I should probably do that in the future. I just need to set up my computer room a bit more for sound, lighting and filming so it’s more professional. Then I aim to both record material myself and be on other podcasts.
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Wrong thread, sorry.
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I realize that this is an old topic, but here’s my two cents, for whatever it’s worth.
I started learning Icelandic from scratch about 4-5 months ago, and LingQ has worked brilliantly for me, especially considering how little time I’ve been able to devote to studying. I would like to thank you (again) for both the quality and the amount of content you’ve created and/or shared here.
I’ve gone through all of the Íslenska með myndum and Íslenska með ljósmyndum courses to build my core vocabulary (although without using the pictures - I already know Swedish and that makes it a lot easier to remember many of the most common words), Íslenska fyrir alla 1-4 (nice dialogues), the Mini Stories, some of the Einföld íslenska series, as well as several other beginner- and intermediate-level courses. One of my favorite courses has been Einfalt eintal, which has been excellent for practicing listening comprehension (and pretending that I could actually understand spoken Icelandic, ha!). Málvarpið seems interesting as well, but somewhat too advanced for me at this stage. I found the Mini Stories to be too monotonous on the other hand, so I’m glad that there’s such a variety of other beginner-friendly materials to choose from.
I also started reading materials from the Books section pretty early on. I’ve especially enjoyed the excerpts from Gunnar Helgason’s books - and even went on to purchase the first part in his Stella series as an ebook (it’s a pity one has to buy the audio books separately, as he is also an excellent narrator). I am considering buying the rest of the books in the series as well, so the ploy to lure LingQ users with free excerpts seems to be working as intended. Thank you for taking the time to negotiate with the publisher(s?) to make these materials available!
What really makes me happy though is that there’s still so much left to explore. I can’t really compare the Icelandic Library with those of other languages, since I’m trying to focus on Icelandic and not get sidetracked by anything else, but to me, it seems pretty extensive and the quality of the materials is great.
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It is certainly ok to comment on older topics and I am happy to hear about your experience. You seem to be using the library in almost exactly the way I imagined a beginner would/should use it, except maybe for skipping the mini-stories.
There started to be a problem with my Zoom recording device so I haven’t recorded any Einfalt eintal episodes in while, but I should be able to record some next year. They seem to be disproportionately popular for their level of difficulty (the easiest lessons tend to get taken the most) and I think it’s because there is a certain authenticity to a real person just talking about things. I certainly seek out similar material to Einfalt eintal when I learn languages: Espanol con Juan, Polish with John, Francais authentique, Inner French, Portuguese with Leo etc. and some of them certainly inspired Einfalt eintal.
I have always said it’s smart to switch between more and less difficult material, so it’s good you are reading books as well. I will pass on your compliments to Gunnar Helgason, who I know a bit personally and to Sigþrúður, who runs the Forlagið publishing company. I think the strategy of using the excerpts certainly works. There isn’t a great number of users learning LingQ yet at least, but it will at least result in a sale of an Ebook here and an audiobook there.
My long term goal was always to make it possible for users of all levels to benefit from using LingQ to learn Icelandic and that users could go from zero to fluent literacy just using LingQ. The first goal I think I’ve met, the second one I think I’ve at least theoretically met, but I think the library could certainly be improved to the point of making that goal easier and more realistic.
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I studied Icelandic around 15 years ago and did get up to C1 level in understanding (my speaking/writing remained low). I haven’t used it once since around 2012 so take my memory with a grain of salt.
I did what was essentially the low-tech version of LingQ - I found any text I could, used a dictionary on all the words, typically understood less than 10% of the text, and then found another text and kept trying. It took a few years to get anywhere like that.
The main issue I had back then was I couldn’t find any explanation of what cases were, what they meant or how to use them, anywhere on the internet, and the dictionaries were horrifically bad. I did end up taking university classes and they taught it terribly too. The university courses were meant for either people who had Icelandic family members and were already familiar with Icelandic, and just needed official learning, or who were already fluent in a Scandinavian language, so everything came much easier for them.
The biggest advice I can give you is, which case to use is controlled by the basic meaning of the sentence or phrase. It is NOT - as they always tried to teach me back then – controlled by the preposition or the verb.
The trickiest cases are 1) Ownership or description (store of books - bookstore. dog of me - my dog). 2) location, time, situation (ON a table, ON monday. IN a box, IN my opinion. AT home, AT that point in time), 3) Movement or change (ONTO the table, INTO a box, homeWARDS / BOUND for home)
However again, you cannot think of specific prepositions or verbs. You need to think something like “table-location”, and not “at, in, on, under….. the table”.
You however have to think of things as if you were back in time 1,000 years ago, instead of translating literally from English. As an example, when you were talking TO someone in the viking age, there were no phones and you couldn’t read, so you were standing in the same location as them when you talked. Or you need to relate them to another phrase - we say “I’m speaking IN Icelandic” (“in” showing location, time, situation) and so it makes more sense if another verb relating to speaking also uses the location, time, situation case.
If you struggle with Icelandic I would highly, highly recommend you learn Norwegian or Swedish. If you already speak a Scandinavian language, I would recommend you learn Faroese before Icelandic (it is a lot easier to understand in writing than Icelandic, Faroese compound words are also more obvious in meaning than Icelandic ones).
