ICELANDIC!!! Who's learning it? Who speaks it?

[kallikak]

Re: ICELANDIC!!! Who's learning it? Who speaks it?

Þú ert ekki eins og kettlingur. Þú ert SKÚRKUR eins og Glanni Glæpur.

[ooozmin]

Re: ICELANDIC!!! Who's learning it? Who speaks it?

ÉG er a melludólgur , setja það þessi vegur

[kallikak]

Re: ICELANDIC!!! Who's learning it? Who speaks it?

Glanni Glæpur er melludólgur. Þú ert ekki melludólgur.

[ooozmin]

Re: ICELANDIC!!! Who's learning it? Who speaks it?

Ríða þessi , ÉG er a svertingjahundur!

[kallikak]

Re: ICELANDIC!!! Who's learning it? Who speaks it?

Why do you always capitalize the G in Ég?

I think you have an extra word in your sentences with "Ég er...(something.)"

Shouldn't it be "Ég er svertingjahundur."?

I'm going to bed. Góða nótt.

[ooozmin]

Re: ICELANDIC!!! Who's learning it? Who speaks it?

Góða nótt!

[Frakkyfire]

Re: ICELANDIC!!! Who's learning it? Who speaks it?

You know, I was thinking about learning Icelandic before I discovered LazyTown. I'm quite interested in Nordic culture and the old sagas (my lineage is mostly northern european) and I saw a program about Vikings that mentioned that if they were around today, they would be able to understand Icelandic. I thought that was really cool, and that it would be neat to read the myths and legends in (close to) the original language. I'm lame like that - I even want to learn Italian so I can read a non-translated version of Dante. Lawl.

Anyways, I've been learning a little bit of it from that Icelandic university website after I got into LazyTown, and after hearing it spoken (it's a seeeexy language, no?). Plus, I'm already learning a useful langage - French, since I'm Canadian - so why not learn a not-so-useful one?

Despite my best efforts so far, though, the only words I tend to remember fully are: "Gott CD drive! Góður harður diskur!"
I find myself singing it once in a while when I'm not paying attention.... :oops:

[kallikak]

Re: ICELANDIC!!! Who's learning it? Who speaks it?

There is something to be said for reading literature in the original. I've only read ????? ?????? ??????? (A Hero of Our Time) in Russian. I've only read anything by Tolstoy and Dostoevsky in Russian, as well.

The hard part of learning a language on your own is lack of anyone to actually speak with in that language. At least with Russian, I actually know some people who speak it.

[Alan314159]

Re: ICELANDIC!!! Who's learning it? Who speaks it?

I've just started to learn. As in, yesterday, pretty much
So far can conjugate hafa and vera in the present tense, which is a fat lot of good when I don't know any nouns or adjectives to make it into a sentence, lol

I've ordered the Teach Yourself Icelandic, so I'm hoping it'll be useful.

At the moment I'm just singing along to the songs phonetically, especially Stefán Karl's dub of Hakuna Matata from the Lion King.

[Alan314159]

Re: ICELANDIC!!! Who's learning it? Who speaks it?

I got thinking today, if I were to forget how to conjugate/decline a particular verb/noun, would it still be comprehensible to an Icelander? As a comparison, lots of Brits routinely use "...you was..." for example, which, even though it's obviously wrong to someone who uses correct English grammar, is still perfectly understandable.

As far as I understand, Icelandic places less emphasis on word order and more on the correct part of speech, so would a few mistakes start to cause large problems with comprehensibility?
It's starting to become apparent to me that Icelanders will decline anything that sits still long enough!

Also, I was learning some verbs from a website, and it says that "we come" is "við komum", but so is "we came". Is there really no difference between the past and present tense?