Icelandic language

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Icelandic
íslenska
Spoken in: Iceland and Gimli, Manitoba, Canada 
Region: Iceland
Total speakers: 300,000
Language family: Indo-European
 Germanic
  North Germanic
   West Scandinavian
    Icelandic 
Official status
Official language of: Flag of Iceland Iceland
Regulated by: The Icelandic Language Institute
Language codes
ISO 639-1: is
ISO 639-2: ice (B)  isl (T)
ISO 639-3: isl
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-​based pronunciation key.

Icelandic (íslenska) is a North Germanic language, the official language of Iceland and the mother tongue of the Icelandic people. Its closest relative is Faroese and can be somewhat understood by a small number of Norwegians as well, depending on their dialect and education.

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 Norse and Old English.

Contents

[edit] History

Written Icelandic has changed relatively little since the 13th century. As a result of this, and of the similarity between the modern and ancient grammar, modern speakers can still understand, more or less, the original sagas and Eddas that were written some eight hundred years ago. This ability is sometimes mildly overstated by Icelanders themselves, most of whom actually read the Sagas with updated modern spelling and footnotes — though otherwise intact. This old form of the language is called Old Icelandic, but also commonly equated to Old Norse, an umbrella term also known as “Danish Tongue” used for the common Scandinavian language of the Viking era. Old Icelandic was, in the strict sense of the term, a dialect of Old Norse with some Celtic influence.

The Danish occupation of Iceland from 1380 to 1918 has had hardly any effect on the linguistic evolution of Icelandic, which stayed in daily use within the population. The Danish did not use the language for official communications. The same applied during the American occupation of Iceland which began in the 1940s, and was gradually withdrawn during the 1950s.

During the 18th century, the Icelandic authorities implemented a tough policy to preserve the purity of the language. As a result of this policy, some writers and terminologists were made in charge of the creation of new vocabulary to adapt the Icelandic language to the evolution of usages and new concepts, and thus avoiding having to resort to awkward neologisms like in other languages, notably Danish and English. Old words that have fallen into misuse are updated to fit in with the modern language, and neologisms are created from old roots of the language. For example, the word rafmagn, literally “amber power” means ‘electricity’, similarly the word sími, an old word meaning ‘wire’ is used today for ‘telephone’. A final example, the word tölva formed from the words tala (‘figure/number’) and völva (‘magician’) means ‘computer’. In 1944, Icelandic was registered in the constitution as the official language of Iceland, and now, it is the only authorised language in official texts and public debates.

[edit] Alphabet

The Icelandic alphabet is notable for its retention of two old letters which no longer exist in the English alphabet: Þ,þ (þorn, anglicized as "thorn") and Ð,ð (eð, anglicized as "eth" or "edh"), representing the voiceless and voiced "th" sounds as in English thin and this respectively. The complete Icelandic alphabet is:

A Á B D Ð E É F G H I Í J K L M N O Ó P R S T U Ú V X Y Ý Þ Æ Ö (32 letters)
a á b d ð e é f g h i í j k l m n o ó p r s t u ú v x y ý þ æ ö

Icelandic has only very mild dialect differences.

[edit] Phonology

Main article: Icelandic Phonology

Note: This page or section contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for a pronunciation key.

Icelandic has an aspiration contrast between plosives, rather than a voicing contrast, something relatively rare among European languages. Preaspirated voiceless stops are also common. However fricative and sonorant consonant phonemes exhibit regular contrasts in voice, including in nasals (rare in the world's languages). Additionally, length is contrastive for consonants, but not vowels. The chart below is based on Scholten (2000, p. 22); refer to the IPA article for information on the sounds of the following symbols:

[edit] Consonants

Consonant phones
  Bilabial Labio-
dental		 Dental Alveolar Palatal Velar Glottal
Plosive pʰ p     tʰ t     cʰ c kʰ k ʔ  
Nasal m̥ m     n̥ n     ɲ̊ ɲ ŋ̊ ŋ    
Fricative     f v θ ð s   ç j x ɣ h  
Trill             r̥ r            
Lateral approximant             l̥  l̥ɣ l lɣ            

The voiced fricatives [v], [ð], [j] and [ɣ] are not completely constrictive and are often closer to approximants than fricatives.

