Category: Icelandic (Íslenska)

Scandinavian Mutual Intelligibility

By Simon

Scandinavian languages

The other day I meet a Faroe Islander, and one of the things we talked about was mutual intelligibility between Scandinavian languages.

I was under the impression that Faroese and Icelandic were closely related, and assumed that there would be quite a bit of mutually intelligibility between them.

She told me that this is true to some extent – if you know Faroese, you can understand written Icelandic quite well, but spoken Icelandic is more difficult to follow.

I also thought that Danish, Norwegian and Swedish are more or less mutually intelligible. I’ve been learning Swedish for a while now, and can make some sense of written Danish and Norwegian, and understand the spoken languages to a limited extent.

Everyone in the Faroe Islands learns Danish, which is very close to Norwegian, so they can understand both languages. According to my Faroese informant though, Swedish differs more from the other Scandinavian languages and is more difficult to understand.

If you speak one or more of the Scandinavian languages, how much can you understand the others?

Gloopy!

By Simon

An interesting Russian word I learnt this week is глупый (glupyj) [ˈɡlupɨj], which means silly, stupid, foolish or inane, but sounds like one of the seven dwarfs.

The Russian name for the dwarf dopey is actually Простак (Prostak), which means simpleton.

Глупый comes from the Proto-Slavic *glupъ (stupid, foolish), which possibly comes from a Germanic source. Cognates in Germanic languages include glópr (idiot) in Old Norse, and glópur (fool, idiot) in Icelandic.

Cognates in Slavic languages include:

– Bulgarian глупав (glupav) = stupid, silly, foolish, fool, unwise, sappy
– Croatian glup = stupid, dumb, silly, dull, brainless, dense
– Serbian глуп = stupid, dumb, silly, dull, dense, obtuse
– Slovene glúp = dumb, stupid, moronic
– Slovak hlúpy = stupid, silly, foolish
– Czech hloupý = stupid, silly, foolish

A related word in Russian is тупой (typoj) [tʊˈpoj], which means ‘dull, blunt; obtuse; dull, stupid’. It comes from the Old East Slavic тупъ (tupŭ), from Proto-Slavic *tǫpъ, and sounds like the Welsh word twp [tʊp], which means stupid. Is there any connection?

The word stupid comes from the Middle French stupide (stupid), from the Latin stupidus (struck senseless, amazed), from stupeō (to be amazed or confounded, to be struck senseless), from the Proto-Indo-European *(s)tup- / *(s)tewp- (to wonder), from *(s)tu- (to stand, stay).

I thought I’d made up the word gloopy, but it does exist, and means ‘Having a glutinous, sloppy consistency’.

Sounds good to me

By Simon

Have you ever learnt a language just because you like the way it sounds?

This is one of the reasons for learning a language discussed by John McWhorter is this TED talk:

He talks about the joys of getting your tongue round the sounds of other languages, and mentions Khmer, with its large inventory of vowels.

Which languages sound good to you?

Are there any particular sounds or combinations of sounds that really appeal to you (in any language)?

I like listening to languages with clicks, such as Xhosa and Zulu, and also to ones with ejectives, such as Georgian. I also like listening to and speaking tonal languages, like Mandarin and Cantonese.

At the moment, my favourite language in terms of sounds, is Swedish.

Other sound favourites include Japanese, Finnish, Italian, Icelandic and Swahili.

A River of Words

By Simon

When Iceland was permanently settled from 874 AD, the settlers from Norway brought with them wives and thralls (þrælar – slaves/serfs) from Ireland. The Norwegians spoke a form of Old Norse, which developed into modern Icelandic, and borrowed a few words from the Irish.

Here are some examples:

  • á = river – from the Old Irish aub (river). The Old Norse word for river was fljót.
  • áin = (act of) driving – from Old Irish áin = (act of driving (animals etc))
  • bagall = crozier, from the Old Irish bachall (staff, crook, crozier). The Old Norse word for crozier / staff was stafr.
  • brekán = blanket, quilt, from the Old Irish breccán (speckled thing, striped or chequered stuff, plaid)
  • bjannak = blessing, from the Old Irish bennacht (blessing)
  • tarfur = bull, from the Old Irish tarb (bull). The Old Norse word for bull was þjórr.

Icelandic has also absorbed words from Latin, Greek, Middle Low German and Danish. Some of these words are no longer used, but new loanwords, mainly from Danish and English, are streaming into the language, especially in the fields of IT and medicine. One example I heard about was móment being used instead of augnablik (‘eye-blink’) for moment.

Sources: Wiktionary, Germanic.eu, eDil

Heim aftur / Home again

By Simon

The Polyglot Conference is over now for another year, and I arrived back to Bangor yesterday. Although the conference only lasted two days, a lot was packed into that time.

