Phonology

Icelandic has very minor
dialect The term dialect (from Latin , , from the Ancient Greek word , 'discourse', from , 'through' and , 'I speak') can refer to either of two distinctly different types of Linguistics, linguistic phenomena: One usage refers to a variety (linguisti ...
al differences phonetically. The language has both
monophthong A monophthong ( ; , ) is a pure vowel sound, one whose articulation at both beginning and end is relatively fixed, and which does not glide up or down towards a new position of articulation. The monophthongs can be contrasted with diphthongs, wh ...
s and
diphthong A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech o ...
s, and consonants can be
voiced Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds (usually consonants). Speech sounds can be described as either voiceless (otherwise known as ''unvoiced'') or voiced. The term, however, is used to refer ...
or
unvoiced In linguistics, voicelessness is the property of sounds being pronounced without the larynx vibrating. Phonologically, it is a type of phonation, which contrasts with other states of the larynx, but some object that the word phonation implies ...
. Voice plays a primary role in the differentiation of most
consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced wi ...
s including the nasals but excluding the
plosives In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or simply a stop, is a pulmonic consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be made with the tongue tip or blade (, ), tongue body (, ), lips ...
. The plosives ''b'', ''d'', and ''g'' are voiceless and differ from ''p'', ''t'', and ''k'' only by their lack of aspiration.
Preaspiration In phonetics, preaspiration (sometimes spelled pre-aspiration) is a period of voicelessness or aspiration preceding the closure of a voiceless obstruent, basically equivalent to an -like sound preceding the obstruent. In other words, when an obstru ...
occurs before
geminate In phonetics and phonology, gemination (), or consonant lengthening (from Latin 'doubling', itself from '' gemini'' 'twins'), is an articulation of a consonant for a longer period of time than that of a singleton consonant. It is distinct from ...
(long or double consonants) ''p'', ''t'', and ''k''. It does not occur before geminate ''b'', ''d'', or ''g''. Pre-aspirated ''tt'' is analogous etymologically and phonetically to
German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) ** Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...
and
Dutch Dutch commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands * Dutch people () * Dutch language () Dutch may also refer to: Places * Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States * Pennsylvania Dutch Country People E ...
''cht'' (compare Icelandic ', ' with the
German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) ** Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...
', ' and the Dutch ', ').


Consonants

* are laminal
denti-alveolar In linguistics, a denti-alveolar consonant or dento-alveolar consonant is a consonant that is articulated with a flat tongue against the alveolar ridge and the upper teeth, such as and in languages such as French, Italian and Spanish. That is, ...
, is apical alveolar,, cited in are alveolar non-sibilant fricatives; the former is
laminal A laminal consonant is a phone (speech sound) produced by obstructing the air passage with the blade of the tongue, the flat top front surface just behind the tip of the tongue in contact with upper lip, teeth, alveolar ridge, to possibly, as ...
, while the latter is usually
apical Apical means "pertaining to an apex". It may refer to: *Apical ancestor, refers to the last common ancestor of an entire group, such as a species (biology) or a clan (anthropology) *Apical (anatomy), an anatomical term of location for features loc ...
. * The voiceless continuants are always constrictive , but the voiced continuants are not very constrictive and are usually pronounced closer to approximants than fricatives . * The rhotic consonants may either be trills or taps , depending on the speaker. * A phonetic analysis reveals that the voiceless lateral approximant is, in practice, usually realised with considerable friction, especially word-finally or syllable-finally, i. e., essentially as a
voiceless alveolar lateral fricative The voiceless alveolar lateral fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents voiceless dental, alveolar, and postalveolar lateral fricatives is , ...
. includes three extra phones: . Word-final voiced consonants are devoiced pre-pausally, so that ''dag'' ('day (acc.)') is pronounced as and ''dagur'' ('day (nom.)') is pronounced . Many competing analyses have been proposed for Icelandic phonemes. The problems stem from complex but regular alternations and mergers among the above phones in various positions.