The status of [c] and [cʰ] as phonemes or as allophones of /k/ and /kʰ/ is the topic of some debate. On the one hand, the presence of minimal pairs like gjóla [couːla] "light wind" vs. góla [kouːla] "howl" and kjóla [cʰouːla] "dresses" vs. kóla [kʰouːla] "cola" suggests that the palatal stops are separate phonemes. On the other hand, only the palatal stops, not the velars, may appear before front vowels, and some linguists (e.g. Rögnvaldsson 1993) have held out for an underlying phonemic representation of [couːla] and [cʰouːla] as /kjoula/ and /kʰjoula/ respectively, with a phonological process merging the /k(ʰ)j/ into [c(ʰ)]. Whether this approach, which is consistent with the orthography and historical processes, represents a synchronic reality is disputed.[citation needed]

The dental fricatives [θ] and [ð] are allophones of a single phoneme. /θ/ is used word-initially, as in þak [θaːk] "roof", and before a voiceless consonant, as in maðkur [maθkʏr] "worm". [ð] is used intervocalically, as in iða [ɪːða] "vortex" and word-finally, as in bað [paːð] "bath", although it can be devoiced to [θ] before pause. The phoneme /θ/ actually represents a voiceless alveolar non-sibilant fricative [θ̠] or [ð̠] when voiced.

Of the voiceless nasals, only [n̥] occurs in word-initial position, for example in hné [n̥jɛː] "knee". Recently, there has been an increasing tendency, especially among children, to pronounce this as voiced; for example pronouncing hnífur [nivʏr] "knife" rather than standard [n̥ivʏr]. The palatal nasal appears before palatal stops and the velar nasals before velar stops. [ŋ] appears also before [l] and [s] through the deletion of [k] in the consonant clusters [ŋkl] and [ŋks].

The preaspirates [ʰp ʰt ʰc ʰk] (e.g. löpp [lœʰp] "foot") do not occur in initial position. In most analyses, consonant length is seen as phonemic while vowel length is seen as determined entirely by environment. Measurements of segment length reveal a more complex picture.

[edit] Vowels

Monophthongs Front Back
Close i u
Near-close ɪ • ʏ  
Open-mid ɛ • œ ɔ
Open a

Where symbols appear in pairs, the one to the right of the dot represents a rounded vowel.

Diphthongs Closer component
is front		 Closer component
is back
More open component is mid ei • øy ou
More open component is fully open ai au

Vowel length is predictable in Icelandic (Orešnik and Pétursson 1977). Stressed vowels (both monophthongs and diphthongs) are long:

  • In one-syllable words where the vowel is word-final:
    • fá [fauː] "get"
    • nei [neiː] "no"
    • þú [θuː] "you (singular)"
  • Before a single consonant:
    • fara [ˈfaːra] "go"
    • hás [hauːs] "hoarse"
    • vekja [ˈvɛːca] "wake (someone) up
    • ég [jɛːɣ] "I"
    • spyr [spɪːr] "ask (1 person, singular)"
  • Before any of the consonant clusters [pr tr kr sr], [pj tj sj], or [tv kv]. (This is often shortened to the rule: If the first of the consonants is one of p, t, k, s and the second is one of j, v, r, then the vowel is long. This is known as the ptks+jvr-rule. An exception occurs, if there is a t before the infix k. Examples are e. g. notkun and litka. There are also additional exceptions like um and fram where the vowel is short in spite of rules and en, where the vowel length depends on the context.)
    • lipra [ˈlɪːpra] "agile (accusative, feminine)"
    • sætra [ˈsaiːtra] "sweet (genitive, plural)"
    • akra [ˈaːkra] "fields (accusative, plural)"
    • hásra [ˈhauːsra] "hoarse (genitive, plural)"
    • vepja [ˈvɛːpja] "lapwing"
    • letja [ˈlɛːtja] "dissuade"
    • Esja [ˈɛːsja] proper noun, a mountain
    • götva [ˈkœːtva] as in uppgötva "discover"
    • vökva [ˈvœːkva] "water (verb)"

Before other consonant clusters (including the preaspirated stops [hp ht hk] and geminate consonants), stressed vowels are short. Unstressed vowels are always short.

