Welcome to the Icelandic language (íslenska)

Local name: íslenska
Language family: North Germanic (part of the Indo-European family)
Number of speakers: Current estimates range from 300,000 to 400,000 speakers
Writing system: Latin
Official language in: Iceland

One of the most often repeated mantra in linguistics is that “languages evolve”. Just look at English and how much it has changed throughout the centuries, the small, gradual shifts transforming the language completely over the years. (Try to read 9th-century Beowulf, for example!)

This linguistic dogma is not quite true for Icelandic, however. This ancient language, which developed on a small island relatively far from anything and so rather protected from outside influences, has hardly changed at all over the last few centuries. This means that Icelandic schoolkids can easily read texts from the Middle Ages – whilst British pupils would be left bamboozled.

This ancient language has another peculiarity besides its unchangeability: in Icelandic there are no family names! While in most languages you will find family names that are passed on from generation to generation, marking the line of succession, in Icelandic the last name is formed from one of parents’ first name – most often the father’s – in a similar manner to Slavic patronymics. So, if we take the famous singer’s full name, Björk Guðmundsdóttir, any Icelander will know that she is Björk, the daughter (‘dóttir’) of Guðmundur.

Hello!                                  Halló!
My name is…                     Ég heiti…
Yes                                     Já
No                                      Nei
Thank you                          Takk

If you think of bold Icelandic sagas and fearless Vikings living in cruel weather conditions, you might imagine a harsh language to go with it. Yet, as one of our Icelandic translators explains: “Icelandic sounds softer than many people think. We use the letters ‘þ’ and ‘ð’ that sound like the ‘th’ in ‘thing’ and ‘thus’, respectively. Maybe that’s why people find it soft.”

Icelandic might be easy on the ears but when it comes to grammar, it’s certainly no child’s play. One of our translators who works from Icelandic into French jokingly notes that one has to be perhaps a bit of a “masochist to undertake to learn it”. She adds that “studying Icelandic is a lifetime commitment.”

So, let’s get a look at this grammar! There are three grammatical genders, like in German, and then there are ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ nouns. Nouns, adjectives and pronouns can all be declined in four different cases (nominative, accusative, dative and genitive), and in two numbers (singular and plural). Struggling to keep up? Wait, there’s more! There is no indefinite article (a/an) in Icelandic, and what would be considered the definite article (the) is usually stuck to the end of the noun! Of course, there are several exceptions, too. It’s safe to say that Icelandic grammar has some interesting challenges up its sleeve.

Another linguistic quirk is what is known as ‘middle voice’, a reflective form of the verb, e.g. ‘andast’ (to smother), ‘sjáumst’ (‘bye’, literally ‘let’s see each other very soon’) and also ‘fæðast’ (to be born). The fun doesn’t stop there. As mentioned above, each noun has its own gender assigned to it and these grammatical genders might not coincide with general notions: Some nouns are resolutely feminine like ‘hetja’ (= hero) . This means that you can have sentences like “Colin er hetja”, which literally translates as “Colin is a heroine”. Isn’t this fascinating?

According to the well-known stereotypes, Brits love to talk about the weather and the English language has countless expressions and idioms related to it. But what about Icelanders? Well, they also have their own special way of discussing the forecast. Being an island, Iceland is a rather windy place, so there are some clever words for expressing various types of wind! You can start with ‘gola’ (breeze), continue with ‘stinningsgola’ (wind force 4 or moderate breeze), go on with ‘kaldi’ (wind force 5 or fresh breeze), then ‘stinningskaldi’ (wind force 6, strong breeze), then end up with ‘stormur’ and ‘rok’ (storm and gale).

But the beautifully specific weather vocabulary is not the only charm the language has. Let’s close the blog post the charming word ‘ljósmóðir’, which is Icelandic for ‘midwife’. It literally translates as ‘light mother’. We suppose this is because a midwife is the person who brings the baby into daylight for the first time.

As a certified translation agency, First Edition Translations offers a wide range of services for the translation, editing, proofreading and typesetting of publications. Whether it’s Icelandic, Bulgarian or anything inbetween, we’ve done it all. We cover a wide range of languages, collaborating with vetted professional linguists. We’ve had the privilege of collaborating with many a publisher such as Cambridge University Press, museums such as Tate Modern, and big-name pharmaceutical manufacturers such as Karo.

If you have any questions about Icelandic or translations in general, you can always get in touch with our friendly project management team under enquiries@firstedit.co.uk.