The Enigmatic ICELANDIC Language

[@Langfocus]

Hi, everyone! I hope you like the new video! I noticed a spelling mistake that I thought I had fixed, but it seems the mistake is still there: Around 12:02, "löreglu" should be "lögreglu" and "löregla" should be "lögregla" (the "g" is missing in both words). Sorry about that! ►If you're learning a new language, try the world-famous *Pimsleur method* in its new-and-improved subscription format: ► imp.i271380.net/langfocus ► *Free trial - Use my link to gain access* (Disclosure: The above link is an affiliate link, so Langfocus gets a small referral fee - at no extra cost to you)

[@Tinneas_poite]

Hey Paul, possibly a new video topic to do would be to see if their is any influences on Icelandic from Irish, I know many Irish women were taken by vikings to Iceland originally, is there influence?

[@suadomar1581]

Long time to wait your nice videos thank you 👍🏻

[@AnulaibazIV]

You also spelled ‚blessuð‘ as ‚blessöð‘ (which is not a word in Icelandic).

[@icelandicforforeigners]

Great video, thanks Paul! One other small typo: at 7:42 the feminine form of goodbye is vertu sæl og blessuð (instead of blessöð). Though A often shifts to Ö in the feminine singular, it shifts to U in unstressed syllables. Thus glaður (happy) becomes glöð in feminine. But blessaður becomes blessuð. Again, thank you for your great content!

[@AndriLindbergs]

@@icelandicforforeigners Ég var rétt í þessu að benda á þetta annarstaðar. Gott að vita að málið sé leiðrétt svona fljótlega eftir "sjósetningu" myndbandsins 😆

[@Hyngvi]

To answer your question: As a native speaker, yes it is absolutely possible to read and understand old Sagas. It’s not always straightforward though. Some words either have changed their meanings or have been omitted completely in more modern Icelandic. The spelling is a bit different and although I am no expert in old Norse, one fun fact I remember is that they would use a -t ending after a verb to make it negative, where in modern we have a separate word “ekki” (not). In high school we read a few sagas, of the top of my head is Snorra Edda, Hávamál and Brennu-Njáls Saga. The “school version” has little hints/translations of what the hardest words meant back then, and with that you can generally understand it all.

[@pentelegomenon1175]

just like Shakespeare, that's interesting

[@haukuringason7967]

Seconded, this has also been my experience, more or less.

[@gummi666]

I want to add that most school children are not told that what they are reading has been modernized. Like ǫ changed to ö, -r changed to -ur, any systematic shortenings have been spelled out, and some more changes. You would not be able to hand original, but digitized, texts to school children and expect them to be able to read it.

[@daydayr97]

@@pentelegomenon1175 yeah Shakespeare makes some sense and then you’re like wtf lol

[@cyanide_breathmint]

​@@pentelegomenon1175 The comment you replied to didn't mention Shakespeare, but the video did. In my experience as someone who's fluent in both Icelandic and English, yes that's exactly what the old sagas feel like to me. Shakespeare. I can understand the gist of it, but my comprehension is liimited because I only know the modern versions of the languages.

[@n0lain]

Icelandic is the language that got me interested in linguistics back in 7th grade, and just today I walked across the stage to receive my diploma in linguistics :) Man, what a blast from the past. Takk fyrir!

[@HeyKevinYT]

Congratulations!!

[@n0lain]

@@HeyKevinYT Thanks!

[@aaronmarks9366]

As a fellow ling major, congratulations!! What topics did you specialize in?

[@n0lain]

@@aaronmarks9366 Computational linguistics, but mainly I did a little bit of everything

[@traustisokki]

Verði þér að góðu ;)

[@Hasatame]

Now we just need the Faroese language and all main languages of the Nordic countries are going to be completed in your channel, Paul!

[@SchmulKrieger]

Which dialect?

[@markaxworthy2508]

Yes, I would like to see something on Faroese, too.

[@ec1480]

@@kilipaki87oritahiti both of the statements you've made are incorrect

[@MrKorton]

Actually faroese retains quite a few dialects (historical remoteness of some islands there) but icelandic ones have been wiped out and we only have semi-dialects. Northeners around Akureyri and Húsavík pronounce some certain words different. It's not enough to constitute a dialect by linguists though. Some people from the Westfjords pronounce ng/nk differently also. P.s. it has been said to me that the south island/Suðuroy in the Faroes is most similar to icelandic 😉

[@Aeslyth]

Has he done Norn from Scotland?

[@kainingyao7873]

The Icelandic word for "computer" meaning something like "number oracle" really got me there. Sounds like some kind of magitechnology used for divination from a fantasy world. Sounds pretty close to what the Vikings would have to think or say about our super cool modern technology.

[@FrozenMermaid666]

I’m learning Icelandic & Norse, and I am obsessed with all the pretty words - by the way, it’s not true that Old Norse & Old Icelandic are the same language, it’s just a misconception most have, because they are very closely related, but, the dude that created Old Icelandic by modifying Old Norse changed lots of the words’ spelling, and replaced the special Norse letter ǫ with the letter ö and some of the other special Norse vowels as well, so its aspect is slightly different, so it isn’t the same language, so yea, West Norse is only one language, and ppl should start learning it and speaking it as a main language anew, it’s one of those languages that shouldn’t have been sent into a ‘dormant state’ for centuries, and I am learning them all, actually, so I am learning West Norse + Icelandic 2gether with Greenlandic Norse and Faroese and East Norse, and I’m also trying to learn Old Icelandic + Middle Icelandic and Old Faroese + Middle Faroese, and all other Nordic / Germanic languages, and also the 6 modern Celtic languages etc, but it’s not easy to find resources and yt videos teaching most of the ancient ones and even Faroese and the modern Celtic languages which are a modern language, which makes it harder for the learner, but, I know that they did that with the Celtic language called Manx, so they should do the same for all these ancient Germanic languages, and, they should also provide a complete set of proper yt vocab videos and videos on grammar etc that cover all words in all those languages and all details about their grammar, so that they can be learnt to fluency by many, and they should also add them all to Google translate, and also, to all those language apps like Duolingo etc!

[@FrozenMermaid666]

I highly recommend learning Icelandic + Norse and Dutch and Norwegian etc, as they are the prettiest languages ever, as pretty and refined and poetic as English, so they are too pretty not to know and a true work of art - Icelandic has lots of interesting words that are quite unique, and the word for computer (which is tölva, as far as I remember, tho I have only seen it once or twice, so the spelling might be a bit different) is one of them, and it also has lots of interesting compound words, and all other Germanic languages are also awesome, so any of them are a great option, honestly!

[@FrozenMermaid666]

I noticed that almost every Icelandic word is super gorgeous, except for a few words such as ka x 2 (for obvious reasons 😂 because ka x 2 reminds of a word that isn’t good and that is the exact opposite of food, but, I just fixed its spelling, so, it should just be spellt kæjkí instead, like, kæjkí / kæjk / kæjku / kæjks /// kæjkínn / kæjkinn / kæjkinum / kæjksins) and probably a few others, but yea, I don’t remember to have seen more than 2 or 3 non-pretty words in Icelandic and Norse / Faroese / Norwegian / Danish / Gothic etc, and I haven’t seen more than 10 non-pretty words in Dutch, as Germanic languages just don’t have many non-pretty words, so it’s not easy to find a non-pretty word in a Germanic language, as almost every Germanic word is just so pretty and well-constructed, with great letter combinations and gorgeous word endings and diphthongs etc!

[@v0r0byov]

​@@FrozenMermaid666well said!!!

[@FlamedWater]

The more I watch videos about languages, the more I appreciate the incredible variety of ways humans came up with to communicate. Makes me appreciate language diversity even more.

[@catalyticcentaur5835]

Orcas seem to have quite differentiated dialects, too. I've just seen a short documentary which does not delve very deep (but how would that be possible?) into this, but it's fascinating. Makes me appreciate language diversity, too (and not just on the human side). I'm not trolling you, I just find that fascinating in an overarching way.

[@PeterDeprez]

Belgian here. I used to have an Icelandic coworker who often spoke both Icelandic and Danish on the phone to customers. I always had the impression the Danes decided not to use half of their consonants and send them to Iceland instant of wasting them. To me Danish sounds like a bunch of vowels with an occasional consonant mixed in, and Icelandic sounds like a bunch of consonants with an occasional vowel mixed in.