Vowels


Grammar

Icelandic retains many grammatical features of other ancient
Germanic languages The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 515 million people mainly in Europe, North America, Oceania and Southern Africa. The most widely spoken Germanic language, Engli ...
, and resembles
Old Norwegian nn, gamalnorsk , region = Kingdom of Norway (872–1397) , era = 11th–14th century , familycolor = Indo-European , fam2 = Germanic , fam3 = North Germanic , fam4 = West Scandinavian , fam5 ...
before much of its
fusional Fusional languages or inflected languages are a type of synthetic language, distinguished from agglutinative languages by their tendency to use a single inflectional morpheme to denote multiple grammatical, syntactic, or semantic features. For e ...
inflection was lost. Modern Icelandic is still a heavily
inflected language Fusional languages or inflected languages are a type of synthetic language, distinguished from agglutinative languages by their tendency to use a single inflectional morpheme to denote multiple grammatical, syntactic, or semantic features. For e ...
with four cases: nominative,
accusative The accusative case (abbreviated ) of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb. In the English language, the only words that occur in the accusative case are pronouns: 'me,' 'him,' 'her,' 'us,' and ‘th ...
, dative and genitive. Icelandic nouns can have one of three
grammatical gender In linguistics, grammatical gender system is a specific form of noun class system, where nouns are assigned with gender categories that are often not related to their real-world qualities. In languages with grammatical gender, most or all nouns ...
s: masculine, feminine or neuter. There are two main declension paradigms for each gender: strong and
weak noun Weak nouns are nouns that follow a weak inflection paradigm, in contrast with strong nouns. They are present in several Germanic languages. English Modern English has only two vestiges of the weak noun inflection in common use: ''ox'', whose p ...
s, and these are further divided into subclasses of nouns, based primarily on the ''genitive singular'' and ''nominative plural'' endings of a particular noun. For example, within the strong masculine nouns, there is a subclass (class 1) that declines with ''-s'' (') in the genitive singular and ''-ar'' (') in the nominative plural. However, there is another subclass (class 3) of strong masculine nouns that always declines with ''-ar'' (') in the genitive singular and ''-ir'' (') in the nominative plural. Additionally, Icelandic permits a quirky subject, that is, certain verbs have subjects in an oblique case (i.e. other than the nominative). Nouns, adjectives and pronouns are declined in the four cases and for number in the singular and plural.
Verb A verb () is a word (part of speech) that in syntax generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual descri ...
s are conjugated for tense, mood,
person A person ( : people) is a being that has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of prope ...
,
number A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The original examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers c ...
and
voice The human voice consists of sound made by a human being using the vocal tract, including talking, singing, laughing, crying, screaming, shouting, humming or yelling. The human voice frequency is specifically a part of human sound producti ...
. There are three voices: active, passive and middle (or medial), but it may be debated whether the middle voice is a voice or simply an independent class of verbs of its own, as every middle-voice verb has an active-voice ancestor, but sometimes with drastically different meaning, and the middle-voice verbs form a conjugation group of their own. Examples are ' ("come") vs. ' ("get there"), ' ("kill") vs. ' ("perish ignominiously") and ' ("take") vs. ' ("manage to"). In each of these examples, the meaning has been so altered, that one can hardly see them as the same verb in different voices. Verbs have up to ten tenses, but Icelandic, like English, forms most of them with
