Icelandic phrasebook
Icelandic is spoken in Iceland. It is a North Germanic language, related to Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian, but unlike them retains the full set of conjugations and declensions that Old Norse had. That and its lack of Latinate words make it a difficult language for English speakers.
Icelandic nouns are declined in four cases, two numbers, and the presence of the definite article. Verbs have person and number, which is used with pronouns.
Pronunciation guide
Although Icelandic looks very formidable with its strange characters "þ" and "ð" and many accented vowels, once the basic rules have been learned, pronunciation is fairly straightforward. Note that stress always falls on the first syllable of any word.
Vowels
Some vowels in Icelandic can have accent marks which modify the sound of each vowel. Vowels can come in long or short forms. In Icelandic, all vowels can be long or short. Vowels are long when they are in single syllable words, or when they form the penultimate syllable in two syllable words.
- A a
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This page was last edited at 00:22, on 3 December 2008 by Anonymous user(s) of Wikitravel. Based on work by Peter Fitzgerald and Valtteri Päivinen, Wikitravel user(s) Episteme, Anonymous user(s) of Wikitravel and others.
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