[@vde1846]

As a Swede I second your assessment :)

[@bluemoonhub]

There's a reason everyone in Iceland, Norway and Sweden calls Danish "Norwegian with a potato in your throat"

[@hassegreiner9675]

'A æ u å ø i æ å' is Danish dialekt and can be understood to mean: I am out on the island in the river, so I guess you've got a point there. Many years ago on a business trip to Belgium we met a factory manager whose hobby was studying Danish in order to be able to read the Danish translation of the Icelandic sagas, why he didn't study Icelandic, I don't know but I guess the Danish version was more accessible while maintaining the 'tone'.

[@PeterDeprez]

@@hassegreiner9675 this is indeed a great example :) But even when consonants are written, I always had the impression many of them are not pronounced or are 'swallowed'

[@hassegreiner9675]

@@PeterDeprez You are not mistaken and it's a common fact that many Danes - including myself - don't watch modern Danish language movies unless they come with subtitles - their mumbling is often incomprehensible. On the other hand, I also struggle to understand modern spoken Swedish, though I read it without difficulty, but then the other day I watched a video about the switch from left-hand driving to right-hand driving in the early sixties and understood every spoken word. The hearing plays a role, I'm afraid, and the young people's desire to shovel out words at the speed of sound.

[@IanMcKellar]

My Icelandic story is that I was in San Francisco about 15 years ago walking past the bike shop that used to be a block away from my apartment and there was a woman who kind of looked like Bjork talking into her mobile phone. As I walked by her I noticed her speaking what sounded to me like weird Danish. I don't speak Danish but I knew what it sounded like because until a few months before I'd had Danish flatmates who talked in Danish all the time. When I got home I tried to work out if it was in fact Bjork. She wasn't on tour, but then I worked out that her then husband Matthew Barney had an exhibit at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art at the time so I'm *pretty* sure it was Bjork, waiting outside the bike shop for her husband, talking to someone back home on the phone.

[@nathandrake5544]

I heard an Icelander say that everyone there has a story about seeing or meeting Bjork, because it's such a small country

[@bjornjonsson2118]

Who's bjork

[@erlingursnrkristjansson2766]

​@@nathandrake5544 It's true, I live close to her and often see her walking around the neighborhood in some crazy outfit. Icelanders don't really make a big deal out of seeing someone famous (even the president), since Iceland has such a small population.

[@bjornjonsson2118]

@A S I'm Icelandic and I have never heard of her

[@blotski]

@@bjornjonsson2118 Björk Guðmundsdóttir. I'm very surprised you've never heard of her. She's probably one of the most famous Icelanders. Maybe you're very young.

[@vuurniacsquarewave5091]

Having learnt Swedish, and being a sort of fluent speaker of German and Dutch, it honestly feels like all the hardest stuff from the entire Germanic language family is combined in Icelandic.

[@uppercut147]

This was exactly my thought. My jaw was on the floor the whole time LOL. I can speak Swedish and German, and some of the basic grammar stuff makes sense to me but I couldn't understand 99.999% of what was being said. The only thing I could kind of make out was how to introduce yourself with your name.

[@uppercut147]

@Rani Hinnawi still similarly difficult. I just tried typing in a few basic phrases into Google translate to see if I could make anything out. I think with great effort I could maybe fumble my way through a basic sentence or two (Hi my name is _____. I come from ______. I work as a _____.) It sure is a unique language! So much a part of the Nordics and yet so much its own thing!

[@sonozaki0000]

so what you're saying is that icelandic is the final boss of germanic languages?!

[@FrozenMermaid666]

It just seems that way when one is a beginner - Icelandic & Old Norse are super easy to learn, as the words are super pretty and easy to memorize, just like Dutch / English / Norwegian etc words, and I am already upper beginner level in Old Norse and Icelandic (close to intermediate level) after only studying them for a few months, along with the other languages that I am learning, and I know 1.500+ or 2.000+ words in each, and I am advanced level in Dutch and intermediate level in Norwegian / German / Swedish and writer level in English, and beginner level in Gothic / Danish / Faroese etc and the other Germanic languages!

[@FrozenMermaid666]

Some pronunciation rules in Old Norse and Icelandic - in Old Norse, the letter Æ / æ is pronounced like an open A sound in many words, just like in Norwegian and like in the English word cat and like the AA in the Dutch words Maan and raam etc, but in words like mæra it is pronounced like a normal E sound, and it can also be pronounced like an EI sound, and in words such as grænn it is pronounced it is pronounced EI / ei (like the ay in the English word say) because it wouldn’t sound right with an open A sound, and in words like frænda it can be pronounced EI and E etc, while the HV in Old Norse can be pronounced in many different ways, like a HU sound, so the words hvat (what) and hvar (where) etc can sound like huat and huer, and can also sound like a HV sound, so, pronouncing them the same way they are spellt, by pronouncing both the H sound and the V sound, tho it’s not as easy, and, it can also be pronounced like in Norwegian, without the H sound, so, just saying vat or var instead of hvat or hvar, which seems like the most used one, because in many lines and in many word combinations that have hvat or hvar, one tends to pronounce it vat or var automatically, like, when I say, hvar þú auga fallt, I automatically say var without even thinking about it, so it’s a very natural pronunciation, and, one can even use the Icelandic pronunciation rule with a K sound instead of the H sound, so one can also say kvat / kvar etc, which is the Icelandic pronunciation, and all these pronunciations can be used in Old Norse, depending on the line and word combinations, so, depending on what sounds better in each line and what comes more naturally in each case, and, the G can sound like a K when it’s at the end of the word or when it’s in the middle of the word, and it can sound like a normal G when it’s at the beginning of the word, like in the English words get and go, and in some words the G is pronounced like an Y / I sound, which also has to do with the letter combinations and what makes the word sound better or right, so a word like hœgri is pronounced heoyri, which sounds way better than heogri, so, it’s also a very natural pronunciation, and the Á is usually pronounced like a normal O sound in Old Norse, tho in Icelandic it is pronounced AU in almost every word, and the U is usually pronounced like a YU sound (like the English word you and like the German Ü etc) in most words, depending on what feels easier and comes more naturally, so in words that have, say, two Us, the first U would be pronounced like a normal U, while the U that’s closer to the end of the word would be pronounced more like an YU or even more like an Y / I sound, as sometimes the U can become very soft in pronunciation when saying yu, especially when it is between two consonants, though in certain words the first U would be pronounced as a YU sound and the U that’s closer to the end would be pronounced like a normal U sound, so this also depends on the word, and, in Icelandic it’s like that as well, and also, in Icelandic the Æ / æ is pronounced AI like the English letter i in almost all Icelandic words, and the G is also pronounced like a K in Icelandic, in many words, so a word like gluggi (window) can sound like gluhki or kluhki, from what I could hear in Icelandic vocab videos, and, the LL is pronounced TL in Icelandic, in most words, and in Old Norse, it’s pronounced L, and in Faroese it is pronounced more like a DL sound, as Faroese pronunciation is kinda similar to Icelandic pronunciation, and, the letter F is pronounced like a V sound when it’s in the middle of the word in both Old Norse and Icelandic, and I think it’s also the same in Faroese, tho I’m not sure, and when it’s at the beginning of the word it is pronounced like a normal F sound, so, frænda sounds like freinda and drífr sounds like drívr or like drívuhr, because the sound that’s added in pronunciation before the last R (which is a sound that’s close to i or related to i which doesn’t seem to have an official letter in spelling) can also be pronounced like a schwa sound, especially in singing, as it comes more naturally like a schwa sound when singing, while when speaking it comes more naturally as the other sound, which is the same sound / vowel that’s used in pronunciation between the D and the N at the end of English words such as hidden / ridden etc, or in German words like schreiben, so it’s how the E (that’s between B and N) is pronounced in manny of the German verbs, and also in many of the English verbs that have an E between two consonants, and it’s pronounced quite softly, and more towards a schwa sound...

