Icelandic

## Overview

**Icelandic** is a North Germanic language spoken on Iceland. Along with Faroese, Norn, and Western Norwegian it formerly constituted *West Nordic*; while Danish, Eastern Norwegian and Swedish constituted *East Nordic*. Modern Norwegian *Bokmål* is influenced by both groups, leading the Nordic languages to be divided into mainland Scandinavian languages and *Insular Nordic* (including Icelandic). Historically, it was the westernmost of the Indo-European languages until the Portuguese settlement in the Azores.

Most Western European languages have greatly reduced levels of inflection, particularly noun declension. In contrast, Icelandic retains a four-case synthetic grammar comparable to German, though considerably more conservative and synthetic. Icelandic is distinguished by a wide assortment of irregular declensions. Icelandic also has many instances of oblique cases without any governing word, much like Latin. For example, many of the various Latin ablatives have a corresponding Icelandic dative. The conservatism of the Icelandic language and its resultant near-isomorphism to Old Norse (which is equivalently termed Old Icelandic by linguists) means that modern Icelanders can easily read the *Eddas,* sagas, and other classic Old Norse literary works created in the tenth through thirteenth centuries.

The vast majority of Icelandic speakers—about 320,000—live in Iceland. More than 8,000 Icelandic speakers live in Denmark, of whom approximately 3,000 are students. The language is also spoken by some 5,000 people in the United States and by more than 1,400 people in Canada, notably in the province of Manitoba. While 97% of the population of Iceland consider Icelandic their mother tongue, the language is in decline in some communities outside Iceland, particularly in Canada. Icelandic speakers abroad represent recent emigration in almost all cases except Gimli, Manitoba, which was settled from the 1880s onwards.

## History

The oldest preserved texts in Icelandic were written around 1100 AD. Much of the texts are based on poetry and laws traditionally preserved orally. The most famous of the texts, which were written in Iceland from the 12th century onward, are the Icelandic Sagas. They comprise the historical works and the eddaic poems.

The language of the sagas is Old Icelandic, a western dialect of Old Norse. The Dano-Norwegian, then later Danish rule of Iceland from 1536 to 1918 had little effect on the evolution of Icelandic (in contrast to the Norwegian language), which remained in daily use among the general population. Though more archaic than the other living Germanic languages, Icelandic changed markedly in pronunciation from the 12th to the 16th century, especially in vowels (in particular, '**á'**, '**æ'**, '**au'**, and '**y*/*ý'**).

The modern Icelandic alphabet has developed from a standard established in the 19th century, primarily by the Danish linguist Rasmus Rask. It is based strongly on an orthography laid out in the early 12th century by a mysterious document referred to as *The First Grammatical Treatise* by an anonymous author, who has later been referred to as the First Grammarian. The later Rasmus Rask standard was a re-creation of the old treatise, with some changes to fit concurrent Germanic conventions, such as the exclusive use of '**k'** rather than '**c'**. Various archaic features, as the letter '**ð'**, had not been used much in later centuries. Rask's standard constituted a major change in practice. Later 20th-century changes include the use of '**é'** instead of '**je'** and the removal of '**z'** from the Icelandic alphabet in 1973.

Apart from the addition of new vocabulary, written Icelandic has not changed substantially since the 11th century, when the first texts were written on vellum.[11] Modern speakers can understand the original sagas and Eddas which were written about eight hundred years ago. The sagas are usually read with updated modern spelling and footnotes but otherwise intact (as with modern English readers of Shakespeare). With some effort, many Icelanders can also understand the original manuscripts.

## Icelandic excerpt from Wikipedia article "Íslenska"

Ýmsar ástæður eru fyrir því hversu vel málið hefur varðveist. Hefðbundna skýringin er auðvitað einangrun landsins en líklega hefur fullmikið verið gert úr því og er sú skýring ein tæpast fullnægjandi. Önnur ástæða sem oft er nefnd er sú að málið hafi varðveist í skinnhandritunum, hvort sem var um afþreyingarbókmenntir að ræða eða fræði. Handritin hafi verið lesin og innihald þeirra flutt fyrir þá sem ekki voru læsir, þannig hafi mál þeirra varðveist og orðaforði handritanna haldist í málinu.

Enn fremur hafi lærðir Íslendingar skrifað að miklu leyti á móðurmálinu, allt frá því að Ari fróði og Fyrsti málfræðingurinn skráðu sín rit, þess vegna hafi latínuáhrif orðið minni en víða annars staðar. Kirkjunnar menn á Íslandi voru líka fljótir að tileinka sér aðferðir Marteins Lúthers og Biblían var snemma þýdd á íslensku. Biblíur og önnur trúarrit voru því snemma til á íslensku á helstu fræðasetrum landsins og prestar boðuðu Guðs orð á íslensku. Þessa kenningu má helst styðja með því að bera okkur saman við þjóðir sem ekki áttu Biblíu á eigin tungu, til dæmis Norðmenn en þeir notuðust við danska Biblíu. Orsakir þeirrar þróunar sem varð á íslensku verða seint útskýrðar til hlítar en þeir þættir sem nefndir eru hér að ofan hafa allir haft einhver áhrif.

Margir Íslendingar telja íslenskuna vera „upprunalegra“ mál en flest önnur og að hún hafi breyst minna. Það er ekki alls kostar rétt og má í því sambandi nefna að íslenskan hefur einungis fjögur föll af átta úr indóevrópska frummálinu, á meðan flest slavnesk mál hafa sex föll og pólska sjö. Þýska hefur einnig fjögur föll eins og íslenska og varðveitt eru rit á fornháþýsku sem eru mun eldri en íslensku handritin eða frá áttundu öld. Í Grikklandi er enn töluð gríska, rétt eins og fyrir þrjú þúsund árum og svo má lengi telja. Grikkir geta þó ekki skilið forngrísku eins og Íslendingar skilja texta á forníslensku, því breytingarnar voru of miklar milli forn-, mið- og nýgrísku, vegna ýmissa mállýskna sem höfðu áhrif hver á aðra. Öll þessi mál eiga það þó sameiginlegt að hafa breyst að einhverju leyti og er íslenskan þar engin undantekning.