Icelandic language

Categories: Pages containing IPA | Icelandic language | North Germanic languages | Languages of Iceland

Icelandic (íslenska)
Spoken in:	Iceland
Region:	Iceland
Total speakers:	300,000
Ranking:	Not in top 100
Genetic classification:	Indo-European Germanic North West Scandinavian Icelandic
Official status
Official language of:	Iceland
Regulated by:	Íslensk málstöð (The Icelandic Language Institute)
Language codes
ISO 639-1	is
ISO 639-2	isl
SIL	ICE
See also: Language – List of languages

Icelandic (íslenska) is a North Germanic language spoken in Iceland. It is an inflected language with four cases: nominative, accusative, dative and genitive.

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 English.

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 read, more or less, the original sagas and Eddas that were written some eight hundred years ago. This old form of the language is called Old Icelandic, but also commonly equated to Old Norse (an umbrella term for the common Scandinavian language of the Viking era).

Icelandic orthography is notable for its retention of two old letters which no longer exist in the English alphabet: þ (thorn) and ð (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

The preservation of the Icelandic language is taken seriously by the Icelanders — rather than borrow foreign words for new concepts, new Icelandic words are diligently forged for public use.

Icelandic does not have any dialect differences that can cause misunderstanding.

1 Phonology
- 1.1 Consonants
- 1.2 Vowels
  - 1.2.1 Monophthongs
2 Morphology
3 Syntax
4 Icelandic sign language
5 See also
6 External links

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Phonology

Note: This page contains
IPA phonetic symbols
in Unicode.

Icelandic phonology is somewhat unusual for European languages in having an aspiration contrast in its stops, rather than a voicing contrast (though, in fact, English exhibits some characteristics of such a contrast). Preaspirated voiceless stops are also common. However, Icelandic continuant phonemes exhibit regular contrasts in voice, including in nasals (rare in the world's languages). Additionally, length is contrastive for many phonemes; voiceless sonorant consonants seem to be the only exception. The chart below was developed from data found at BRAGI and related pages; refer to the IPA article for information on the sounds of the following symbols:

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Consonants

	Bilabial	Interdental	Dental	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Plosive (Stop)	p / pʰ		t / tʰ	c / cʰ	k / kʰ
Nasal	m / m̥		n / n̥	ɲ / ɲ̥	ŋ / ŋ̥
Rhotic (Trill)			r / r̥
Fricative	f / v*	θ / ð*	s	ç	x / ɣ*	h
Lateral Fricative			ɬ / ɮ
Semivowel				j
Lateral Approximant			l / l̥

(*In Icelandic these sounds are not completely constrictive and often closer to approximants than fricatives).

Notes:

The status of [c] and [cʰ] as phonemes or as allophones is often argued over. [c] is k before i, í, e, é, æ and also if followed by j when written. Icelandic phoneticians usually say that the j is merged with the k so that it is actually an allophone of of k, not the other way around. The same applies to [cʰ].

The letter Ð is used inside a word and at ends of words and doesn't occur word-initially while Þ is used there. They are the same phoneme, þ becoming voiced between vowels. The same would apply to f and v except that Proto-Germanic *w became v in the Nordic languages giving v a phonemic status. Unlike þ, f often occurs in medial position but is most often voiced.

Of the unvoiced nasals, only [n̥] is phonemic occuring where hn appears in writing. Recently, there has been an increasing tendency, especially among children, to pronounce this as voiced, hnífur [n̥ivʏr] becoming [nivʏr]. The palatal nasals appear before palatal stops and the velar ones before velar ones. [ŋ] has gained a phonemic status through the deletion of g before l and s in particular.

Pp, tt and kk are preaspirates: löpp [lœhp] 'foot' etc. Note that they do not occur in initial position. Bb, dd and gg usually simply shorten the preceding vowel although they may be lengthened in certain styles of speech, such as when talking to children.

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Vowels

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Monophthongs

	Front		Back
Close	i		u
		ɪ • ʏ
Close-mid	e* • ø*		o*
Open-mid	ɛ • œ		ɔ
Open	a

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

(*only as first member in diphthongs ei, øi/øy, ou)

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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, other as aspects to varying degrees.

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Syntax

Icelandic is SVO, generally speaking, but the inflectional system allows for quite some freedom in word order.

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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.

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