[@FrogeyBeag]

I’m a native Scots Gaelic speaker who just married an Icelander. I kind of hoped our shared Norse heritage might be a real benefit in learning Icelandic. Nope! I’ve been learning for over a year now but I’m still finding it brutally difficult! But the more time I’m around people speaking Icelandic the more I understand. I’m still not confident speaking it, but it gives me hope! It’s the crazy grammar that’s the problem. The genders and weak and strong nouns and all the bonkers declensions are just so hard to absorb, but it will come. I hope…! *Edit: Yes, I know Gaelic is not a Norse language, but the island I’m from was settled and ruled by the Norse for around 400 years. I’m talking about my own Norse heritage and my wife’s, not that of Gaelic!*

[@sarahpengelly8439]

Respect to you. I've been to Iceland twice & love it. I met new residents there who were trying to learn & finding it really challenging also. I wonder just how many people moving to Iceland or marrying an Icelander ever become really comfortable & reasonably fluent though...

[@logi-a]

Yeh over 10 years out of 13-14 years in Icelandic classes in school are just learning how to spell and use proper grammar. The thing is most people don’t even speak it probably, making common mistakes like the Christmas song (for example) “ég hlakka svo til” where most people including the singer say “mér hlakkar svo til”

[@Kai-wf5tg]

so hopefully children will be trilingual in Icelandic , Scots Gaelic and English? Interesting Combo

[@FrogeyBeag]

@@Kai-wf5tg That’s the plan!

[@valgardurhalldorsson4006]

@@logi-a My daughter is married to a Norwegian man, he complains about the grammar issues all the time, i understand that the grammar can be a big hurdle to get over but it is not important and you wonderful people who are learning should not in my opinion think about that, learn the words, we understand you even if the word doesn't have the exact right ending, start or whatnot. My advice and i am not an expert, learn the words, all the diddledos come later :)

[@uliuchu4318]

I remember being on the ferry to iceland, where on the deck a kind of impromptu pangermanic pidgin developed immediately between all the norse, swedish, danish, germans, dutch, faröer, english tourists and icelanders. It was interesting thing to observe and partake in. especially how seemingly unplanned it happened

[@NathanMN]

My maternal grandmother's parents were Swedish and German, and apparently spoke in a similar manner when they didn't want their children to understand them. I don't know if they taught them any Swedish or German. Their oldest surviving child was born in 1913, and speaking foreign languages in America during World War I was discouraged, at the very least, and persecuted in some cases. My great uncle told me the story, when he was their last living child. He was born in 1926, and never learned any Swedish or German at all.

[@robertklose2140]

When Icelanders, Swedes, Norwegians, and Danes get together, they speak a kind of patois called "skandinavisk."

[@asbisi]

@@robertklose2140 Icelanders will have a hard time participating in that, the language is too far removed from the others. Danes don´t understand Swedish or Norwegian and vice versa, Norwegians and Swedes don´t understand Danish. None of them understand Icelandic. Norwegians and Swedes understand each other. From my experience, people tend to speak English, because everyone understands that with ease.

[@robertklose2140]

@@asbisi Skandinavisk is, as I said, a kind of patois that Icelanders do, indeed, participate in. As an Icelandic speaker, I've witnessed this many times.

[@linguaphile9415]

What a nice experience 😂

[@globetrekker86]

The voiceless L is so cool and vastly underrated. Mongolian, Tibetan, Welsh, Swahili, Nahuatl, and Navajo have it

[@manfredneilmann4305]

You're right! In Welsh it is written as LL, as in LLEWELLYN, LLANDIDNO, etc.

[@iavv334]

I have never seen anyone claim that swahili has an unvoiced lateral. Do you have something to back this up?

[@Hasatame]

When I heard it, I immediately thought about Mongolian! It just confirmed my senses, haha

[@asgerhougardmikkelsen8770]

@@Hasatame Mongolian has a VOICED lateral fricative, the one he is talking about is a voiceLESS lateral fricative

[@cerebrummaximus3762]

​@@manfredneilmann4305 They aren't the same sound, I'm afraid. The Icelandic one (/l̥/ in IPA) is just an ordinary "l", just pronounced with no voice. The Welsh sound is a voiceless alveolar lateral fricative (/ɬ/ in IPA), it is prounced further back in the mouth. But don't worry, they're so similar that they are almost undistinguishable from each other, and even Wikipedia puts them on one page: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_dental_and_alveolar_lateral_fricatives

[@ulisesdiale4004]

I recently started learning some Icelandic by my own and I was waiting for this video SO much dude

[@Coffeeisnecessarynowpepper]

Please say your maiden name is S Grant

[@ulisesdiale4004]

@@Coffeeisnecessarynowpepper ?

[@zigsynx5364]

?

[@Coffeeisnecessarynowpepper]

@Coffeeisnecessarynow ?

[@魔法-s4r]

you know the American president Ulises S Grant

[@Jason-bg7jc]

Icelandic has always sounded like a magical language to me. I really enjoy studying it everyday. Takk fyrir myndbandið! Bless!

[@cyanide_breathmint]

Gangi þér vel með þetta. Örugglega ekki auðvelt að læra íslensku bara vegna þess hversu lítið er til af kennsluefni þarna úti.

[@icelandinreallife2042]

@@cyanide_breathmint Enda ekki stór markaður

[@Meybroz]

Moved to Iceland from Canada two years ago and have been learning the language. Oddly, once I began speaking/understanding more Icelandic, I could also understand Norweigan (mostly as it was written, sometimes spoken). Even stranger, I am from Eastern Canada, a descendant of Irish and Scottish settlers (not uncommon), and have found a lot of similarities in how we speak in my part of Nova Scotia and how Icelandic is spoken. For example, inhalated words and putting verbs in weird places. Sometimes sounds like Yoda speak.

[@fat1fared]

Shouldn't that be 'like Yoda, sometimes we sound'?

[@raymondkidwell7135]

About a fourth of Icelandic blood is Irish. The Norse took a lot of Irish wives and also Irish in general on their way to Iceland. I imagine the Irish influenced the pronunciation a bit.

[@mgg9416]

As a native German speaker Icelandic and Old Norse are interesting, because every time I see them written, I feel like I should be able to understand them. I understand single words and construction but never the whole sentence except for really basic ones. When I read the translation, the connections are immediately obvious. It always feels like I could understand it, if I just thought about it hard enough.

[@xylophobiaa]

I feel that with Old English.

[@WANOFAN2007]

Ich bin auch Deutscher. Ich interessiere mich fürs Isländische wegen Lazy Town bzw. Stefan Karl Stefanson (dem Schauspieler von Freddie Faulig /Robbie Rotten). Er ist ja Isländer gewesen. Lazy Town wurde ja in Island erfunden von Magnus Scheving (Sportakus).

[@tovekauppi1616]

As a native Swedish speaker, I feel the same about Icelandic. Sometimes it helps to have the pronunciation.

[@geistescrashednana933]

Yeah sometime it feels like a hard dialect but then there is the "th" pronounciation which we dont have in german anymore.

[@johannhawk8471]

As a native speaker yes i can understand the Old Icelandic but i can definitely feel the a generational gap being far more significant than just a vocabulary difference between me and my grandparents. Said sagas can come with footnotes for such edge cases where certain words would be unrecognizeable.

[@FrerMartr]

The exact same applies to the dialects less influenced by Dano-Norwegian in Norway too. Our grandparents tend to use verbal forms like ‘eg hev’ (I have, ‘eg har’ is more common today) and in my specific area, the /ð/ sound is realised by a few old people and represented by an otherwise silent /d/ among the younger generation (eg. blad is normally pronounced /bla:/ but we pronounce it like /blad/ and the elderly sometimes like /blað/).

[@UnshavenStatue]

god i wish shakespeare came annotated like that, it's impossible to read without annotations but ive never seen a teacher provide an annotated version

[@tilda140]

flott

[@supersabrosinho]

Good grief, how is your English so good?

[@someoneinthecrowd4313]

@@FrerMartr Sometimes when my grandpa talks I just nod and smile haha

[@HelgiThorisson]

This is the best video about the Icelandic language that I have ever seen. The grammar, spelling and pronunciation are perfect. There is only one spelling error, blessöð is supposed to be spelled blessuð. I am impressed.

[@edstjames9351]

I went to Iceland a few years ago. Upon arriving at the airport we heard people talking icelandic. It was sooo differe t from what I expected. Its has a nice sound to it. Very soft, melodic and elegant. I loved to hear people speaking it. Loved Iceland.

[@joshuarosen6242]

All your videos are interesting but as an Englishman, this one was especially so. I knew a little bit about Icelandic as my wife studied German linguistics at university and we read the prose Edda together in translation. What I hadn't realised is how obviously related to English it is.

