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Danish and Icelandic simultaneously | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Skandinavisk & Nordisk |  | |
| bradfanella Diglot Newbie United States Joined 4932 days ago 10 posts - 12 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Danish, Icelandic | Message 1 of 8 12 August 2011 at 2:30am | IP Logged | |||||
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I have been studying Danish intensively for around 3 months, and have a very strong
interest in Icelandic. My concern is that because they are so similar, I may end up mixing the two constantly when speaking. I took a look at some Icelandic text, and just with my knowledge of Danish and a little bit of sentence analysis, I was able to read it moderately well, so I wouldn't go into the language as a total beginner. A quick phrase comparison ("What is your name?"): Danish: Hvad hedder du? Icelandic: Hvað heitir þú? (Note the "ð" makes a "th" sound, just as the soft "d" in "hvad") Can anybody advise for/against trying to study these language concurrently? 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6702 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes  Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 8 12 August 2011 at 10:12am | IP Logged | |||||
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They are not so similar that it will be a problem in itself. The problem will be to find time for both, and to keep an equal interest in both projects.
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| bradfanella Diglot Newbie United States Joined 4932 days ago 10 posts - 12 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Danish, Icelandic | Message 4 of 8 13 August 2011 at 10:37pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Thanks for the input! I've heard many people say that it's tough to study Icelandic in
conjunction with other languages, because of its level of difficulty. Being both a polyglot and native Danish speaker, would you agree with that? It's certainly not a necessity to learn Icelandic (nor are any of my other studies). I think that if I'm smart about time allocation, I should be able to pull it off. ^_^ 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6702 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 5 of 8 14 August 2011 at 7:12pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Icelandic has a morphology that has roughly the same 'size' as the German one, i.e. 4 noun/adjective/pronoun cases with quite irregular distribution, a subjunctive and a number of strong verbs where you need to know some standard vowel change categories. If you find German to be possible to learn then Icelandic is possible too - however with the big difference that there are roughly 300 times as many German speakers as Icelandic speakers, and that the amount of relevant materials will be correspondingly lower.
The Danish grammar is less morphology heavy, but the pronunciation can be a problem (as you probably have discovered by now). Contrary to some claims the Icelandic pronunciation and its relationship with the writing is NOT terribly difficult - I would put it at roughly the same level as Danish or even slightly easier (because Icelandic is spoken in a less slurred way). Edited by Iversen on 15 August 2011 at 1:03pm 7 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Maypal Pentaglot Newbie Russian Federation Joined 5060 days ago 32 posts - 40 votes Speaks: Russian*, Icelandic, English, Danish, Faroese Studies: Greenlandic, Scottish Gaelic | Message 6 of 8 17 August 2011 at 2:08pm | IP Logged | |||||
I would recommend to postpone your Icelandic studies until your level of command in Danish is stable enough. Both languages, with all differences inbetween, are still closely cognated, have similar sets of pronouns and strong verbs, which may change in an individual way in either language, the same words may have different meanings and belong to grammatical classes (like gender) etc. There might happen confusions, so it's better not to learn both languages at the same time... if you're mentally so strong to stand the desire to learn'em all! :)))))) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| bradfanella Diglot Newbie United States Joined 4932 days ago 10 posts - 12 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Danish, Icelandic | Message 7 of 8 17 August 2011 at 9:22pm | IP Logged | |||||
I appreciate the explanation Iversen! I do recall hearing about Icelandic/German grammatical similarities, so I'm glad that you could confirm that. Also, I think that Danish pronunciation is a big obstacle for newcomers to the language, but I believe that I have it down by now (~1 year of study). Hearing that Icelandic corresponds even just slightly better to its written form than Danish gives me some hope.
The desire to learn 'em all, isn't that the truth. :) Thanks, your post really convinced me to hold off on Icelandic for a little bit. Although I would think that pronoun similarities and cognates would be beneficial if anything. EDIT: ...or just study Icelandic less intensively for the time being. ;) Edited by bradfanella on 17 August 2011 at 9:24pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| britmic Newbie United States Joined 4794 days ago 4 posts - 3 votes Speaks: German | Message 8 of 8 20 March 2012 at 2:41am | IP Logged | |||||
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These posts regarding the simultaneous study of Danish and Icelandic were intensly interesting to me. I am very much a Danish beginner, still pretty much relying on what I can forage on the Internet and Pimsleur etc. But Icelandic and also Norsk have been always foremost in my interests. I have a pretty good level of German and I am a native UK English speaker. I'm finding the study of Danish,as a self-learner even with my limited resources and material equally interesting and not at all difficult. I have "sampled" Icelandic via the "Transparent Byki Icelandic material and some downloaded "Youtube" videos, it does not appear terribly difficult but with all the knowledgible posts above, I see one should approach this study carefully and be prepared for some hard intense study.All in all great stuff! Most appreciated.
However,I think for myself I'll postpone the Icelandic until I have reached a decent level in Danish! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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