Category: All Levels

I went to Iceland for spring break and I was fascinated with the language. It’s sad that so few people speak it – only 314K, which is less than the total population of Iceland! – so I want more people to learn it. Here are some awesome facts about the language that might get you to learn it!

I found their alphabet to be fascinating. They share the same Roman alphabet as other Germanic languages such as English and German, with the exception of the letters c, q, w, and z, which don’t exist even though they’re so prominent in other Germanic languages! The sounds of the letters are still there, but they’re replaced by other letters. The letter q is replaced by the use of ‘hv’. For example, the word ‘how’ is ‘hvernig’ in Icelandic, pronounced qver-nih. The letter c is entirely replaced by the letter k, which sometimes leads to some funny looking words. Credit card is ‘kreditkort’ in Icelandic, which I find hilarious. The letter w is replaced with the letter v, leading to certain words sounding like a vampire trying to speak English. ‘What’ is ‘hvað‘ (qvah-th), ‘where’ is ‘hvar’ (qv-ar), and ‘when’ is ‘hvenær’ (qven-eye-r).

Icelandic might not have these letters, but they do have new ones! Ð/ð is a letter named eð and is transliterated as either ‘th’ in words such as ‘brother’ or if it’s at the end of a word it’s pronounced like the letter d. Þ/þ is the letter þorn and is transliterated as the ‘th’ sound in words like ‘thorn’. Æ/æ is technically a letter of its own pronounced like the word ‘eye’. Ö/ö is also technically a letter of its own and is pronounced like the ‘eu’ sound in French. There’s also accents that change the way the letters a, e, o, i, and y sound, but I won’t get into it as they don’t technically count as individual letters.

Another interesting fact about Icelandic is that last names work differently. In Iceland, instead of having your parent’s last name, you have your dad’s name followed by daughter or son. So if my dad’s first name is Carlos and I’m a boy, my name would be Patricio Carlosson in Icelandic. If my dad’s first name was Jón and I was a girl named Guðný (two common names in Iceland), I would be Guðný Jónsdóttir (Pronounced Guth-knee Joh-nsdoh-teer), as in Guðný daughter of Jón. Typically the last name takes the father’s name, but there are some cases where the mother’s name is taken.

Finally, something that’s both interesting but also horrible about Icelandic is that, like German, they love mixing whole sentences into a single word. In 2010, a volcano in Iceland named Eyjafjallajökull (…) erupted and caused massive disruptions in air travel across all of western Europe for months. Pronounced as Eya-fiat-la-yeu-cutl, the volcano’s name means the island with the glacier on the mountain. Another example is dairy products, which is just mashed into one word in Icelandic: mjólkurvörur (myoh-lkur-veu-rur). It’s like if instead of saying “I’m sitting at the bench in the canyon that’s under the blue bridge”, we gave a name to that specific bench and said “I’m sitting at the canyonbenchbluebridge”. It’s horrible to look at, but I guess it’s time saving!