[@metamon2704]

All Germanic languages are fairly similar - However English is probably more related to East Norse since England was occupied by Denmark, Danish however changed a lot since then.

[@swedneck]

As a swede it's fun to hunt for equivalent words in swedish, and how there often exist cognates that went out of fashion just a few hundred years ago

[@MarkRose1337]

In my own study of Swedish, I found the same thing: most of the words have cognates in English, though sometimes they're archaic, less frequently used, or the meanings have shifted in time (more often in English than in Swedish, that I've noticed).

[@Bjowolf2]

@@MarkRose1337 And in Danish and Norwegian as well - in some cases it's just other archaic words. D forlade = E leave / OE forlætan D råbe [roa-be] / S ropa = E shout / OE hropan D hedde / S heta = E be called ( "carry the name" ) / OE hatan D muldvarp = E mole / ME molewarp, moldewarpa, moldwerp And so on and on 😉😪

[@Komatik_]

"Jag kan svenska" makes more sense to me now that I know the etymology.

[@MarkRose1337]

@@Komatik_ That doesn't make sense though? That's "I can Swedish".

[@Komatik_]

@@MarkRose1337 Yes, but that's how it's said in Swedish. The video highlighted the etymology: kan comes from a word that means 'to know', not simply 'can do'.

[@roasty247]

Icelandic always sounded very 'breathy' to me, almost like somebody speaking that was out of breath slightly after just exercising...I guess maybe this comes from the voiceless consonants feature which I never knew about!

[@Mr.Nichan]

There's also the "preaspirated" stops (i.e., unwritten [h]s pronounced before voiceless stops).

[@brianboru7684]

It's also found in Scottish Gaelic and Hebridean English.

[@billie_the_birdie]

I thought the same! Like everyone's always just done a 10k run

[@monnaak]

I’ve also experinced that. And Finnish kinda too. Bu some languages that take it to the next lever are the Sámi languages. They are very breathy lol

[@melindar.fischer5106]

Native English speaker here. I have described Icelandic as a "whisper" language. It sounds like native Icelandic speakers are whispering some of their words. Now I know why it sounds like that (to my ears). Thank you, Paul, for explaining the voiceless nasal consonants and the inhaling while speaking.

[@zeroeyedpete]

Icelandic is one of my favorite languages. It's so beautiful. I'm very excited for this video.

[@ukurainajin]

Slavic speaker here. My impression of Icelandic is that it's probably the most difficult European language for me to pronounce as for now. And thanks to German I'm able to guess a couple of simple things in written language.

[@oliverman3713]

In everyday Icelandic we tend to use “bæ” as a way of saying “goodbye”. It sounds very similar if not identical to “bye” in English. I think it’s a generational thing, so because I’m younger I tend to use “bæ” more instead of “bless”

[@Somer-set]

We actually kind of lack a word in between bæ & bless.. bæ is a bit too common to use with strangers and officials and bless is too harsh and rarely used in daily life.. eða hvað? ☺️

[@91rumpnisse]

When i see that word "Bae" (Can't type that ae letter, my version is Ä), i think of the English word "Bae" (Short for Babe). Are you sure you guys aren't just calling each other "Babes" when you say farewell to each other? xD

[@yvindVagenJgtnes]

Kind of funny and not an insult, but in Norway the sheep say bæ 🤣 But it is pronounced a bit different than the icelandic æ.

[@DoomShrm]

@@91rumpnisse no æ makes the ai sound in icelandic. In English it was historically used for the nasal a in cat

[@addiart577]

@@Somer-set segi oft sjáumst eða bæjó. Mæli með

[@alansewell7810]

This is one of your best. My Dad, who passed away in 2006, was stationed in Iceland during WWII. He loved the country. He told me a bit about the language. According to him, men take the patronym of their father, for example, "Thorsson" and women the patrionymic of "Thorsdotter." (Thor's daughter). Iceland is said to be a happy country, despite being in the far northern latitudes.

[@EVO6-]

Þórrsson and Þórsdóttir

[@cerdic6305]

@@EVO6- it’s a transliteration. Most English speakers don’t know what the letter ‘þ’ is or how it is pronounced.

[@ChaoticAphrodite]

@@cerdic6305 ðat’s a shæme

[@natatatt]

My family immigrated out of Iceland a few generations ago, so I have a "son" last name though I am a woman. The last name was essentially frozen in time by the generation who left Iceland, as we aren't carrying on the sson/dottir patronym tradition.

[@volukyrja]

My grandma always loves talking about the Brit’s and the Americans that were stationed here. She was only around 4 years old but she remembers them giving her and her sibling chocolate and dancing with them. I’m glad your dad liked it here :)

[@peterszeug308]

As a German native speaker with some knowledge of Old English I find Icelandic grammar quite comprehensible and familiar. The syntax, inflections and general role of words is quite clear, but only the written form. Spoken Icelandic sounds completely alien from modern Standard German or Old English, I honestly understood none except for some pronouns and loanwords.

[@SchmulKrieger]

@Prof. Spudd I am not sure. Uhr in German is a feminine noun and in Icelandic it's neuter. I thought he would mention more often the similarity between German and Icelandic. Such as the verb heita, ég heiti Schmul, ich heiße Schmul.

[@luxy9530]

@@SchmulKrieger Yeah or Guten Tag. That was a very obvious similarity as well.

[@idraote]

Old Icelandic used to have a very straightforward pronunciation but something has happened in those centuries of isolation.

[@ingriddurden3929]

@@luxy9530 Speaking a Flemish dialect and knowing German and English, I understood quite a few words especially from the written text. The grammar seems to be similar to German, only more old fashioned. I thought it would be impossible to learn Icelandic, but now I am not so sure ! Iceland is beautiful and I think they still require knowledge of their language to immigrate!

[@SirBenjiful]

@@luxy9530 That’s because they are both cognates, not loanwords.

[@RaunySilva]

Finally the long awaited. Icelandic is the most unique language I ever seen. I thought you wouldn't cover this masterpiece of language

[@gerald4013]

Most unique, well, have you tried non-Indo-European languages ? 😛 Or even certain weird IE languages, like Irish...

[@lmatt88]

@@gerald4013 It's unique cause the Scandiniavian languages evolved but Icelandic remained almost like Old Norse. It's like finding an island that still speaks Latin.

[@kame9]

sardinian is close to latin, but have more influenceds and also evolved from latin directly.

[@arolemaprarath6615]

@@lmatt88 except old Norse came there to settle not developed by their inhabitants.

[@RaunySilva]

@@gerald4013 I did, bro. Irish is hell, but not as hellish as Icelandic - plus Icelandic nowadays is the closest thing we have of old norse.

[@UnexpectedGamer7]

"Be happy and blessed" is probably the most wholesome greeting I've ever heard

[@KBAsilomar]

As a student of Icelandic (since 2012, with a native tutor, in-person) I am so impressed by your linguistic skills, and ability to accurately analyze, AND communicate, clearly the Icelandic language. I wish courses were taught the way you convey the language. Your accurate on most to all. Maybe not the ingressive's commonness though. Everything else, spot on!

[@johansvideor]

As a Finland Swede with an archaic Swedish dialect as my mother tongue, I can actually pick up a lot from written Icelandic when I "think in my dialect" when reading. But the grammar goes way over my head, except for the three genders that we still use in our dialect. We also have the voiceless L in some words, mostly in words with combinations of letters "sl" and possibly "lt". And of course the ingressive "Jú" (yes), which is also used in northern Swedish dialects. But spoken Icelandic is like a way too unfamiliar dialect to listen to.

[@mariannaastmarsdottir2380]

Same goes for Icelanders reading Swedish :) I understand the most part, likewise in Norwegian and Danish but easiest to read Faroese. But talking it is a "whole nother arm" (allt annar handleggur).

[@SJ-ym4yt]

Curiously, I find that Icelandic and Finnish sound somewhat similar when spoken quickly. Obviously they’re unrelated languages, I guess it’s just something about some of the phonemes

[@johansvideor]

@@SJ-ym4yt What they have in common is that both emphasize all words on the first syllable, which is different from e.g. Swedish and Norwegian. Neither also have pitch accent. This makes them sound somewhat similar (if you don't listen to the words).