auxiliary verb An auxiliary verb ( abbreviated ) is a verb that adds functional or grammatical meaning to the clause in which it occurs, so as to express tense, aspect, modality, voice, emphasis, etc. Auxiliary verbs usually accompany an infinitive verb or a ...
s. There are three or four main groups of weak verbs in Icelandic, depending on whether one takes a historical or a formalistic view: ', ', and ', referring to the endings that these verbs take when conjugated in the first person
singular Singular may refer to: * Singular, the grammatical number that denotes a unit quantity, as opposed to the plural and other forms * Singular homology * SINGULAR, an open source Computer Algebra System (CAS) * Singular or sounder, a group of boar, ...
present. Almost all Icelandic verbs have the ending -a in the infinitive, some with ', two with ' (', ') one with ' (': "wash") and one with ' (the Danish borrowing ' which is probably withdrawing its presence). Many transitive verbs (i.e. they require an
object Object may refer to: General meanings * Object (philosophy), a thing, being, or concept ** Object (abstract), an object which does not exist at any particular time or place ** Physical object, an identifiable collection of matter * Goal, an ...
), can take a
reflexive pronoun A reflexive pronoun is a pronoun that refers to another noun or pronoun (its antecedent) within the same sentence. In the English language specifically, a reflexive pronoun will end in ''-self'' or ''-selves'', and refer to a previously n ...
instead. The case of the pronoun depends on the case that the verb governs. As for further classification of verbs, Icelandic behaves much like other Germanic languages, with a main division between weak verbs and strong, and the strong verbs, of which there are about 150 to 200, are divided into six classes plus reduplicative verbs. They still make up some of the most frequently used verbs. (', "to be", is the example ''par excellence'', having two subjunctives and two imperatives in addition to being made up of different stems.) There is also a class of auxiliary verbs, called the ' verbs (4 or 5, depending who is counting) and then the oddity ' ("to cause"), called the only totally irregular verb in Icelandic although every form of it is caused by common and regular sound changes. The basic word order in Icelandic is subject–verb–object. However, as words are heavily inflected, the word order is fairly flexible, and every combination may occur in poetry; SVO, SOV, VSO, VOS, OSV and OVS are all allowed for metrical purposes. However, as with most Germanic languages, Icelandic usually complies with the
V2 word order In syntax, verb-second (V2) word order is a sentence structure in which the finite verb of a sentence or a clause is placed in the clause's second position, so that the verb is preceded by a single word or group of words (a single constituent ...
restriction, so the conjugated verb in Icelandic usually appears as the second element in the clause, preceded by the word or phrase being emphasised. For example: * ' (''I'' know it not.) * ' (''Not'' know I it. ) * ' (''It'' know I not.) * ' (I went to Britain when I was one year old.) * ' (To Britain went I, when I was one year old.) * ' (When I was one year old, went I to Britain.) In the above examples, the conjugated verbs ' and ' are always the second element in their respective clauses, see verb-second word order. A distinction between formal and informal address (
T–V distinction The T–V distinction is the contextual use of different pronouns that exists in some languages and serves to convey formality or familiarity. Its name comes from the Latin pronouns '' tu'' and '' vos''. The distinction takes a number of forms ...
) had existed in Icelandic from the 17th century, but use of the formal variant weakened in the 1950s and rapidly disappeared. It no longer exists in regular speech, but may occasionally be found in pre-written speeches addressed to the bishop and members of parliament.