I did it backwards, I studied Icelandic and then Faroese and then Swedish. Today I still use Swedish all the time but not the other two (I got to C1 in Swedish in around 1.5 years), and I am still better at reading Faroese than Icelandic these days, despite having studied Faroese for far less time than Icelandic.
I did eventually live in Iceland for a couple years, and no one would speak Icelandic with me in Reykjavik, not even the “friends” I made there. They claimed my Icelandic was too bad and they couldn’t understand me. This was a common issue in Reykjavik that I heard from almost every foreigner no matter what country they came from. I moved to Sweden and never experienced anything like that, they were happy to speak Swedish with me anywhere I went. I heard that the countryside in Iceland is more open to foreigners speaking Icelandic.
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Your story is quite interesting.
It must have been a terrible grind to go through texts with a dictionary, with 10% understanding. Not exactly the most “comprehensible output” way to do things. Would have been better had you had simpler material, children’s books etc. to go along with it.
Cases can mostly be known by understanding which verbs and prepositions demand which cases but not a 100% like you pointed out. “Ég fer með þér” and “Ég fer með þig” do not mean the same thing for example. Another example: “Ég lét mig fljóta” and “Ég lét mér líða vel” as well as “Ég flýt” and “Mér líður”
The problem with learning Norwegian or some other Norse language to have an easier time with Icelandic, while that would work, might still take more time and effort if you don’t have any intention to learn other Norse languages, or anything to gain from it.
This classic reluctance of Icelanders to speak Icelandic to foreigners you mentioned is well known and is one of many reasons Icelandic is threatened today.
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I’m just a tourist here, but if someone knows, how good is the English Wiktionary for Icelandic?
Did you ever try “Viltu læra íslensku” the video course in LingQ? I was wondering whether people are able to use it successfully, watching the videos and having the text in LingQ.
Not sure exactly what you are looking for but here are some dictionaries of sorts:
Íslenskar orðabækur | Árnastofnun Íslenskar orðabækur | Árnastofnun
Sorry I’m not looking for a dictionary. I just wanted to know if someone here happened to use the English Wiktionary for Icelandic, and could tell me if it has good coverage or not.
I have no idea and can’t be bothered to look into it
I have gone through the first two lessons, but in text only… I’m not very much into watching videos in general, so I hadn’t really thought of watching these either. But I took a look at them just now and they seemed pretty nice, actually. The texts are definitely more meaningful when combined with the video, and it’s nice to see people talk, instead of just listening to the audio. I think I’ll go through them when I’m done with my current courses.
A reply to further up:
Yes. At the time, it was next to impossible to purchase materials in Icelandic without living in Europe, and most Icelandic websites required an Icelandic social security number to order and/or would not ship outside of Iceland, and you were paying an arm and a leg (think 50 dollars in shipping for one picture book alone). This was also before the huge tourism boom and international awareness of Iceland which came from some of the volcanic eruptions, among other things. I think the situation for learners of Icelandic has improved vastly since then.
As I wrote above, it is a huge mistake to sit and memorize which cases go with which verbs or prepositions one by one. You will waste years that way. Follow the general rules I wrote above instead and then you can memorize the few exceptions one by one as you personally encounter them.
No, you will save time overall if you learn a Scandinavian language first. There is plenty of research proving this – and with various sets of languages all around the world. It is a common misconception that learning an easier, simpler, historically related language will “waste time”. In the end you typically save around 30% of your time despite having learned two languages. You can go read studies of people who learned Chinese before Japanese (they partially share a writing system), or Esperanto before French (they share about 30% of vocabulary), and so on if you can’t find enough studies between the Nordic languages.
If your goal is just to make it easier to learn Icelandic, I would pick Norwegian since it contains less odd spelling and archaic grammar than Swedish so is faster to learn, but if you don’t mind which one or don’t mind it taking like 1.5 years (Swedish) to learn instead of 1 year (Norwegian), I would pick Swedish as it is the larger language. From people I have talked to, Icelandic takes the average English speaker 5-7 years to get fluent in if they don’t know a Scandinavian language first. That time is often cut down to 3 years or less if they know a Scandinavian language first.
Some people also choose to study Old Norse before Icelandic because there’s a lot of translations and explanations of Old Norse materials, and the grammar is not “too” different from modern Icelandic, plus it is easier to find university courses on Old Norse than on Icelandic. I can’t say I think that route is significantly easier though.
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Learning Norwegian or some simpler Norse language first may well work for some people, but there is no way I’ll be advising people to do that. If I tell them they need to learn a whole other language first, they might not even start trying. Most people will give up pretty fast after trying to start learning a new language, which is very unfortunate, because they underestimate the effort it takes, lack discipline etc. Out of the people who would not be turned off the whole idea of trying to learn Icelandic by being told they need to learn another language first, many would just start and give up learning Norwegian or Swedish and never even start with Icelandic. Furthermore, if we are talking about immigrants in Iceland, there would be very few opportunities to do live engagement in Norwegian/Swedish here in Iceland, while they could always try to say a few words to the local Icelanders, read signs and so on. Aside from that, learning Icelandic in LingQ is free for the time being, while learning other Norse languages is not. That means I’d be hard pressed to tell immigrants who live here to first pay for learning NO/SE on LingQ so they could later start learning Icelandic.
So while I have no problem with you advising people to do what worked for you or what you feel works for others, I will advise them to get straight to Icelandic.
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