[@tranchedecake3897]

Actually, Ancient Greek had *voiceless trills* , but they were the word-beginning allophones of the phoneme /r/. Even tho it wasn't a phoneme, they still wrote it differently, with a rho with a hard spirit. (when they used spirits, think of them they are like accents that indicates if there's a /h/ before a vowel (hard spirit) or not (soft spirit), but in this case it indicates if the /r/ is voiced or not ). *So that's why, in romanizations, some words in greek start with "rh" like "rhythm", because they're basically voiceless trills*

[@LittleWhole]

There are also double rhos with a smooth breathing on the first one and a rough breathing on the second one, like διάῤῥοια = diarrhoea. Rhos at the beginning of a word always took rough breathing. Even the letter "rho" itself (ῥῶ).

[@tranchedecake3897]

@@LittleWhole oh, didn't know they had double rho's, i suppose it was a geminated /r/, but ok

[@shimokitazawa1217]

The little audio in the beginning gave me an impression that Icelandic sounds similar to Greek at times. Maybe there is some sort of phonetic convergence in unrelated or distantly related languages.

[@Thelaretus]

@@tranchedecake3897 Double rhos are voiced-unvoiced sequences.

[@eckligt]

Wonderful! As a Norwegian, I can only pick out some cognate words here and there. It is funny to me that the speech melody of Icelandic reminds me of that of the Sogn dialects in Norway. Sometimes, hearing the Sogn dialects in the distance without being able to make out the words, I have been thinking that I am hearing Icelandic. I would finally just like to suggest the next topics for Germanic language videos now: Faroese and Elfdalian.

[@nahblue]

​@@kilipaki87oritahiti Det er også derfor man kunne sette norsk samtidlig på både sider av vest og øst-norrønt opdelingen - norge och norsk idag inneholder så mange dialekter at det er som en bro fra vest till øst-norrønt, på en måte. (English summary) I don't think it would be wrong to place norwegian *both* in west and east norse, thinking of Norwegian as the living language it is today, bridging a wide span of dialects.

[@eckligt]

@@kilipaki87oritahiti Ja, klart, men det er jo interessant at dialektene lengre nord og sør på Vestlandet ikke har lignende tonefall som islandsk (mitt inntrykk, jeg har tatt feil før).

[@inflikktion]

I watched a video of various people from Norway talking. As an Icelander I couldn't understand all of it, but I could certainly tell who was from the more rural parts as the pattern of speech was closer to Icelandic.

[@egilsandnes9637]

Yeah, Icelandic and Norwegian are "just out of reach" to eachother. I'm Norwegian, and I can with some effort partially decrypt Icelandic. I've managed to read whole Faroese articles on Wikipedian without much trouble though. Å se islandske krimserier er en fryd da. Jeg må ha på tekst for å skjønne hva som sies, men det er herlig å høre på. Alltid artig når man skjønner enkelte ord eller hele fraser da! 😊

[@thoraro]

Im an Icelander living in Norway and I have svereral times asked people if they are fellow Icelanders, when hearing them speak Norwegian, only to find out they are from Sogn. The cadence and soundscape are very similar to an Icelander speaking Norwegian and not bothering to hide his accent.

[@hognigk96]

As a native I can read the old sagas with little difficulty. I have been making my way through them during the pandemic and having a lot of fun. Even though there are definitely some words and phrases that we no longer use or have different meanings today it doesn’t really detract from the overall narrative too much (plus there are helpful annotations).

[@Starkardur]

Ingressive sounds aren't THAT common in Icelandic and it's entirely up to the individual in my opinion. I find it used when a person pretends to be shocked or is trying to ease their way out of a conversation.

[@gudmundur-heimisson]

It’s also gendered and based on age. If you listen to two women who are middle aged or older speaking you’ll hear it very frequently.

[@herrbonk3635]

Exactly the same even in Swedish (despite all our Hansa/plattyska vokabulär).

[@gearoiddom]

Also used in Ireland when speaking English, same two reasons largely.

[@アンドレスくん]

I started learning swedish half-year and learning about the Nordic culture and its group of languages a little bit and i wanna learn more about iceland because most of everything is beautiful about that land and its language is still more 🇮🇸💕

[@eldurhagberg848]

Haha much love from a swede/icelander, appreciate the ambition. I myself struggle with my native tongue, you have a long journey ahead of you!

[@陈昱良-v3p]

What I want to say is learning Icelandish is another thing, which will never be as easy as swedish, and will be much harder than German. (you know, German is comparatively a nuisance in germanic language)

[@アンドレスくん]

@@eldurhagberg848 it'll interesting and fun🙂

[@アンドレスくん]

@@陈昱良-v3p of course, but it's fun to try it at least

[@lmatt88]

Me too, I had started with Norwegian but the 2 written standards and the millions of dialects discouraged me. Swedish has twice the amount of speakers and it's also official in Finland. it's cool you can communicate with Norwegians using Swedish as well.

[@TrimbakkiFonElsass]

As a non scholarly hobbyist who is learning old Icelandic to read the sagas. To try and explain why myself a native English speaker can read, but not speak Icelandic is difficult. Their phrasing, syntax, idioms, and kennings. Is very alien to non native speakers imho. I've managed to read at a low level in about a year. But to try speaking by "copy pasting" correct words as if you're speaking English (even with correct cases) will not be correct. But it is a wonderfully expressive amazing language, and i will continue learning.

[@pedropinheiro9196]

I wouldnt say that i learned it but i am doing the same thing to read the eddas as a ✨hobbie✨

[@TrimbakkiFonElsass]

@@pedropinheiro9196 that is great! It is very difficult to reach that level. I can read Völuspa, but grógaldr is my favorite and it gives me trouble, havamal is difficult for me as well, but i try. For prose reading i enjoy the Fornnorræna sögur, most read pretty straight forward with predictable sentence structure. I study about 2 hours a day, and every week i feel like something really "clicks" suddenly, then it becomes a little more natural. I guess we just stay with it haha

[@minirop]

@@pedropinheiro9196 I've been wanting to do that, but as with Chinese to read the 3 kingdoms, I gave up. but I still follow Jackson Crawford's videos.

[@AlbertBoris]

Even as a Swedish-speaker, understanding Icelandic is pretty difficult, but most of the time I can pick up a few random words so I'm never entirely lost lol

[@putlerkaputt9201]

hrafna approves

[@SchmulKrieger]

Spoken it's very hard. Written to some extent possible when you know German the sound shift.

[@NickNameTrickName]

I would say you can pick up most of the words, or relate them to a word of the same root

[@danymalsound]

Thing is, just like Sweden, if you go to Iceland, they won't even bother speaking to you in Icelandic. They'll just use English the whole time

[@Asptuber]

And some of the modern Icelandic words are fun, using a cognate of flock (as in flock of sheep) to mean political party will forever stay in my mind :-)

[@arhus12]

As a Swede Icelandic is very curious since while you can obviously see the similarities, it's still so different and it makes you realise how much the other Scandinavian languages must have changed. Actually, historically Icelandic and Norwegian were more closely related to each other than to Swedish and Danish, but that's obviously not the case anymore. Although you can still hear some of those interesting phonetic aspects in certain dialects of Norwegian. It's weird to listen to Icelandic because you don't really understand anything and then every now and then you hear a word that sounds exactly like Swedish. Super cool language!

[@pumfeethermodynamics3286]

i love that u point out the shared etymology between icelandic and english. this makes this kind of education more comprehensible in my opinion.

[@Langfocus]

Thanks! I’m glad to hear that.

[@Pokephosgene]

I was hoping to see a more detailed look at Icelandic word formation. There are neologisms created so that they convey not only the meaning of the foreign word, but also, the sound. This is called phono-semantic matching, and it is quite impressive.

[@manfredneilmann4305]

Any examples?

[@Pokephosgene]

@@manfredneilmann4305 They took the verb eyða (to destroy) to make the word eyðni, which has the meaning of AIDS.

[@Swooper86]

Icelander here. Yes, I can read the old sagas, with some difficulty. I think the Shakespeare comparison is probably apt. I would like to point out two errors from the same slide: 1) The feminine form of blessaður is blessuð, not *blessöð. 2) "Vertu sæll og blessaður" (and "vertu sæll", a slight abbreviation) is actually used to say goodbye, not hello. "Komdu [come] sæll og blessaður" (or just "komdu sæll") is hello.

[@lyftari]

@@magnuskarlkjerulf Can also depend on when people were born. My late father used to greet people with "bless".

