Colloquial Icelandic The Colloquial Series Series adviser: Gary King The following languages are available in the Colloquial series: Afrikaans Korean Albanian Latvian Amharic Lithuanian Arabic (Levantine) Malay Arabic of Egypt Mongolian Arabic of the Gulf and Norwegian Saudi Arabia Panjabi Basque Persian Bulgarian Polish * Cambodian Portuguese * Cantonese Portuguese of Brazil * Chinese Romanian Croatian and Serbian * Russian Czech Scottish Gaelic Danish Slovak Dutch Slovene Estonian Somali Finnish * Spanish French Spanish of Latin America German Swedish Greek * Thai Gujarati Turkish Hindi Ukrainian Hungarian Urdu Indonesian * Vietnamese Italian Welsh Japanese Accompanying cassette(s) (*and CDs) are available for the above titles. They can be ordered through your bookseller, or send payment with order to Taylor & Francis/Routledge Ltd, ITPS, Cheriton House, North Way, Andover, Hants SP10 5BE, UK, or to Routledge Inc, 29 West 35th Street, New York NY 10001, USA. COLLOQUIAL CD-ROMs Multimedia Language Courses Available in: Chinese, French, Portuguese and Spanish Colloquial Icelandic The Complete Course for Beginners Daisy L.Neijmann London and New York First published 2001 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2006. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to http://www.ebookstore.tandf.co.uk/.” © 2001 Daisy L.Neijmann All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Neijmann, Daisy L., 1963– Colloquial Icelandic: the complete course for beginners/ Daisy L.Neijmann. p. cm.—(Colloquials) Includes index. 1. Icelandic language-Textbooks for foreign speakers-English. 2. Icelandic Language- Spoken Icelandic. I. Title. II. Colloquial series. PD2413 .N45 2001 439'.6983421–dc21 00– 047062 ISBN 0-203-99545-7 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-415-20706-1 (Print Edition) (book) ISBN 0-415-20707-X (Print Edition) (cassettes) ISBN 0-415-20708-8 (Print Edition) (book and cassettes course) Contents Acknowledgements vii Abbreviations viii Introduction 1 The sounds and letters of Icelandic 4 1 Velkomin til Íslands! Welcome to Iceland! 11 2 Hvaðan ert þú? Where are you from? 26 3 Hvert förum við? Where are we going? 41 4 Ég ætla að fá…Hvað verður þetta mikið? I would like to get…How much 59 will that be? 5 Föt Clothing 72 6 Á ferð og flugi On the move 87 7 Daglegt líf Daily life 104 8 Verði þér að góðu! Enjoy your meal! 117 9 Fjölskyldan The family 134 10 Stefnumót Appointments 145 11 Gisting Accommodation 156 12 Tómstundir Spare time 168 13 Ísland Iceland 182 14 Saga og þjóð Story, history and people 195 15 Höfuð, herðar, hné og tær Head and shoulders, knees and toes 206 16 Gangi þér vel! Good luck! 218 Grammar summary 231 Glossary of grammatical terms 239 Key to exercises 242 Glosses of reading passages 257 Icelandic-English glossary 268 English-lcelandic glossary 310 Index 329 Acknowledgements I am grateful to Morgunblaðið, Talnakönnun (formerly Nesútgáfan), DV and Tímarit Reykjavík for permission to use various extracts and articles, to Ferðaskrifstofan Nonni to use their advertisement, to Jón Gíslason and Sigríður þorvaldsdóttir to use excerpts from their book Landsteinar, to Gerður Kristný and Elísabet Þorgeirsdóttir to use excerpts from their articles, to Hótel Borg for permission to print their menu. Warmest thanks are extended to my generous and patient Icelandic friends Árni þór Eymundsson, Katrín Eymundsdóttir and Antonía Sveinsdóttir, who were kind enough to read and correct the manuscript during its various stages, fielded my many questions and contributed valuable insights. Thanks also go to the friendly and helpful staff at Routledge, especially to Gary King whose encouragement and assistance during the early writing stages were important. Final thanks to Wil Neijmann, who passed on to me his love of languages and the joy of language learning, and, as always, to Mark, for his patience and love. Every effort has been made to obtain permission to reproduce copyright material. If any proper acknowledgement has not been made, or permission not received, we would invite copyright holders to inform us of the oversight. Abbreviations acc. accusative adj. adjective adv. adverb comp. comparative conj. conjunction dat. dative dem. demonstrative excl. exclamation f./fem. feminine gen. genitive imp. imperative impers. impersonal indecl. indeclinable inf. infinitive inter. interrogative interj. interjection intrans. intransitive lit. literally