But you need to be aware that the language these texts is old and generally does not teach you modern ways of saying things. I´m reading some of the Norwegian and it´s quite different from modern texts (looks a lot more Danish in most cases). It´s a great source for those who are interested in Nordic history and culture though.
Finally I apologise for taking such time to add Icelandic. I´ve translated all the mini-stories a long time ago but I still haven´t finished going over the proofread version, which can be frustrating because of the constant “should I teach people to say exactly what is said in the English version or should I teach them more authentic Icelandic” dilemma. I will have it done, including the audio, sometime this summer though. Hopefully early in July and then it takes LingQ quite a while to do everything needed to launch the language.
Yeah, older Norwegian texts tend to look a lot like Danish due to the history of the language. I downloaded a work from Ibsen back in the day to test Heinzelnisse’s Kindle dictionary and realised quickly that a Danish dictionary would have made more sense.
No worries. I think a more authentic version would be better. Keep up the work!
Thrilled to hear you’re still intending to finish the Icelandic mini stories. I really appreciate the work you’re doing, and it will be my first port of call when I get around to learning it (once it’s added). Can’t wait!
This for example Gylfafinning is just Icelandic. I can easily read it. The poetry in it seems to be Old Norse or at least very old Icelandic though. Maybe I can read one of these and add them to LingQ once Icelandic is in LingQ, since old texts like these are in the public domain. The most tedious work is really the translations and corrections and going over the corrections but reading is not that hard and is fairly enjoyable.
No question that translating, proofreading and then recording all those stories is a real effort, which is why I and others really appreciate the effort, seriously.
That would be a great contribution, to record those! There just aren’t many Icelandic audiobooks in the public domain, and these works should be heard every bit as much as read (in my opinion).
If you’re interested in Old Norse and related topics you might already be aware of Dr. Jackson Crawford’s channel on YouTube. Yesterday he posted the first of what looks to be a series of lessons on Old Norse. Old Norse "Class," pt. 1: Pronunciation, Vital Vocabulary - YouTube Be aware that, as he explains in each video, he uses reconstructed Old Norse pronunciation, not modern Icelandic. He starts the initial lesson with pronunciation and then goes into a list of some basic vocabulary. Memorizing vocabulary lists is not the “Lingq way”, but perhaps you’ll find the series interesting nonetheless.
I found this channel because of a video that he did some time ago about Indo-European. I subscribed because I find many of his topics interesting, but I’m not into Old Norse per se.
I try to only learn active languages (languages that are actually spoken today) but who knows, maybe I´ll look at old Norse someday out of pure interest. I am going to prioritise learning Norwegian and Faroese though and would like to be able to fluently speak them (at least one dialect of each language) some day.