[@Westfjordian]

In the part of Iceland I (and more my parents) grew up in "sæll og blessaður" was hello while "blessaður og sæll" was goodbyes 🤷‍♂️

[@nirutmorfmot]

Half Italian half Scottish here. I lived in Iceland for a year until a few months ago, great time in a great country! I tried learning the language, but it's quite difficult not only linguistically speaking, but mainly because pretty much all Icelanders speak fluent English, so they will switch to that the moment they see you struggle with Icelandic. Besides that, I was working for an international organization, so I couldn't practice my Icelandic with the Japanese or Argentinian partners. Anyway, from my own experience, there are far too many exceptions for each rule, so it is really a matter of just getting into it rather than just memorising the whole grammar book. It is not impossible, I got to handling conversations relatively well, I can fool Icelanders I'm one of them for about five minutes. Reading is much easier, as English does help with the various cognates, and it is also interesting to notice them. A very peculiar fact is that their vocabulary is very limited compared to other languages, so many words have multiple but related meanings. For example, "boiling water" and "welding metal" are using the same verb in Icelandic. Also, they don't really have adverbs, as their adjectives can be used as adverbs too. I could go on and on, but it is not easy to sum up my Icelandic year and experience with the language. Long story short, if you ever fancy getting into it I'd recommend it, it will be fun and open doors to other Scandinavian languages and especially Icelandic people, some of the most honest, caring and with a cool sense of humour!

[@imba.hjaltalin]

Interesting but not sure I agree 100%. It may be true in comparison to for example English but in comparison to other nordic countries the opposite is true. For example each and every baby animal has a special word where in other countries it often is the same with another ending like "-unge" even if there are also many variations. Also every single animals gives birth with a seperate verb so for instance a horse will "kasta" its foal while a sheep will "bera" its lamm, a cat will "gjóta" and ONLY a woman will actually give birth "faeda".

[@rafnbaldurgislason2554]

Icelandic is not limited🙂, Im sure that you wouldnt fool any Icelander for 5 minuets, ( Im not guessing here.)

[@rafnbaldurgislason2554]

Maybe I was littlebit rude but here you have another ice verb for welding BRÆÐA.

[@no1uknow32]

This video is so cool in how it shows how closely related Icelandic is to English and what English used to look like, but it's also interesting to see how many characteristics Icelandic has in common with highly inflected languages like Slavic ones. Really cool!

[@yarz443]

Exactly my thoughts! It struck me immediately. It is something I wouldn't expect from one of the Scandinavian languages, as over the centuries they have become simplified to a certain degree. Very cool indeed. (Slovak native speaker here, currently advancing in norwegian.)

[@Mindartcreativity]

I love Icelandic! As a native German speaker, if I listen really really closely I can somehow catch the sense of a sentence. Someday I will learn Icelandic., my favourite Germanic language. Tak fyrir!😁

[@Caine61]

The timing on this couldn’t be better. I’m traveling to Iceland next month! Can’t wait 👍🇮🇸

[@zovisapphire]

Vertu tilbúinn fyrir sól allan sólarhringinn :)

[@Caine61]

@@zovisapphire Oh yes, we are making sure to get the black-out rooms at the hotels lol

[@icelandinreallife2042]

@@Caine61 Or you can just stay in the capital, they have never have any sun. Just rain.

[@nymmyz]

@@icelandinreallife2042 uss, ekki jinxa plís 🥺

[@519djw6]

*Thank you for finally getting around to Icelandic! I don't remember if your video on Norwegian included the fact that Norwegian, Swedish and Danish are now grouped together under "Mainland Scandinavian,'"since these three are now largely mutually intelligible, while Icelandic and Faeroese are classified as "Insular Scandinavian," because their grammar is more complicated and they are not mutually intelligible with the Mainland Scandinavian Languages. PS KZbin still does not recognize "Faeroese," and underlines it as a "misspelling"! Justice for Faeroese!*

[@ferretyluv]

It is a misspelling. We spell it as Faroese in English.

[@519djw6]

@@ferretyluv No, it is not. Look up "Faeroese" in Merriam-Webster's Dictionary, and you will find that spelling. "Faroese" is also listed, but as a variant spelling of the former term. In any case, You-Tube does not accept *either* spelling.

[@flavioxy]

thanks paul, very fascinating! "flott" is a rather old-fashioned german word for cool (or fashionable). therefore, fashionable watch is "flotte Uhr." very similar. "eiga" and german "eigen" have the same meaning. "fahren" (to drive) is also similar to "farid".

[@MichaelSpengler]

noticed that too.. besides "flott" also means quick in German.

[@flavioxy]

@@MichaelSpengler and eigen can mean peculiar. maybe that received its meaning as in "his own way"

[@estenbakken8180]

In norwegian "eiga" or "eigen" means "own". Like in: - my own shoes, translating to: - Mine eigene sko or: - to own, translating to: -å eiga

[@Asptuber]

Same in Swedish with "flott", has a very 1920-1950ies vibe to it. Would be interesting to know when "flott" entered Icelandic in this sense.

[@MichaelSpengler]

@@Asptuber in German it used to be used for songs that very rhytmic,as well.

[@hulda4ever]

I'm Icelandic and I looove watching videos about my country and language !

[@LaunchKaffee]

I like that you are now making videos, about smaller languages. As a Luxembourger, you can see why I appreciate it

[@CadeIsSleepy]

yoo, I honestly love the Icelandic language. It'd so fascinating how similar it remains to Old Norse, can't wait to watch !

[@jonasholmqvist5231]

Absolutely! The pronunciation has changed a lot, though. A Viking would easily be able to read Icelandic (if literate) but would struggle with the spoken language.

[@Aprill264]

I was thinking a few days ago "Langfocus hasn't made a video on Iceland yet, I hope he'll make one soon, I'd love a video on Icelandic", and here we are, excellent timing Paul.

[@arthurmoran4951]

Exactly what I was thinking about that some weeks ago

[@easterdeer]

I used to be huge into Björk and Sigur Rós. Icelandic is one of the most beautiful languages in the world to me and I love seeing all the cognates with English and other Germanic languages. Thanks for the wonderful video as always and thanks to Iceland for their magic musicians. Much love from England :D

[@MrMaltasar]

Native speaker here! As a child I enjoyed reading some of the sagas just for fun, namely Egils saga and Njáls saga (the two most famous and epic). I was able to do this at an age of around 10 or 11 without any outside help from a tutor. However, most book versions have within them copious amounts of annotations that are crucial in some parts to understand the narrative, either to explain extinct words or to clarify older forms of the same words. Simplified versions of these stories have also been written, aimed at young audiences, so it helps by introducing you to the broad narrative. In school, especially high school, we take classes where we read these sagas with the aid of a teacher to do some more specific literature analysis of these stories, which brings a lot of added depth to them. Needless to say, most people sleep through these classes and many Icelanders have never read the sagas or don't remember much from them, in the same way as loving Shakespeare can be a very niche interest. Me being an outlier as someone who was obsessively interested in this ancient literature from an early age. That all being said, the sagas are relatively easy to understand, probably even easier for us to understand than Shakespeare is to English speakers. I say that as a fluent English speaker who does not have much luck trying to read Shakespeare. Another example: The old rune stones dotted all over Scandinavia from the Viking age contain inscriptions in Old Norse dialects, which after being transliterated into the Latin alphabet are pretty easily understood for Icelandic speakers, whereas they are not so easy for speakers of modern-day continental Scandinavian languages (Danish, Swedish, Norwegian).

[@H-Vox]

The part about ingressive sounds is FASCINATING, I've always wondered if such a thing exists but had no idea

[@herrbonk3635]

You can still hear that in rural Sweden too, particularly in the north (and in Vestlandet, in Norway).

[@arnarorsson20]

I want to add that ingressive sounds or sentences usually carry the same vibe. Like, semi tired, exacerbated, or slightly shocking.

[@qupp75]

Absolutely common in Danish. And I’ve been told also in Scotland and Ireland.

[@richardgardner5568]

For an English (Ensk) speaker, it takes practice to avoid inhaling air, then burping/belching. já já (emphatic yes).

