Icelandic: a brief history and general description, pronunciation. How to learn Icelandic?

Iceland is a great state with a rich history and beautiful nature. The fate of the Icelandic language cannot be called ordinary. Many people know that after one state conquers another, the language of the defeated state, as a rule, weakens, and then completely disappears, as happened in Norway when the Danes conquered the country. Despite the fact that the Danes tried to introduce their own language in the country, Icelandic not only withstood the onslaught of Danish, but also remained the main spoken and literary language. The rural population simply did not want to accept Danish, only a small part of the educated people could boast of knowledge. In Icelandic they wrote works and letters to each other, and later began to print books.

Origin

Icelandic is a language with a great history. It belongs to the group of Germanic languages and the Scandinavian subgroup. The history of the Icelandic language began when the first immigrants from Norway settled Icelandic lands. With the advent of the Vikings, literature also came. Then in 1000, Christianity came to the Icelanders, after which writing appeared. A little later, the first Icelandic poetry appeared. The works were a little ambiguous, with intricate plots and complex turns. The Icelandic language has many similarities with Norwegian and in the XII century they practically did not differ, since the Scandinavians conquered Iceland. Previously, Icelandic was called the Danish language, since in general everything that related to the ancient Scandinavians was considered Danish.

Distribution area

In modern times, the Icelandic language is native to more than 450 thousand people, many of whom live in North America, Canada and Denmark. Outside Iceland, there has been a decrease in the number of Icelandic speakers.

General characteristics of the language

One of the oldest languages is Icelandic. A brief history and general characteristic indicate that it changed very slowly, there are practically no borrowings from other languages ​​in it. Until now, it remains similar to the Old Icelandic language. The formation of words occurs mainly using the suffix method, compounding and tracing, that is, the literal translation of borrowed foreign words. In Iceland there is even a special organization that is created to create equivalent names for existing concepts. After the capture of the Icelandic lands by the Danes, the Icelanders made every effort to eliminate the words of a language foreign to them.

An interesting fact is that the Constitution of the country does not write about Icelandic as an official state language. Working languages ​​are Danish, Swedish and Norwegian. Icelandic students learn two required languages: Danish and English.

An important feature is that the names of Icelanders are made up of the name and patronymic. This is a tradition of the Scandinavian countries. Patronymic consists of the name of the father in the genitive case and the words "son" or "daughter". Sometimes the name of the mother may be used. In order to avoid confusion, the name of the grandfather can be used. Only a small number of people have surnames. Upon marriage, the wife may take her husband's surname, if any.

Dialects

There are only two dialects:

• northern;
• southern.

The difference between the dialects that characterizes the Icelandic language, the words of which are not much different, makes it clear that the northern and eastern dialects are more like various kinds of jargon, since the dialects are not very well developed. The only difference is that in the southern dialect the consonants p, t, k are pronounced weakly and with aspiration, and in the north they are pronounced deaf and aspirated.

Alphabet

Surely some wanted to learn how to learn the Icelandic language, because it is not only beautiful, but also hides great events and stories about the valiant and powerful Vikings. There are 32 letters in the Icelandic alphabet. It is based on a standard alphabet created in the 19th century. A little later he underwent some changes. Some letters and sounds are not characteristic of the Russian language, so for those learning Icelandic they may seem difficult and incomprehensible.

The following letters are used only in loan words.

The latter is no longer used anywhere except in the name of a local newspaper.

Pronunciation

At the moment, compared with the XII-XII century, you can notice how the modern structure of the word has changed, how the Icelandic language itself has changed. The pronunciation is in some way different from what it was before. Nasal vowels disappeared from the tongue , long vowels turned into diphthongs, and pre-aspiration (aspiration) appeared. But one thing remained unchanged - a huge number of inflections. In words, shock balance is maintained. Before a long consonant, a short vowel in the stressed syllable is necessarily followed by a long vowel before a short consonant. The pronunciation of consonants is based on tension and preasperation. There are no voiced sounds in the language, and deaf sounds are not so common. The initial syllable is always stressed. Unstressed consoles are a very rare occurrence for the Icelandic language.

Morphology

Those who are going to learn the Icelandic language should know that the morphology of the language is not much different from Russian. There are plural and singular nouns, as well as feminine, masculine and neuter. Compared to many other Scandinavian languages, which greatly simplified the word formation system, especially the declension of nouns, Icelandic has remained faithful to its traditions. Since Iceland is located far beyond the borders of Europe, which is located on the mainland, this made it possible to preserve the similarity of the Old Norse and Icelandic languages.

The Icelandic language has four cases: nominative, genitive, accusative and dative. Certain nouns carry the article with them, while indefinite nouns do not. There is a double certainty in which the article is added to the noun, depending on the grammatical basis of the sentence. The structure of the word resembles Russian, that is, a standard prefix is ​​added to the root. The verb has a temporary form, voice and mood. There are also strong and weak verbs. They can be conjugated by faces and numbers.

Vocabulary

Since the advent of the language, and this is the 9th century, little has changed in it. It only means that Icelanders can easily read works in Old Norse. With the translation of the New Testament into Icelandic in 1540, its formation and development began. In the eighteenth century, Icelanders revolted to clear their tongues and return to using the old words. And if Icelandic words were not enough to denote new objects, then it was proposed to create them from ancient Icelandic roots and prefixes. Thanks to modern reforms, Icelandic vocabulary is practically free of borrowings and foreign words. Despite the rapid development of science and technology, Icelanders are very scrupulous in their work and they replace new words with words from their old vocabulary. Now, many words that were once out of use, updated according to all the rules of the Icelandic language, are introduced back so that Icelanders gradually get used to them.