m./masc. masculine n./neut. neuter nom. nominative num. numeral pl. plural pp. past participle pref. prefix prep. preposition(al) pron. pronoun refl. reflexive sg./sing. singular subj. subjunctive/subject superl. superlative trans. transitive v./vb. verb Introduction Icelandic is a fascinating language. Dating back to Viking times, with less than 300,000 speakers and a history that has kept it relatively free from major changes, it has captured the interest of many enthusiasts over the course of time. People are attracted to Icelandic for many different reasons. For some, it is the romantic lure of learning the language of the Vikings. Others want to be able to appreciate the Icelandic sagas or Eddic poems in the original. You may be intrigued by the linguistic antiquity of Icelandic. Perhaps Icelandic was the language of your ancestors. Or maybe you are simply planning a trip to Iceland, and you wish to communicate with Icelanders in their own language. Whatever it is that motivated you to pick up this book, you are interested in learning Icelandic, or in keeping up and improving your Icelandic. This course may be just what you need. Iceland Iceland is an island in the North Atlantic, 103,000 km2 in size, hugging the Arctic Circle. Geologically, Iceland is young, and in many ways still ‘in the making’: volcanic and geothermal activity determine much of Iceland’s landscape, as do glaciers, mountains, lava deserts, green valleys, and clear, rich waters. The warm Gulf Stream moderates the climate, with a mean annual temperature in Reykjavík of 5°C. The island was settled in the ninth century, largely by Norse people from western Norway and the British Isles and their Celtic companions. The settler community established its own national assembly, resembling a parliament and called the Alþingi, and officially adopted Christianity in the year 1000. In 1262–4 Iceland became subject to the Norwegian crown and in 1380 it came under Danish rule. Iceland eventually regained its independence in stages: it obtained home rule in 1918, and became an independent republic in 1944. Today, Iceland has approximately 270,000 inhabitants, about half of whom live in the capital Reykjavík and its surroundings. The Icelandic economy largely depends on the fishing industry, which makes up of the GNP. Since only 1 per cent of the land is arable, dairy and sheep farming are more common than arable farming, and woollens and mountain lamb are among Iceland’s exports. Iceland is rich in natural energy: geothermal heat is used to heat houses and greenhouses, and electricity is generated from water power. Colloquial icelandic: the complete course for beginners 2 Icelandic Icelandic is part of the North Germanic language group, and developed from the Viking Age West Norse speech brought by the settlers. Icelandic first appears as a separate language in the twelfth century, when the anonymous author of The First Grammatical Treatise introduced a special alphabet to suit the needs of Icelandic. Writing was introduced by the Church, along with influences from Latin, English and French. The remarkable body of literature recorded in Iceland during the following centuries, and the translation of the Bible into Icelandic after the Reformation in the sixteenth century, were instrumental for the continuity of Icelandic under foreign domination, when the influence of Danish became pervasive. During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Icelandic language and literature came to play a crucial role in the nationalist struggle for independence. The nationalists developed language policies to purify Icelandic from foreign influences. Today, many of these policies are still in place: a special language board creates words for new phenomena from the resources of the Icelandic language itself. Nevertheless, Icelandic adopts its share of loan words every year, some of which live a long and happy life alongside their Icelandic neologist equivalents. Where loan words win out, they are usually adapted to Icelandic grammar and spelling, and will often take on a new meaning in the Icelandic context. Icelanders have been remarkably successful in making their ancient language fully compatible with today’s global, computerized world: a knowledge of modern Icelandic will allow relatively easy access to a fourteenth-century Icelandic saga as well as a discussion of the latest concepts in marketing or Internet communication. Colloquial