[@MelonSiggi]

As a young Icelander (born early 2000's) I have heard a lot of English words being somewhat modified into an "Icelandic" word. for example; "ég ætla að dabba" -> "I am going to dab" (it's the only example I could think of haha). this is commonly done by the younger majority of Icelanders that have either forgotten some words or have yet to learn the correct words to use. it's kind of cool to know that Icelandic is able to modify words from other languages (or at least from what I've heard and or read so far in my life). sadly the Icelandic language is being slowly forgotten (at least on how to speak the language) there's a rough estimate on when Icelanders will forget how to speak Icelandic; which is around 500 years or so. to whoever read this far into my comment; I hope that you'll at least consider learning Icelandic so that it won't be forgotten. yes it'll be challenging but if you do learn it then you may or may not be able to speak an exotic language that not a lot of people even know exists. I wish you a great day or night and an even better life ahead of you! :^)

[@francoisdaureville323]

How do you forget a language that an entire population in a country speaks?????😂😂😂 that isnt how languages work, for icelandic ti be forgotten there would have to be a form of colonialism in wich a languages majority in a country is imposed that isnt a thing in iceland sort of what french is in canada

[@mbdg6810]

As a person also born in the early 2000’s, i just recently got interest in learning more languages. I got interested in Icelandic due to revisiting a childhood favorite of mine LazyTown which has Icelandic origin.

[@mattiasandersson2315]

As a native swedish speaker,i think icelandic is the most beautiful of all the Nordic languages 🙂👍,,and some words i can understand.

[@mariannaastmarsdottir2380]

An Icelander here. Yes, we need to read the sagas in school, we start as young as 11 years old. And to have everything correct in this video, it is written "blessuð" or "blessaður" not "blessöð". (But you would say "blessöð" when saying the world "jokely" (if that is a word)) :) loved the video and thank you for telling the world about our language. The 16th of November is the "Day of Icelandic tongue" where we celebrate our language, mostly done in Schools ofcourse :)

[@NcxX-c8f]

You mean “jokingly”?

[@ktheodor3968]

As ever Paul, very high quality content videos. Straight out of the university post-graduate linguistics workshop. Thank you...for over the years *consistently* excellent uploads.

[@thorgerdurannabjornsdottir]

Hi Paul, thank you so much for your interesting videos on languages! I'm a native speaker of Icelandic and studied Icelandic and general linguistics at university. I remember when we were studying "The First Grammatical Treatise" being pleasantly surprised how easy it was to understand the original text. We had to learn a few differences in the written form like S was written like... J upside down but it was mindblowing to me that we were reading a text from the 12th century without difficulty (we were reading a printed version, not looking at the manuscript itself but it was not modernized or adjusted in any way). I had not had any training in reading old texts prior to this. I also remember as a teenager visiting Gotland island in Sweden, that I could read some very old tombstones that my Swedish friends could not decipher. To me it was like a mix of Icelandic and Swedish.

[@user-mrfrog]

Ég get ekki beðið eftir myndbandinu. Ég er að læra íslensku líka. Takk kærlega og bless bless frá Québec-fylki. 🇮🇸

[@gunnarinn90]

Þekkiru einhverja íslendinga sem búa í Québec?

[@user-mrfrog]

@@gunnarinn90 Því miður ekki! ☹

[@SchmulKrieger]

astoundingly similar to Old High German and still to Modern Standard German. In Old High German for example they did the same with the second person singular pronoun in nominative for questions. that's why, and also true for English, the seconst person got its -t at the end of the conjugated verb. thu gibis (you give), but gibistu (do you give. or early Modern English thou givest.

[@shannonfrericks1124]

To me it is very close to low German in which my grandmothers and great grandmother would speak. My great grandfather who was from Holland could talk to them and the neighbors from Iceland with no problems.

[@SchmulKrieger]

@@shannonfrericks1124 sounds like a Paulaner.

[@lp-xl9ld]

Been a while, Paul! Nice to see another posting from you! As to the subject: Iceland and Icelandic generally don't get too much attention. I'm sure the people there are happy to finally get some.

[@elainechubb971]

I loved this video and your presentation of a fascinating language. Thank you! The quality of your videos is attested to by the comments, which show how much people respond to them--and I note you get very civil, engaged, and interesting comments, too, which is most welcome in these difficult times.

[@d.ryanwebb1166]

Great video, Paul! Icelandic has always been one of my favorite languages. Vertu sæll og blessaður!

[@Lemonz1989]

I would love a video on Faroese or a video on the differences between Faroese and Icelandic. As a native Faroese speaker, it sort of short circuits my brain when reading Icelandic and hearing them speak it at the same time. It’s so similar to read, but sounds so different when spoken. I could understand almost all of the written sentences here, but I would only have a minor idea of what they were talking about if I didn’t see it in writing as well.

[@vasilzahariev5741]

As a non-native speaker of English and German, Icelandic looks familiar in its written form, but sounds so different from what you'd expect it to sound like.

[@thorrih99]

Best thing about speaking icelandic is that when you are traveling abroad with other icelanders, you can speak icelandic as loud as you like cuz noone will be able to understand. This recently came to mind regarding people that only speak english or some popular language wont experience that often

[@Torfinice1]

Já farðu varlega í Kaupmannahöfn/Danmörku. Mér líður stundum eins og 20% af mannskapnum hérna séu Íslendingar.

[@acamapichtli.raul.suppachok]

Me and my friends were speaking bad (using Icelandic ) about an old white man with a (too) young Thai girl in a random little town in thailand. To our surprise, when he heard us speak Icelandic he asked us “eruð þið íslendingar?” … luckily he didn’t hear exactly what we were talking about 😂😂😮😂 but that was a surprise.

[@chiharii8322]

this is by far the best video I've ever watched about Icelandic, you clearly did you're research and its great to see something with so much effort into it

[@Halli50]

The last quarter of this clip was a "blast from the past" - a dip into the complex Icelandic grammar we were made to learn in our early schooling, and then promptly relegated to the dustbins of history - much to my regret now that I'm old enough to appreciated the treasure our language is. Thank you Paul!

[@ninjadude971]

Great video! This is cool to watch as I'm currently learning Old Norse from Jackson Crawford's channel.

[@buckwylde7965]

Listening to Bjork sing the same song in both English and Icelandic one must listen closely to know which language she is singing in. English song lyrics are almost exclusively Germanic in origin so the sound of the same song is very similar in Icelandic or English. .

[@karolinadesu7224]

I am Icelandic and i never really realised how f hard Icelandic really is and i am kind of proud to speak it

[@WackoWambo]

You should be proud! 😊 I love your country and tell all my friends to go visit. English is great online, but keep the Icelandic spoken word strong!

[@tobbaeinars]

Im icelandic as well

[@Whatismusic123]

icelandic is the second worst languaguage in the world, just behind danish.

[@karolinadesu7224]

@@tobbaeinars æði!

[@karolinadesu7224]

@@Whatismusic123 what do you mean by worst?

[@Ciekawe.Rozmowy.Dominika]

Soon the number of the views will exceed the entire population of Iceland. Thank you for the video.

[@MandyCaputo]

Thank you for the sample. I was one of the viewers making this suggestion under a previous video

[@hyoga4345]

As an Icelander and a long time fan of the channel, I have been waiting for this for so long!!! Thank you for finally making this video, Paul! Edit: I am able to understand it, the vocabulary and grammar is somewhat archaic however so it sometimes takes some thinking to figure out what a sentence means. Generally, after someone explains what it means the meaning seems extremely obvious and a word you thought impossible to decipher seems natural in it's meaning. The comparison to Shakespeare is understandable but I'd say it isn't as difficult for us to understand it as it is for english-speakears to understand shakespeare, as Icelandic vocabulary has changed less over the centuries.

[@ah795u]

It's mad to think about that because I have massive trouble understanding some English works written just 400 years ago and things like Shakespeare are essentially indecipherable to me despite almost all the words seeming familiar and yet you lot can understand things written almost 1000 years ago with relative ease

[@sveinnthorhalls]

Been waiting for this for years honestly. But I'm Icelandic myself so... yeah. Hope you mention how modern Icelandic has changed (a lot) from Old Norse in pronunciation :) Keep on with the good work Paul!

[@SchmulKrieger]

pronunciation, yes, that's the most.

