The Enigmatic ICELANDIC Language

Hi, everyone! I hope you like the new video! I noticed a spelling mistake that I thought I had fixed, but it seems the mistake is still there: Around 12:02, "löreglu" should be "lögreglu" and "löregla" should be "lögregla" (the "g" is missing in both words). Sorry about that! ►If you're learning a new language, try the world-famous Pimsleur method in its new-and-improved subscription format: ► imp.i271380.net/langfocus ► Free trial - Use my link to gain access (Disclosure: The above link is an affiliate link, so Langfocus gets a small referral fee - at no extra cost to you)

To answer your question: As a native speaker, yes it is absolutely possible to read and understand old Sagas. It’s not always straightforward though. Some words either have changed their meanings or have been omitted completely in more modern Icelandic. The spelling is a bit different and although I am no expert in old Norse, one fun fact I remember is that they would use a -t ending after a verb to make it negative, where in modern we have a separate word “ekki” (not). In high school we read a few sagas, of the top of my head is Snorra Edda, Hávamál and Brennu-Njáls Saga. The “school version” has little hints/translations of what the hardest words meant back then, and with that you can generally understand it all.

Icelandic is the language that got me interested in linguistics back in 7th grade, and just today I walked across the stage to receive my diploma in linguistics :) Man, what a blast from the past. Takk fyrir!

The Icelandic word for "computer" meaning something like "number oracle" really got me there. Sounds like some kind of magitechnology used for divination from a fantasy world. Sounds pretty close to what the Vikings would have to think or say about our super cool modern technology.

Belgian here. I used to have an Icelandic coworker who often spoke both Icelandic and Danish on the phone to customers. I always had the impression the Danes decided not to use half of their consonants and send them to Iceland instant of wasting them. To me Danish sounds like a bunch of vowels with an occasional consonant mixed in, and Icelandic sounds like a bunch of consonants with an occasional vowel mixed in.

Now we just need the Faroese language and all main languages of the Nordic countries are going to be completed in your channel, Paul!

My Icelandic story is that I was in San Francisco about 15 years ago walking past the bike shop that used to be a block away from my apartment and there was a woman who kind of looked like Bjork talking into her mobile phone. As I walked by her I noticed her speaking what sounded to me like weird Danish. I don't speak Danish but I knew what it sounded like because until a few months before I'd had Danish flatmates who talked in Danish all the time. When I got home I tried to work out if it was in fact Bjork. She wasn't on tour, but then I worked out that her then husband Matthew Barney had an exhibit at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art at the time so I'm pretty sure it was Bjork, waiting outside the bike shop for her husband, talking to someone back home on the phone.

The more I watch videos about languages, the more I appreciate the incredible variety of ways humans came up with to communicate. Makes me appreciate language diversity even more.

Having learnt Swedish, and being a sort of fluent speaker of German and Dutch, it honestly feels like all the hardest stuff from the entire Germanic language family is combined in Icelandic.

The voiceless L is so cool and vastly underrated. Mongolian, Tibetan, Welsh, Swahili, Nahuatl, and Navajo have it

I remember being on the ferry to iceland, where on the deck a kind of impromptu pangermanic pidgin developed immediately between all the norse, swedish, danish, germans, dutch, faröer, english tourists and icelanders. It was interesting thing to observe and partake in. especially how seemingly unplanned it happened

As a native German speaker Icelandic and Old Norse are interesting, because every time I see them written, I feel like I should be able to understand them. I understand single words and construction but never the whole sentence except for really basic ones. When I read the translation, the connections are immediately obvious. It always feels like I could understand it, if I just thought about it hard enough.

I’m a native Scots Gaelic speaker who just married an Icelander. I kind of hoped our shared Norse heritage might be a real benefit in learning Icelandic. Nope! I’ve been learning for over a year now but I’m still finding it brutally difficult! But the more time I’m around people speaking Icelandic the more I understand. I’m still not confident speaking it, but it gives me hope! It’s the crazy grammar that’s the problem. The genders and weak and strong nouns and all the bonkers declensions are just so hard to absorb, but it will come. I hope…! Edit: Yes, I know Gaelic is not a Norse language, but the island I’m from was settled and ruled by the Norse for around 400 years. I’m talking about my own Norse heritage and my wife’s, not that of Gaelic!

As a native speaker yes i can understand the Old Icelandic but i can definitely feel the a generational gap being far more significant than just a vocabulary difference between me and my grandparents. Said sagas can come with footnotes for such edge cases where certain words would be unrecognizeable.

Icelandic always sounded very 'breathy' to me, almost like somebody speaking that was out of breath slightly after just exercising...I guess maybe this comes from the voiceless consonants feature which I never knew about!

Moved to Iceland from Canada two years ago and have been learning the language. Oddly, once I began speaking/understanding more Icelandic, I could also understand Norweigan (mostly as it was written, sometimes spoken). Even stranger, I am from Eastern Canada, a descendant of Irish and Scottish settlers (not uncommon), and have found a lot of similarities in how we speak in my part of Nova Scotia and how Icelandic is spoken. For example, inhalated words and putting verbs in weird places. Sometimes sounds like Yoda speak.

Ingressive sounds aren't THAT common in Icelandic and it's entirely up to the individual in my opinion. I find it used when a person pretends to be shocked or is trying to ease their way out of a conversation.

I recently started learning some Icelandic by my own and I was waiting for this video SO much dude

Icelandic has always sounded like a magical language to me. I really enjoy studying it everyday. Takk fyrir myndbandið! Bless!

Slavic speaker here. My impression of Icelandic is that it's probably the most difficult European language for me to pronounce as for now. And thanks to German I'm able to guess a couple of simple things in written language.