Vocabulary

Early Icelandic vocabulary was largely
Old Norse Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is a stage of development of North Germanic languages, North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and t ...
. The introduction of Christianity to Iceland in the 11th century brought with it a need to describe new religious concepts. The majority of new words were taken from other
Scandinavian languages The North Germanic languages make up one of the three branches of the Germanic languages—a sub-family of the Indo-European languages—along with the West Germanic languages and the extinct East Germanic languages. The language group is also r ...
; ' ("church"), for example. Numerous other languages have influenced Icelandic: French brought many words related to the court and knightship; words in the
semantic field In linguistics, a semantic field is a lexical set of words grouped semantically (by meaning) that refers to a specific subject.Howard Jackson, Etienne Zé Amvela, ''Words, Meaning, and Vocabulary'', Continuum, 2000, p14. The term is also used in ...
of trade and commerce have been borrowed from
Low German : : : : : (70,000) (30,000) (8,000) , familycolor = Indo-European , fam2 = Germanic , fam3 = West Germanic , fam4 = North Sea Germanic , ancestor = Old Saxon , ancestor2 = Middle L ...
because of trade connections. In the late 18th century,
language purism Linguistic purism or linguistic protectionism is the prescriptive practice of defining or recognizing one variety of a language as being purer or of intrinsically higher quality than other varieties. Linguistic purism was institutionalized t ...
began to gain noticeable ground in Iceland and since the early 19th century it has been the linguistic policy of the country (see
linguistic purism in Icelandic Linguistic purism in Icelandic is the policy of discouraging new loanwords from entering the language, by creating new words from Old Icelandic and Old Norse roots. In Iceland, linguistic purism is archaising, trying to resuscitate the language ...
). Nowadays, it is common practice to
coin A coin is a small, flat (usually depending on the country or value), round piece of metal or plastic used primarily as a medium of exchange or legal tender. They are standardized in weight, and produced in large quantities at a mint in order t ...
new compound words from Icelandic derivatives. Icelandic personal names are
patronymic A patronymic, or patronym, is a component of a personal name based on the given name of one's father, grandfather (avonymic), or an earlier male ancestor. Patronymics are still in use, including mandatory use, in many countries worldwide, alt ...
(and sometimes
matronymic A matronymic is a personal name based on the given name of one's mother, grandmother, or any female ancestor. It is the female equivalent of a patronymic. Around the world, matronymic surnames are far less common than patronymic surnames. In som ...
) in that they reflect the immediate father or mother of the child and not the historic family lineage. This system, which was formerly used throughout the Nordic area and beyond, differs from most
Western Western may refer to: Places *Western, Nebraska, a village in the US *Western, New York, a town in the US *Western Creek, Tasmania, a locality in Australia *Western Junction, Tasmania, a locality in Australia *Western world, countries that id ...
systems of
family name In some cultures, a surname, family name, or last name is the portion of one's personal name that indicates one's family, tribe or community. Practices vary by culture. The family name may be placed at either the start of a person's full name ...
. In most Icelandic families, the ancient tradition of patronymics is still in use; i.e. a person uses their father's name (usually) or mother's name (increasingly in recent years) in the genitive form followed by the morpheme -son ("son") or -dóttir ("daughter") in lieu of family names. In 2019, changes were announced to the laws governing names. Icelanders who are officially registered with
non-binary gender Non-binary and genderqueer are umbrella terms for gender identities that are not solely male or femaleidentities that are outside the gender binary. Non-binary identities fall under the transgender umbrella, since non-binary people typicall ...
will be permitted to use the suffix ("child of") instead of or .


Cognates with English

As Icelandic shares its ancestry with
English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...
and both are
Germanic languages The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 515 million people mainly in Europe, North America, Oceania and Southern Africa. The most widely spoken Germanic language, Engli ...
, there are many cognate words in both languages; each have the same or a similar meaning and are derived from a common root. The possessive, though not the plural, of a noun is often signified with the ending ', as in English.
Phonological Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages or dialects systematically organize their sounds or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a ...
and
orthographical An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation. Most transnational languages in the modern period have a writing system, and mos ...
changes in each of the languages will have changed spelling and pronunciation. A few examples are given below.


Language policy

A core theme of Icelandic language ideologies is grammatical, orthographic and lexical purism for Icelandic. This is evident in general language discourses, in polls, and in other investigations into Icelandic language attitudes. The general consensus on Icelandic language policy has come to mean that language policy and language ideology discourse are not predominantly state or elite driven; but rather, remain the concern of lay people and the general public. The Icelandic speech community is perceived to have a protectionist language culture; however, this is deep-rooted ideologically primarily in relation to the forms of the language, while Icelanders in general seem to be more “pragmatic” as to domains of language use.


Linguistic purism

During the 19th century, a movement was started by writers and other educated people of the country to rid the language of foreign words as much as possible and to create a new vocabulary and adapt the Icelandic language to the evolution of new concepts, thus avoiding the use of borrowed
neologism A neologism Greek νέο- ''néo''(="new") and λόγος /''lógos'' meaning "speech, utterance"] is a relatively recent or isolated term, word, or phrase that may be in the process of entering common use, but that has not been fully accepted int ...
s as are found in many other languages. Many old words which had fallen into disuse were recycled and given new senses in the modern language, and neologisms were created from Old Norse roots. For example, the word ' ("electricity"), literally means "amber power", calque, calquing the derivation of the
Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
root "electr-" from Greek ' ("amber"). Similarly, the word ' ("telephone") originally meant "cord", and ' ("computer") is a
portmanteau A portmanteau word, or portmanteau (, ) is a blend of words