[@FuelFire]

I can already tell that this will be a great video as always :Þ

[@Stoirelius]

Was that thorn as a tongue intentional? 😆

[@FuelFire]

@@Stoirelius Correct :D

[@Shreyaaaa0610]

I have been learning Norwegian and I can vividly see the similarity in the sentence structure, thank you so much

[@faramund9865]

Love this one. Always been big on the poems and sagas. But especially love this one because you’re using cognates to make people understand the language. Like when you said ‘gaman’ is related to English ‘game’, very good!

[@clementinekirilenko2449]

Finally the icelandic episode :) I had been waiting for this for so long ! I'm currently learning it, it's definitely challenging but also probably one of the most beautiful and interesting language on earth, so it's worth. It sounds like the language of the elves to my ears. I wish I will nail it without an horrible french accent one of these days, or years, or decades... or lives maybe 🤣 At least I can order a large beer and a hotdog, so it's probably not that bad 😎

[@rrni2343]

Regarding your question at the end. Yes I can read it, we had to read the old sagas as kids, although with slight modernisations. Although as you pointed out it takes a bit longer to read, as it takes a bit to get used to.

[@icelandinreallife2042]

Þennan kinnhest skal ég þér muna!

[@faramund9865]

If you ever run out of ‘official’ languages. I’d suggest going after local languages. The Netherlands has plenty of that. So it’s a good place to start.

[@larryoneill6802]

Paul, thanks very much. I have spent quite a bit of time in Iceland and am always fascinated by the sounds and relative complexity of the language. As you mentioned, it often reminds me of the sounds of Old English. I am surprised you did not mention that Icelandic is still spoken around Gimli (Heavenly Abode in English), Manitoba. The Church of the Latter Day Saints invited the first group to Canada and then the eruption of Mount Askja forced some 20k Icelanders to head to Canada and eventually settled along the shores of Lake Winnipeg. (cold, eh?) Lastly, I met a University professor last time I was there. She told me that younger people were borrowing many words from English and their use of computers was 'simplifying' the language. I explained we see the same thing here in QC. Now let's look at Faroese :)

[@ksplatypus]

I've only ever studied Middle English and a tiny bit of Old English, but its similarities to Icelandic and other north Germanic languages is surprising! I know very little Icelandic, but I've always wanted to learn more. It's a fascinating language! Takk, Páll!

[@zeggoulart]

Oh wow, in Brazilian Portuguese we also say "ESTAR COM" to express "I have a headache", for instance (estou com dor de cabeça". Mind-blowing!!

[@BenutzerWalter]

estou com dor do meu cabeça por causa de olhar pra idioma islandesa... kkkk

[@zeggoulart]

@@BenutzerWalter de fato!! 😄

[@lorenzmuller5083]

I was looking forward to this video for a long time :) I was surprised about the many grammatical aspects still shared with German, like wird order and strong/weak declensions of adjectives. Pronunciation would seem to be a real struggle though- and understanding anybody with that crazy inhaling and whispering going on 😅

[@Saturos02]

As a norwegian, I've always envied iceland for retaining so much inflectional complexity in their language. I especially like the dative plural forms, which I'm pretty sure still can be found in some of our dialects, e.g. "oppi dalom" - "up in the valleys". One weird thing though, is how for singular masculine nouns it seems to be the accusative that's unmarked, while the nominative gets the -(u)r ending.

[@annahuga]

Indeed! I am Icelandic, and during my 6 year stay in Norway I really enjoyed my encounters with Norwegian dialects. Surprisingly, I found that I would sometimes understand Nynorsk better than Bokmål speaking people around me. Keep your dialects! They are a treasure.

[@jamiearnott9669]

Your videos are excellent. I remember there was a man on an Icelandic and British documentary that delighted audiences from both countries This is because he managed to pick up the language real easy on the show and everyone was flabbergasted!

[@r1ngil746]

jackson crawford’s channel is an excellent source for old norse linguistics, and he talks a good amount about its relation to icelandic

[@RyunosukeYamato]

I've missed you! Icelandic is very interesting for me

[@cerjmedia]

I like how there are some recognizable elements of germanic in there still, "heitir/heiti" which means 'to be called' reminds me of german "heißen" or "kynnast" for 'become acquainted with' reminds me of germen "kennen" and how about "úr" for 'watch' which is similar to german "Uhr" for 'clock' lastly there's "með" for 'with' which is similar to german "mit" I'm sure most if not all of it dates back to the fact that they are all germanic languages and have similar roots, but those were the interesting ones that I noticed.

[@manfredneilmann4305]

Mir geht's genauso

[@braincytox7314]

i think it's connected to "können" but perhaps können and kennen have the same root?

[@MrKorton]

One funny thing is that the faroese use "við" for with and not með;)

[@troelspeterroland6998]

One similarity is a loanword, though. Úr and Uhr ultimately come from Latin hora 'hour'.

[@Default78334]

Also, certain English dialects (particularly in Scotland) still use the work "ken", which means "comprehend", "understand", or "understanding".

[@jawbone78]

One thing about modern Icelanders reading the Sagas in their original form is that the texts aren't usually presented as they were in the manuscripts; instead they were largely standardized a century ago. Spellings and word forms could vary widely in the manuscripts, even within a single saga or tale. I had one semester when I was working on my MA where I was able to work hands-on with a handful of actual 14th century manuscripts, attempting to transliterate and translate the text. It was extraordinarily difficult. I did not do well.

[@idraote]

true. They have researchers who specialise in transcribing manuscripts because it is far from obvious

[@gabbi47karason]

Great video, only thing that would've been fun to mention also is the sentence ' Ási á Á á á á á ' which is a compleat sentence meaning Ási(Name) á(to have/own often also used as on, I.E. sitting on) Á(name of a farm) á(owns) á(an old term for a sheep) á(on a) á(a river).

[@NajwaLaylah]

I could listen to that language all day. Maybe even if I understood it (content does matter). Fine video! As usual.

[@AgathaLOutahere]

Interesting connection between Icelandic and Persian. The Persian word for "wire" is the same as the Icelandic word for "telephone" which of course prior to cellphones were connected through wiring.

[@MarkRose1337]

Whereas wire in English came to mean telegraph.

[@MrPicky]

A cellphone is a farsími in Icelandic. far comes from ferð (which has several meanings all "movement related", such as travel, being mobile etc.) and sími is telephone. So farsími is mobile telephone :) Now we are starting to use snjallsími for smartphones where sími is still a phone but snjallur is the Icelandic word for smart or clever. So a smartphone is snjallsími :)

[@Templar2k2k]

I had a persian GF, one word she said was the same in Icelandiic and Persian, "fíl" meaning elephant. I've never found out how it was related though.

[@ordisemma7514]

​@@MrPickySnjall* or snjöll, I've never heard "snjallur" although that might exist

[@MrPicky]

@@Templar2k2k fíll is the Icelandic word for elephant. fíl is one of the declension of the word fíll (here is fíll, about fíl, from fíl, to fíls)

[@Someone-ym1ny]

Absolutely love the sound of this language. One of my favourites along with Mongolian I'd say. I'd love a Mongolian video if you have the time!

[@peterc.1618]

I don't know why but although I don't speak Icelandic, I like listening to Icelandic songs; the same applies to Welsh. There is a song that the Icelandic football fans sang during Euro16 in France called "Ég er kominn heim"; it's originally German but it doesn't sound anywhere near as good in the original as it does in Icelandic.

[@dan74695]

15:11 Three northern Dalecarlian dialects for comparison: Elfdalian: Te åvå = to have Ig ar = I have Du ar = you (singular) have Ann, ą̊, eð ar = he, she, it has Wįr avum, wįð amm, wįr amm = we have Įr avir, įð avið = you (plural) have Dier åvå, diem åvå = they have Våmhusmål: Te a = to have Ig ar = I have Du ar = you (singular) have Ann, ą̊, eð ar = he, she, it has Wið amm = we have Ið avið = you (plural) have Diem a = they have Orsamål: Te a = to have Ik ar = I have Du ar = you (singular) have Ånn, ǫ, ed ar = he, she, it has Wi åmm = we have Ni ai = you (plural) have Dem a = they have

[@Speakeeezzy]

Man everything I learn about Icelandic is so interesting. I was so excited to see you did a video on it. It's such a beautiful language.

[@italoman9]

Really admire and enjoy your comprehensive, passionate descriptions and presentations of languages. Because of its major literary history, I always feel somehow that Icelandic is a more widely spoken and reaching language compared to other world tongues having similar numbers of speakers. Great vid post! 👍