Letter from Iceland #43
The Little Book of Icelandic—Old Letters, Strange Sounds
Komið þið öll blessuð og sæl,
Time for another treatise on the Icelandic language!
Did you know that the Icelandic alphabet has 32 letters in it, as opposed to 26 in English? This includes the letters Þ, Ð and Æ, that used to exist in Old English, but became obsolete—letters that tend to confound our foreign visitors.
Also, did you know that the letter Z was banished from Icelandic by governmental decree back in the 1970s?
We examine these things and more in today’s Little Book of Icelandic post.
(If you are confused, or new here, I am posting my LB of Icelandic in its entirety, one section at a time, along with an audio rendition of each section so that people can hear what the different letters and words sound like. BUT to access that you have to be a paid subscriber. If you are not, yet are interested in the book, you can purchase it in three different formats: hard cover, paperback, and ebook. More info here.)
I am currently reading over the LB of Icelandic because it is due for a reprint—just making sure everything is up-to-date. As I read through I am struck all over again by how fascinating this language is, and why I wanted to write the book in the first place.
Icelandic shares the same root as English and German, but because of Iceland’s geographical isolation, it has changed relatively little since the country was settled. Of course it has changed some—I doubt any language in the world is exempt from outside influences, mainly from English at this point in history—but because it was spoken by so few people it sort of stagnated in its own linguistic bubble. What this means (unfortunately for those who want to study it) is that the grammar has remained highly complex, because the more people speak a language, the more streamlined the grammar tends to get. This is why English has a fairly simple grammar—because over the centuries it has been used so much, so the grammar was stripped down. (On the other hand, English has a very extensive vocabulary, and as such is able to express nuances and feelings that Icelandic cannot … which is one reason I love English so much. But I digress.)
Right. On with the post.
Old letters, strange sounds
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