  • Karl [kʰartl̥] proper noun
  • standa [ˈstanta] "stand"
  • sjálfur [ˈsjaulvʏr] "self"
  • kenna [ˈcʰɛnːa] "teach"
  • fínt [fin̥t] "fine"
  • loft [lɔft] "air"
  • upp [ʏʰp] "up"
  • yrði [ˈɪrðɪ] as in nýyrði "neologism"
  • ætla [ˈaiʰtla] "will (verb)"
  • laust [løyst] "lightly, loose"

(Note: in Icelandic, the main stress is always on the first syllable.)

[edit] Grammar

Icelandic is an inflected language with four cases: nominative, accusative, dative and genitive. Icelandic nouns can have one of three grammatical genders - masculine, feminine or neuter. Nouns, adjectives and pronouns are declined in the four cases, in singular and plural.

[edit] 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 three voices: active, passive and medial; but it may be debated whether the medial voice is a voice or simply an independent class of verbs of its own. 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, others as aspects to varying degrees.

[edit] Nouns

Main article: Icelandic Nouns

Icelandic nouns are much like Old Norse, both in form and inflection. They decline in four cases (Nominative, Accusative, Dative and Genitive) and vary in gender (Masculine, Feminine or Neuter) and number (Singular and Plural). There are two main declension paradigms for each gender: Strong and Weak nouns, that are furthermore divided in smaller paradigms for declension, according to many criteria (sound-shifts, consonant clusters etc.)

[edit] The Article

Main article: Icelandic Definite Article

[edit] Pronouns

Main article: Icelandic Pronouns

[edit] Numerals

Main article: Icelandic Numerals

[edit] Adjectives

Main article: Icelandic Adjectives

[edit] Verbs

Main article: Icelandic Verbs

[edit] Adverbs

Main article: Icelandic Adverbs

[edit] Other (Indeclinable) Word Classes

[edit] Prepositions

Main article: Icelandic Prepositions

[edit] Conjunctions

Main article: Icelandic Conjunctions

[edit] Others, e.g. Exclamations

Main article: Icelandic Minor Word Classes

[edit] Syntax

Main article: Icelandic Syntax
Main article: Icelandic Case Government
Main article: Icelandic Word Order

Icelandic is SVO (subject-verb-object), generally speaking, with the subject and verb inverted in questions and when a sentence begins with an adverb. However, the inflectional system allows for considerable freedom in word order.

[edit] Icelandic sign language

Main article: Icelandic Sign Language

Icelandic sign language was originally based on Danish Sign Language. Until 1910, deaf Icelandic people were sent to school in Denmark. Today, Icelandic sign language has evolved apart from its Danish roots. The language is regulated by a national committee.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  • Eiríkur Rögnvaldsson (1993). Íslensk hljóðkerfisfræði. Reykjavík: Málvísindastofnun Háskóla Íslands. ISBN 9979-853-14-X. 
  • Guðrún Kvaran, Höskuldur Þráinsson, Kristján Árnason et al. (2005). Íslensk tunga I–III. Reykjavík: Almenna bókafélagið. ISBN 9979-2-1900-9. 
  • Orešnik, Janez, and Magnús Pétursson (1977). "Quantity in Modern Icelandic". Arkiv för Nordisk Filologi 92: 155–71. 
  • Scholten, Daniel (2000). Einführung in die isländische Grammatik. Munich: Philyra Verlag. ISBN 3-935267-00-2. 

[edit] External links

Wiktionary
Icelandic language edition of Wiktionary, the free dictionary/thesaurus
Wikipedia
Icelandic language edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Major Modern Germanic languages
Afrikaans | Danish | Dutch | English | German | Norwegian | Swedish | Yiddish
Minor Modern Germanic languages
Faroese | Frisian | Icelandic | Luxembourgish
Reg. acknowledged Germanic languages/dialects
Limburgish | Low German / Low Saxon | North Frisian | Saterland Frisian | Scots | Ulster Scots
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