Writing system

The Icelandic alphabet is notable for its retention of two old letters that no longer exist in the
English alphabet The alphabet for Modern English is a Latin-script alphabet consisting of 26 letters, each having an upper- and lower-case form. The word ''alphabet'' is a compound of the first two letters of the Greek alphabet, '' alpha'' and '' beta''. ...
: Þ, þ (, modern English "thorn") and Ð, ð (, anglicised as "eth" or "edh"), representing the
voiceless In linguistics, voicelessness is the property of sounds being pronounced without the larynx vibrating. Phonologically, it is a type of phonation, which contrasts with other states of the larynx, but some object that the word phonation implies ...
and
voiced Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds (usually consonants). Speech sounds can be described as either voiceless (otherwise known as ''unvoiced'') or voiced. The term, however, is used to refer ...
"th" sounds (as in English ''thin'' and ''this''), respectively. The complete Icelandic alphabet is: The letters with diacritics, such as ' and ', are for the most part treated as separate letters and not variants of their derivative vowels. The letter ' officially replaced ' in 1929, although it had been used in early manuscripts (until the 14th century) and again periodically from the 18th century. The letter ' was formerly in the Icelandic alphabet, but it was officially removed in 1973.


See also

*
Basque–Icelandic pidgin The Basque–Icelandic pidgin ( eu, Euskoislandiera, Islandiera-euskara pidgina; is, Basknesk-íslenskt blendingsmál) was a Basque-based pidgin spoken in Iceland in the 17th century. It consisted of Basque, Germanic and Romance words. Ba ...
(''a pidgin that was used to trade with
Basque Basque may refer to: * Basques, an ethnic group of Spain and France * Basque language, their language Places * Basque Country (greater region), the homeland of the Basque people with parts in both Spain and France * Basque Country (autonomous co ...
whalers'') *
Icelandic exonyms The following is a list of Icelandic exonyms, that is to say names for places in Icelandic that have been adapted to Icelandic spelling rules, translated into Icelandic, or Old Norse exonyms surviving in Icelandic. Commonly pronunciation is close ...
*
Icelandic literature Icelandic literature refers to literature written in Iceland or by Icelandic people. It is best known for the sagas written in medieval times, starting in the 13th century. As Icelandic and Old Norse are almost the same, and because Icelandic wo ...
*
Icelandic name Icelandic names are names used by people from Iceland. Icelandic surnames are different from most other naming systems in the modern Western world by being patronymic or occasionally matronymic: they indicate the father (or mother) of the child ...


Notes


References


Bibliography

* * * * * * * * * * * *


Further reading

* ''Icelandic: Grammar, Text and Glossary'' (1945; 2000) by Stefán Einarsson. Johns Hopkins University Press, .


External links


The Icelandic Language
an overview of the language from the Icelandic Ministry for Foreign Affairs.
BBC Languages – Icelandic, with audio samples

Icelandic: at once ancient and modern
a 16-page pamphlet with an overview of the language from the Icelandic Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, 2001.
The ''New World Translation of the Christian Greek Scriptures'' in Icelandic
the modern
bible The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts of a ...
translation, published by Jehovah's Witnesses, both printed and online versions, 2019.
Íslensk málstöð (The Icelandic Language Institute)
*
Lexicographical Institute of Háskóli Íslands / Orðabók Háskóla Íslands


Dictionaries


Icelandic-English Dictionary / Íslensk-ensk orðabók
Sverrir Hólmarsson, Christopher Sanders, John Tucker. Searchable dictionary from the University of Wisconsin–Madison Libraries
Icelandic – English Dictionary
from Webster's Rosetta Edition.
Collection of Icelandic bilingual dictionaries


by
Richard Cleasby Richard Cleasby (1797–1847) was an English philologist, author with Guðbrandur Vigfússon of the first Icelandic-English dictionary. Life He was eldest son of Stephen Cleasby, and brother of Anthony Cleasby, born on 30 November 1797. He was ...
and
Gudbrand Vigfusson Gudbrand is a given name. Notable people with the given name include: *Gudbrand Bøhn (1839–1906), Norwegian violinist, concertmaster, and music teacher *Gudbrand Granum (1893–1984), Norwegian politician * Gudbrand Gregersen de Saág (1824–19 ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:Icelandic Language West Scandinavian languages North Germanic languages Languages of Iceland Subject–verb–object languages Verb-second languages