On the Friday I went on a Golden Circle tour with two coach loads of other polyglots. Unfortunately it was a wet, cloudy and cold day, so the views were not great, but the landscape we could see was rather fine.

The first stop was Þingvellir (Thingvellir), a World Heritage Site where the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates meet. It is also where the Iceland parliament (Alþingi) met from AD 930 until 1798.

Þingvellir / Thingvellir

Next we went to Geysir, and area of volcanic activity with a number of sprouting hot springs, including the famous Great Geysir, which is currently inactive, and Stokkur, which erupts every few minutes (see photo below). We also had lunch here – there are a number of eating places and souvenir shops in the complex near the hot springs. I was expecting the whole place to stink of sulphur, but it didn’t really.

Þingvellir / Thingvellir

Our final stop was Gullfoss (“Golden Falls”), waterfalls in the canyon of Ölfusá river. They were spectacular, and well worth seeing.

Gullfoss

In the evening, after we arrived back in Reykajvik, I went for dinner at an Indian restaurant with a few other polyglots.

The conference started on Saturday morning with interesting speeches by Dr Sebastian Drude, the director of the Vigdís International Centre for Multilingualism and Intercultural Understanding, and Vigdís Finnbogadóttir, the former President of Iceland and UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador for languages.

Vigdís Finnbogadóttir opening the 2017 Polyglot Conference in Reykjavik

Then there were talks on a variety of topics, with themes including Icelandic language and culture, bilingualism and autism, and maintaining ‘small’ languages. Some of the speakers were lecturers or researchers in universities, others were language enthusiasts. The talks I found most interesting were the one by Daniel Tammet and Sigriður Kristinsdóttir about how he learnt Icelandic in a week with her help; one about bilingualism and autism, one about the cognitive effects of language learning, and one about Mongolian.

The 2017 Polyglot Conference in Reykjavik

There was plenty of time between the talks and at lunch to catch up with old friends, meet new ones and practise languages. During my time in Iceland, I had conversations in English, Welsh, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Mandarin, Japanese and Irish, and spoke bits of Czech, Scottish Gaelic, Breton, Manx, Swedish and Icelandic.

Lunch was provided – small sandwiches and wraps, though didn’t appeal to me, so I bought something else in a supermarket.

A panel discussuion at the 2017 Polyglot Conference in Reykjavik

There weren’t any organised activities in the evenings, as there are at the Polyglot Gatherings. Instead babbles of polyglots went off to do their own thing. I went for dinner with some polyglot friends and had very interesting discussions about all sorts of things, not all of which were related to languages – we do have other interests.

The annoucement of where the Polyglot Conference will be in 2018

The next Polyglot Conference will be in Ljubljana in Slovenia from 5-7 October 2018 (as you might have guessed from this photo). So next year I will learn some Slovenian before the conference in Ljubljana, and some Slovak before the Polyglot Gathering in Bratislava in Slovakia.

On Monday I did some work on Omniglot in the morning, explored Reykjavik a bit, had lunch in a restaurant in the old harbour area of Reykjavik, did some more work, then explored a bit more with the two Russian teachers who were staying in the same place as me.

Iceland is a very expensive place, which I expected. Meals in restaurants cost at least twice as much as in the UK, as do most other things. It wasn’t as cold as I expected – about 7-10°C during the day and 2-5°C at night. All the locals I met speak very good English, but if you speak Icelandic, they’re happy to speak it with you. There are apparently quite a few people who have moved to Iceland recently for work, most don’t speak Icelandic. On a clear, dry day, the scenery is spectacular. Even on grey, wet days, it’s still impressive and dramatic.

There are some more photos on Flickr:

Iceland / Ísland

Café Lingua – lifandi tungumál

By Simon

Yesterday evening I went to Café Lingua – lifandi tungumál at the University of Iceland / Háskóli Íslands. It’s a regular meet-up for language enthusiasts, and last night there were a lot of extra people there who are in Reykjavik for the Polyglot Conference. It was great to see lots of familiar faces, and to meet new people.

I had conversations in English, Welsh, Irish and Mandarin, and spoke odd bits of Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Cantonese, Swedish, Icelandic, Czech, Russian, Finnish and French. Other languages were available.

Today I’m going on a Golden Circle tour with other Polyglot Conference participants.

Ég fer til Reykjavíkur á morgun

By Simon

I’m off to Reykjavik tomorrow for the Polyglot Conference. This will be my first time in Iceland, and I’m looking forward to it very much.

