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

Iceland is a great state with a rich history and the most beautiful nature. The fate of the Icelandic language can not be called ordinary. Many know that after the conquest of one state by another, the language of the defeated state tends to weaken, 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, the Icelandic not only stood firm against the onslaught of Danish, but it remained the main spoken and literary language. The rural population simply did not want to take Danish, only a small part of educated people could boast of knowledge. Icelandic wrote works and letters to each other, and later began to print books.

Origin

Icelandic is a language with a great history. Refers to the group of Germanic languages and the Scandinavian subgroup. The history of the Icelandic language began when the first settlers from Norway settled the Icelandic lands. With the advent of the Vikings came and literature. Then in 1000 the Christianity came to the Icelanders, after it appeared writing. A little later I received the first Icelandic poetry. The works were slightly ambiguous, with intricate plots and complex turns. The Icelandic language has many similarities with the Norwegian language and in the 12th century they practically did not differ, since the Scandinavians conquered Iceland. Previously, Icelandic was called Danish, since in general everything that concerned 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 is a decrease in the number of speakers in Icelandic.

General characteristics of the language

Icelandic is one of the earliest languages . A brief history and general characteristic show that it changed very slowly, it practically does not have borrowings from other languages. Until now, it remains similar to the Old Icelandic language. The formation of words occurs mainly through the use of the suffix method, compositional and calculating, that is, a literal translation of borrowed foreign words. In Iceland, even there is a special organization that is created to create equivalent names to already existing concepts. After the capture by the Danes of Icelandic lands, the Icelanders made every effort to eliminate the words of someone else's language.

An interesting fact is that the Constitution of the country does not describe Icelandic as an official state language. The working languages are Danish, Swedish and Norwegian. Icelandic schoolchildren study two compulsory languages: Danish and English.

An important feature is that the names of Icelanders are composed of the name and patronymic. This is the tradition of Scandinavian countries. The patronymic consists of the father's name in the genitive case and the word "son" or "daughter". Sometimes the mother's name can be used. In order to avoid confusion, the name of the grandfather can be used. Only a small number of people have a family name. At the marriage the wife can take the husband's surname, if she is.

Dialects

There are only two dialects:

• northern;
• Southern.

The difference between dialects, characterizing the Icelandic language, whose words differ little, makes it clear that the northern and eastern dialects are more like different jargon, since 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 a pre-spark, and in the northern dialect they are pronounced as deaf and aspirated.

Alphabet

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

The following letters are used only in borrowed words.

The latter has long been used nowhere, except in the name of the local newspaper.

Pronunciation

At the moment, compared with the XII-XII century, you can see how the modern structure of the word has changed, how the Icelandic language has changed. Pronunciation in some way differs from what was before. The nasal vowels disappeared from the tongue, long vowels turned into diphthongs, and a pre-aspiration (aspiration) appeared. But one thing remained unchanged - a huge amount of flexion. In words, the shock balance remains. Before a long consonant necessarily goes a short vowel in the stressed syllable, and a long vowel stands in front of a short consonant. Pronunciation of consonants is based on tension and pre-operation. Sound noises in the language are absent, and deaf people are not so often. The initial syllable is always percussive. Impudent consoles are very rare for the Icelandic language phenomenon.

Morphology

Those who are going to learn the Icelandic language, should know that the morphology of the language differs little from the Russian. There is a plural and singular number of nouns, as well as feminine, masculine and neuter. Compared with many other Scandinavian languages, which greatly simplified the system of word formation, in particular the declension of nouns, the Icelandic remained faithful to its traditions. Since Iceland is located far beyond Europe, located on the mainland, this allowed to preserve the similarity of the Old Norse and Icelandic languages.

Icelandic language has four cases: nominative, genitive, accusative and dative. Certain nouns have an article with them, and there are no indefinite nouns. There is a double certainty in which an article is added to a noun, dependent on the grammatical basis of the sentence. The structure of the word resembles the Russian, that is, a standard prefix is added to the root. The verb has a temporary form, a pledge and an inclination. There are also strong and weak verbs. They can be conjugated by faces and numbers.

Vocabulary

Since the appearance of the language, and this is the 9th century, little has changed in it. This means only that the Icelanders can easily read the works in Old Norse. With the translation of the New Testament into Icelandic in 1540, its formation and development began. In the XVIII century, the Icelanders raised a riot to clear the language and return to using the old words. And if Icelandic words were not enough to designate new objects, it was suggested to create them from ancient Icelandic roots and prefixes. Thanks to modern reforms Icelandic lexicon is practically free from borrowing and foreign words. Despite the rapid development of science and technology, the Icelanders are very scrupulous about their work and replace the new words with words from their old lexical stock. Now many of the words that came out of use were updated according to all the rules of the Icelandic language, introduced back, so that the Icelanders gradually got used to them.