A Northern-Germanic language with slightly over 300,000 speakers, Icelandic is a member of the Indo-European group of languages and one of the best examples that languages do not have to change over the centuries in order to keep up with the all around modernization process. Icelandic is a descendant of Old Norse, the language of the Vikings who settled on the Icelandic territory towards the end of the ninth century AD. The language spoken by those settlers is the language most sagas (heroic stories about the Viking migrations and the constant wars between their families) were written in.
Icelandic is closely related to Faeroese and with the dialects spoken in Western Norway. It has a complicated grammar, comparable to those of old languages like Latin and Old English as it has retained most of the characteristics of its mother language, Old Norse.
In what its vocabulary is concerned, Icelandic has managed to refrain from borrowing foreign words. The linguistic purism that started in Iceland in the 18th century still continues to play an important part in the development of their national language today and Icelanders are skeptical about adapting new words.
Icelanders changed their original runic alphabet with the Latin one around the year 1000, concomitantly with the arrival of Christians in these northern areas. The Icelandic spoken today uses some letters which are reminiscent of the old runes and resemble the signs in the English phonetic transcription.
Icelandic is the only official language of Iceland and it is also spoken in some regions of Denmark and Canada. Although it manages to gather just a few hundreds of thousand speakers worldwide, Icelandic is far from being close to extinction. Furthermore, considering the Icelanders' determination in keeping their language alive and unaltered, it will probably go through the next centuries just as it has until now - making no compromises and no changes.
Ioana Mihailas is a linguist for Lingo24 Translation Services, a provider of high quality technical translations.
Source: www.articletrader.com