I’ve been studying Icelandic with Colloquial Icelandic and Memrise for about a month now. I won’t be having complex conversations just yet, but do at least know some basics. I’ve found quite a few Icelandic words that are similar to English, Swedish and/or German, which helps, and the word order is also similar to English.

One of the speakers at the conference, Daniel Tammet, will be telling us how he learnt Icelandic in a week – rather better than I’ve managed. It should be a very interesting talk.

The title of this post means “I am going to Reykjavik tomorrow”, I think.

The Art of Lists

By Simon

List image

Lists might be considered art, and there was an exhibition of lists made by famous artists some years ago.

In Iceland art is a list – the Icelandic word of art is list. In Old Icelandic it also meant “craft, skill, adroitness, dexterity” [source].

Related words include:

  • lista- = artistic
  • listamaður = artist
  • listaverk = work of art
  • listflutningur = live performance
  • listhús = art gallery
  • listmunur = artefact
  • listvefnaður = tapestry

[Source]

Incidently, a list in Icelandic is listi or skrá. Art in Danish and Norwegian is kunst, and it’s konst in Swedish.

Ráðstefna fjöltyngdra einstaklinga

By Simon

Polyglot Conference logo in Icelandic

One of the Icelandic courses I’m doing on Memrise was made especially for people going to the Polyglot Conference in Reykjavik at the end of October.

Today’s lesson included the phrase “Hefur þú tekið þátt í Ráðstefnu fjöltyngdra einstaklinga?”, which means “Have you been to a Polyglot Conference?”, or literally “Have you taken part in a conference of multilingual individuals?”. Quite a mouthful!

  • Ráðstefna means conference, from ráð (advice, counsel, plan, council) & stefna (direction, course, strategy, policy, movement, convention, conference).
  • Fjöltyngdra is from fjöltyngdur (multilingual, polyglot), from fjöl- (many, multi, poly) & tyngdur (tongued, lingual), from tunga (tongue).
  • Einstaklinga is from einstaklingur (individual, person)

Other Icelandic phrases I’ve learnt from this course, and other courses, are slightly easier to remember and say. For example, “Hvaða tungumál talar þú?” (Which languages do you speak?”).

That’s one that’s easy to ask, but more difficult to answer. The way I answer it depends on the context. At a polyglot event, I’ll go into details about the languages I speak and how well I speak them. Elsewhere I just say something like, “I speak 5 languages fluently, more or less”, or “I speak 11 languages well or fairly well”.

In Icelandic I think I could say “Ég tala fimm tungumál, meira eða minna” (I speak five languages, more or less”) – not sure how to add fluently (fljótt).

Ambling Along

By Simon

Walking stick figure

An Icelandic word I learnt recently is (að) labba [ˈlapːa], which means ‘to walk slowly, to amble, to stroll’ [source].

Here are a few examples of usage:

  • Mér finnst gaman að labba um bæinn = I like to stroll around town
  • Ljúft finnst mér að labba á pöbbinn = I like to walk to the pub [source]
  • Ég labba ein heim eftir myrkur = I walk home alone after dark [source]

Other Icelandic words meaning to walk include:

að ganga [að ˈkauŋka] = to walk, go on foot, to climb; to move, run, go; to go around, be passed on [source].

Here are some examples:

  • að ganga á fjall = to climb a mountain
  • vagninn gengur á 20 mínútna fresti = the bus runs every 20 minutes
  • klukkan gengur = the clock is going
  • vélin gengur vel = the machine is running well
  • sagan gengur = the story is going about
  • þetta gengur vel = this is coming along fine
  • þetta gengur ekki = this won’t work, this won’t do
  • hvað gengur á? = what’s going on?

This word comes from the Old Norse ganga (to go, walk), from the Proto-Germanic *ganganą (to go, walk, step), from the Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰengʰ- (to walk, step) [source]. This is also the root of the Old English words gangan (to go, walk, turn out) and gang (a journey; way; passage), which is used in some northern dialects of English to mean to go – e.g. in Geordie gan yem = go home [source]. It’s modern meaning of a group of people probably comes from the idea of people travelling (ganging) together [source].

að troða [að ˈtʰrɔːða] = to trample, tread on, step on; to tread, walk; to stuff, fill, pack; to press forward, elbow one’s way [source].

This word comes from the Old Norse troða (to tread, walk), from the Proto-Germanic *trudaną (to tread, step on), which is also the root of the English words tread and trot.

að rölta [að ˈrœlta] = to stroll, saunter [source].

Incidentally, the English word amble comes from the Old French ambler (to walk as a horse does), from the Old Provençal amblar, from Latin ambulō (I walk) [source], and stroll comes from the German strollen, a variant of the Alemannic German strolchen, from Strolch (vagabond; rascal) [source].