Icelandic 101

Eyjafjallajökull is still erupting. And people (including myself) are still struggling to pronounce the name properly - here a pretty entertaining little video on the attempts by british journalists (thanks Paul :) ). But you'll admit it - it is not an easy one to pronounce (swiss german meets aztecan?). Since I have been trying to learn a little Icelandic, and many people have asked me about the origin of that language, I am going to leave the eruption aside for the day and go on a little linguistic tangent - mostly borrowed from Wikipedia (but before I do that - here a new compilation of amazing pictures of the volcano, and of life in the vicinity of the volcano).

Icelandic is a north germanic language related to Old Norse, which is essentially the language spoken by Vikings between the 8th and the 14th century. The alphabet consists of 32 letters - two of which are derived from Old English and only found in Icelandic, Faroese and some local scandinavian dialects. They are eth (ð) and thorn (þ), and the latter is actually a runic letter - and their pronounciation is generally similar to that of "th" in english. Generally speaking, most european languages have evolved towards a simpler grammar with respect to Latin and ancient Greek, but Icelandic has retained grammatical rules pretty similar in complexity to that of Latin - and in fact, it has evolved so little since the Vikings that people fluent in Icelandic can read the original versions of the Old Norse Viking sagas without too much trouble (the above picture is an excerpt of Njáls Saga).

But I did spend many years in school studying Latin and ancient Greek, so never mind the grammar - I haven't gone that far into my icelandic studies yet anyways. The first nightmare arises from the icelandic pronounciation rules - despite the fact that I am already familiar with languages that have a rather strange sound to them (swiss german - say Chuchichäschtli!) or no apparent correlation between written letters and the sounds you are supposed to generate (english - think "though/through/enough/plough"). So for instance, in Icelandic the letters "hv" sometimes sound like "qu", having a "l" or an "n" after the letter "f" turns the latter into a "p" but "nd" after "f" turns our f into an "m". But my favourite rule has to do with our beloved icelandic volcano, and I am taking this from my "Colloquial Icelandic: The Complete Course for Beginners" book: "ll" is pronounced "tl" , except in loan words and pet names. Pet names? Now that sounds promising - a language that has rules for pet names. What we can learn from this is that Eyjafjallajökull being no pet, we should really pronounce it "Eyjafjatlajökutl" - not without reminding me of Popocatéptl or Ixtaccíhuatl, aztecan names for two volcanoes near Mexico City...!