Icelandic language
Icelandic (íslenska) is a North Germanic language spoken in Iceland. It is an inflected language.
While most Western European languages have reduced greatly the extent of inflection, particularly in noun declension, Icelandic retains an inflectional grammar comparable to that of Latin, Ancient Greek, or more closely, Old English.
Written Icelandic has changed relatively little since the 13th century. As a result of this, and of the grammatical similarity between the modern and ancient grammar, modern speakers can still read, more or less, the original sagas and Eddas that were written some eight hundred years ago. This old form of the language is called Old Icelandic, but also commonly equated to Old Norse (an umbrella term for the common Scandinavian language of the Viking era).
Icelandic orthography is notable for its retention of two old letters: þ (thorn) and ð (eth or edh), representing the voiceless and voiced "th" sounds as in English thin and this respectively.
The preservation of the Icelandic language has been taken seriously by the Icelanders — rather than borrow foreign words for new concepts, new Icelandic words are diligently forged for public use.
Phonology
Icelandic phonology is somewhat unusual for European languages in having an aspiration contrast in its stops, rather than a voicing contrast (though, in fact, English exhibits some characteristics of such a contrast). However, Icelandic continuant phonemes exhibit regular contrasts in voice, including in nasals (rare in the world's languages). Additionally, length is contrastive for nearly all phonemes; voiceless SAMPA Chart article for information on values of the symbols.
| | front unrounded | front rounded | central & back |
| close | i | | u |
| mid | e | 2 | |
| open-mid | E | 9 | O |
| open | | | a |
Morphology
Many German speakers will find Icelandic morphology familiar. Almost every morphological category in one language is represented in the other. Nouns are declined for case, number and gender, adjectives for case, number, gender and comparison, and there are two declensions for adjectives, weak and strong. Icelandic possesses only the definite article, which can stand on its own, or be attached to its modified noun (as in other North-Germanic languages). Verbs are conjugated for tense, mood, person, number and voice. There are only two simple tenses, past and present, but to make up for that there are a number of auxiliary constructions, some of which may be regarded as tenses, other as aspects to varying degrees.
Syntax
Icelandic is SVO, generally speaking, but the inflectional system allows for quite some freedom in word order.
Related topics
