tips and guidelines for learning icelandic

February 25, 2006 10:32 AM

I'm planning on moving to Iceland in a few years (once I get school out of the way), and the biggest obstacle right now is learning Icelandic.

From anyone that has experience learning the language from books (I don't know anyone who speaks Icelandic and as far as I know there aren't any Icelandic courses around me [Dallas, TX area]), I'd like to know which books, resources, methods, etc. are the best.

If anyone has any advice, please give it :) I really want to learn but I'm not quite sure where to start.

posted by p3on to writing & language (10 comments total)

Might try ordering the catalog that I marked as the best answer here.
posted by JanetLand at 10:34 AM on February 25, 2006

I don't have any knowledge of the language, but I do know The University of Manitoba (Canada) has a Department of Icelandic Studies. I believe it's the only one in North America. I don't know if they have a distance education program, but they might be able to point you to some resources. (And they have some links.)
posted by teg at 11:40 AM on February 25, 2006

My uncle taught himself Icelandic in a few months some years ago. I remember he used a big old blue book called "Icelandic." He's napping now, but when he wakes up I'll ask him for more details. Stay tuned.
posted by ohio at 12:38 PM on February 25, 2006

Why not learn Icelandic when you get to Iceland?

Q. They say English is widely spoken in Iceland. True?

A. Almost everybody speaks English. It used to be that kids learned Danish as their second language, English later. Now it's the other way around.
posted by iviken at 12:39 PM on February 25, 2006

Sorry, don't have an answer. However, this is a Good Poem: The Icelandic Language
posted by mto at 1:01 PM on February 25, 2006

Seconding iviken here. A friend of mine moved to Iceland and English was spoken fluently by the vast majority of the folks he met. I got the impression one could live there quite comfortably, especially in Reykjavik, for any amount of time without learning a word of Icelandic.

Which is not to say you should do that. Heavens no. But once you're there, there'll be plenty of opportunities to find classes, conversation partners, etc.
posted by donpedro at 1:13 PM on February 25, 2006

I hope this isn't a derail; it doesn't really help to answer the specific question asked, but hopefully it's still helpful.

Not to argue with the truth and helpfulness of the above comments, but I want to point out that just because people speak fluent English doesn't mean that they always want to. As someone who moved to the Netherlands (where very many people speak excellent English) with just a few words of Dutch, I know that my experience (while relatively painless) would have been much easier if I'd had a working knowledge of Dutch before I got here. (That said, of course, I probably still would have had a major panic because it takes a long time to get used to different accents and to be able to hold conversations with random people - it's true that there's no substitute for actually living in a language.)

I also have to stress that while it's handy to have English-speaking people around when you get stuck, it doesn't help you to read the newspaper, watch tv (or go to the movies to see a non-English film, if you can't read the Icelandic subtitles), take classes in other subjects (let's say you want to do a photography course, not everyone is going to want to speak English for you), or just to feel like you fit in and not be the one who's "making everyone speak English". You feel fine about it at first, but it gets old quite quickly.

What I'm saying, p3on, is that imo you're doing the right thing. If you're planning on spending a while living in Iceland, why not get off to a head start now. Which, admittedly, doesn't help the real question that you're asking, which is how to do that. teg's suggestion is a good starting point. Everyone learns languages differently, so to a certain extent you'll have to go for the trial-and-error method at first. Perhaps you could start by finding some general language-learning resources, if you don't already have experience of learning another language? Finding out your personal learning style would be a start.

I could tell you how I learned Dutch (well, it was simply by listening and speaking), but really that's not a big help - because you might do better with a grammar-based approach, or perhaps you like to learn lists of nouns and verbs, or something else entirely. One suggestion I will make though - it might be a hard thing to do, but I really recommend tracking down any Icelandic films/tv programs you can get your hands on (the Internet should help you here.) You don't need subtitles, though of course they make things a bit more interesting at first ;) Just watch and listen, don't worry about understanding anything, but you'll start to get a feel for the language. Later on you'll think back and remember, with wonder, that the words once didn't make sense to you. I remember when I couldn't even tell where one word ended and another one began, in Dutch. It was just a bunch of sounds. Now I can't not understand it (well, most of the time, anyway!)

/ramble
posted by different at 3:58 PM on February 25, 2006

Also, this was linked to by the site that teg provided - looks like quite a good basic intro to Icelandic. Get going!
posted by different at 4:07 PM on February 25, 2006 [1 favorite has favorites]

[In the interest of full disclosure: I am not Icelandic, nor do I speak Icelandic. I've been three times, however, to visit a good friend of mind (an Icelander) who lives in Reykjavík.]

While I agree completely with different about the potential benefits of learning a country's first language before moving there, in this specific case I think it might be better to study the language after arriving.

First: Icelandic is a notoriously difficult language to learn. The grammar is astoundingly complex and some of the vocalics have no English equivalent; I can't imagine how a person could learn to make those noises accurately without hearing them over and over again from a variety of different mouths. Some Icelanders with whom I've spoken have said that they frequently can't understand Icelandic spoken by self-instructed beginners even if they're using the right words because the accent is so incorrect.

Second: the University of Iceland has a course specifically designed to teach Icelandic to English speakers. No book, regardless of how well-written, will provide the same kind of experience.

Third: there are roughly 300,000 native speakers of Icelandic in the world. Sure, their first language is Icelandic and it's always nice to converse in your first language. And I'd imagine it would be appreciated if you could say very basic things like "yes" (já, with the J sounding like a Y and the Á sounding like an "ow"), "no" (nei, sounding like "nay"), and "thank you" (takk or takk fyrir, with kind of a breathy lisp on the last R) before you got there. But I would be absolutely shocked if anyone you meet in Iceland expected you to be able to speak their language upon your arrival.

I don't want to make it sound like there will be no benefit to beginning to study the language before you arrive, but in the specific case of Icelandic, I think a more immersive instruction would be more beneficial. Can you arrange with your school to study abroad so you can spend a semester there before you move?
posted by jesourie at 10:17 AM on February 26, 2006

If you want to start on familiarity, you could proofread books in Icelandic for Distributed Proofreading Europe. The guy who project manages most of the Icelandic texts welcomes non-Icelandic speakers.
posted by QIbHom at 2:25 PM on February 28, 2006