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Icelandic - countdown to pillaging | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Spanky Senior Member Canada Joined 5953 days ago 1021 posts - 1714 votes  Studies: French | Message 1 of 33 10 February 2015 at 12:49am | IP Logged | ||
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My family and I have just confirmed plans to travel with friends to Iceland in July 2015, with the intention of sacking a village and pillaging and such, all as delayed revenge for past Viking excursions against my ancestors many generations ago. These plans are highly controversial and still quite secretive, so please keep them to yourselves and tell no one.
In aid of this cunning plan, I am hoping to learn just as much of the Icelandic language as possible. I studied Icelandic for about two weeks several months ago, and all I really learned was the following: (a) If one were to set out to design a language to be as unlearnable and as impenetrable as humanly possible, that language would look very much like Icelandic; and (b) There simply is no way I would be able to learn this language. So I am starting essentially from scratch. Actually, from worse than scratch, because I am counterproductively approaching this project with considerable dread born out of my previous limited experience. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Spanky Senior Member Canada Joined 5953 days ago 1021 posts - 1714 votes Studies: French | Message 2 of 33 10 February 2015 at 12:50am | IP Logged | ||
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Purpose of log:
I will use this log as a record of my efforts (I was going to say “progress” but really that is much too optimistic a thing to say), mainly so that when I am found lying on the floor of my room curled in a fetal position with a broken brain, the medical specialists may be able to use this log to retrace my steps and hopefully reverse whatever damage this wretched language may have wrought. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Spanky Senior Member Canada Joined 5953 days ago 1021 posts - 1714 votes Studies: French | Message 3 of 33 10 February 2015 at 12:53am | IP Logged | ||
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Approach and Goal:
I am aiming for a relatively-aggressive three hours per day of study, including sit down study and eccentric mumbling on the bus while actively listening to and repeating Icelandic recordings, which began February 6th and which hopefully will continue to June 30th . No particular longer-range study plan is contemplated at present. I would like to have developed a rudimentary understanding of Icelandic before travelling there in July, and hope to have at least one conversation with anyone there who may be very very patient and who may be prepared to speak with me very, very slowly. At a minimum, I hope to come close in being able to correctly pronounce Icelandic place names while there. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Spanky Senior Member Canada Joined 5953 days ago 1021 posts - 1714 votes Studies: French | Message 4 of 33 10 February 2015 at 12:55am | IP Logged | ||
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Outcome:
(to be completed subsequently, no later than July 2015) I am (surprised/not surprised) to report the following with respect to this hopelessly-misguided language learning project: I … __ … quit this learning project in February, 2015 (83% probability) __ … quit this learning project sometime in March to June (13% possibility) __ … continued learning Icelandic in a desultory fashion, managed to mumble a few words in Icelandic while actually in Iceland, and got ignored or scowled at. Or just spoken to in return in English, which I understand Icelanders understand better than I do. (3.999% possibility) __ … continued bravely to push through this beast of a language and while on vacation, I actually did manage to have a simple, slow conversation in Icelandic with an Islander, thereby winning the admiration of my family and the local townspeople, the latter of whom may be tempted to throw a parade for me to celebrate my awesomeness in language learning. (at best, on a chilly day in hell, a 0.001% outside chance, and any parade would likely be fairly small). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Spanky Senior Member Canada Joined 5953 days ago 1021 posts - 1714 votes Studies: French | Message 5 of 33 10 February 2015 at 12:58am | IP Logged | ||
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Resources:
There is a relatively quite limited amount of English-language-based learning materials available for Icelandic compared to other more popular lanuages, but I have poked around on the interweb a little and will keep track here on an ongoing basis of learning materials for my own reference and for the possible interest of anyone else masochistic enough to tackle this challenging language. Learning materials Alaric Hall course material - audio-based course - à la Michel Thomas phrases/">updated Alaric Hall memrise course not online materials, but a plug for this text which I found useful: ie=UTF8&qid=1428767447&sr=8-1&keywords=hippocrene+icelandic" >Hippocrene, Beginner's Icelandic Memrise course related to the above text/audio: Beginner's Icelandic (Hippocrene) Short articles on individual grammar issues: Mímir University of Iceland audiovisual materials - A1 through C1 Icelandic Online Video-based materials: Viltu læra íslensku? More advanced materials: Bragi materials Online dictionaries University of Wisconsin online dictionary and selected readings dict.cc - eng/isl Interactive assistance with inflections: inflection wizard Memrise courses Icelandic course inventory 3000 flash cards - many but not all words accompanied by native audio Icelandic for Beginners - course created by Alaric Hall concerning vocab from his original mp3 course (no audio). Other material bilingual texts interesting blog - interesting Icelandic learning blog from Pierre-Emmanual Roy youtube material: expert village videos - 30 videos with normal, then slow, pronunciation of thematically-organized phrases pronunciation video Björk-related nature documentary, I guess sssssshhhhh! Edited by Spanky on 12 May 2015 at 5:08pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| daegga Tetraglot Senior Member Austria lang-8.com/553301 Joined 4518 days ago 1076 posts - 1792 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Swedish, Norwegian Studies: Danish, French, Finnish, Icelandic | Message 6 of 33 10 February 2015 at 1:43am | IP Logged | ||
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Save yourself some agony and approach Icelandic the Old Norse way. Reading sagas is fun,
reading about sími, tölva, sjónvarp and the like is not. The curse of modern civilization. http://www.snerpa.is/net/isl/isl.htm has the sagas of Icelanders in modern spelling. Better for extensive reading than anything modern. http://www.sagadb.org/ has some of those too + in pdf/epub format. And with English translation --> nice for making parallel texts. Whatever you do, ignore every word that describes something that didn't already exist in 12th century. It's just not worth it, and it makes the whole project much more pleasant. :) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| redflag Senior Member Australia Joined 3839 days ago 123 posts - 182 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Danish, Indonesian, French | Message 7 of 33 10 February 2015 at 3:17am | IP Logged | ||
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Good for you, Icelandic is at the top of my "one day" list. Glossika has a Icelandic
package I know already released which might be good if it suits your preferred way of learning. Good luck! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| dmaddock1 Senior Member United States Joined 5430 days ago 174 posts - 426 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, Esperanto, Latin, Ancient Greek | Message 8 of 33 10 February 2015 at 4:17pm | IP Logged | ||
Good luck! When I was there many Islanders laughed at my attempts (in a good-natured way). Totally random: Will you be there on Canada Day handing out flag pins? I met a Canadian doing just that at a swimming pool on my trip. (Speaking of, don't miss a chance to go to one.) In case you haven't seen it, check out these Michel Thomas-like lessons for English speakers. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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