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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| caam_imt Triglot Senior Member Mexico Joined 4862 days ago 232 posts - 357 votes  Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2, Finnish Studies: German, Swedish | Message 1 of 11 16 March 2014 at 8:01pm | IP Logged |
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So, next week I'm going to Iceland for a week to visit some relatives of my girlfriend.
I've been practicing how to pronounce words, but aside from that I don't know any Icelandic. I'm quite interested in learning it though, but since I'm trying to devote time to my other languages, I think it would be a bit too much for me to start right now. Since I might start learning Icelandic properly in the future, do you have any recommendation on what to buy there? any good resources that can be found only in Iceland (or are very expensive to ship to other places)? I've been thinking of a (perhaps) monolingual dictionary, since I haven't seen anything good on Amazon or such shops. How about audio books? textbooks? Thanks in advance for the help. PS. It doesn't need to be stuff only for beginners, it could also be some advanced stuff that I might use later on, but would be hard to get by then. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4707 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 2 of 11 16 March 2014 at 8:06pm | IP Logged |
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What you would buy for other languages, but stock up, it's hard to get.
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| Pierre-Emmanuel Diglot Newbie Canada learnicelandicnow.wo Joined 3907 days ago 7 posts - 14 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Icelandic | Message 3 of 11 16 March 2014 at 9:13pm | IP Logged |
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A good monolingual dictionary is definitely something I would buy if I went to Iceland.
You can find good textbooks (Hippocrene Beginner's Icelandic for instance) on Amazon so there's no need to buy one in Iceland. If I were you, I'd take the opportunity to buy a few Icelandic movies/tv series (Næturvaktin, Mannaveiðar and Mýrin are among the best I've watched) and a few books (Arnaldur Indriðason's crime novels are both interesting and easy to read). Shipping costs, especially when you don't live in Europe, are exorbitant so it's a very good idea to buy a few resources when you're there even if you can't (or don't plan to) use them right now. Góða ferð! 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| caam_imt Triglot Senior Member Mexico Joined 4862 days ago 232 posts - 357 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2, Finnish Studies: German, Swedish | Message 4 of 11 16 March 2014 at 9:24pm | IP Logged |
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Thanks a lot! I'll check those out. Any recommendation for a dictionary?
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| Pierre-Emmanuel Diglot Newbie Canada learnicelandicnow.wo Joined 3907 days ago 7 posts - 14 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Icelandic | Message 5 of 11 16 March 2014 at 10:00pm | IP Logged |
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You can find these two on Forlagið's website:
"Íslensk-ensk/ensk-íslensk vasaorðabók" "Íslensk orðabók - kilja" The bilingual dictionary is good but not as thorough as the Icelandic Online Dictionary (which is free). I use it only when there's no wifi available. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6703 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 6 of 11 16 March 2014 at 11:09pm | IP Logged |
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I have got Iðunn's Íslensk-Ensk dictionary, which has served me so well that I haven't needed anything else in that direction (although I also have an old Icelandic-Danish dictionary by Águstsson and a tiny toway Icelandic-German one from Langenscheidt, but I hardly use those).
The other way is more of a problem because almost all the dictionaries I have checked were made for Icelanders who wanted to learn something else. And this means that the treatment of Icelandic morphology and idiomatics isn't quite top notch. And because I haven't found anything really good I have got Mål og Mennings' Dönsk-Islendsk, Norstedt's Swedish-Icelandic and Pons' German-Icelandic, and I'm still not quite satisfied - but none of those I have seen from English to Icelandic have tempted me. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Henkkles Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4253 days ago 544 posts - 1141 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: Russian | Message 7 of 11 17 March 2014 at 6:47am | IP Logged |
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You should buy everything you can get your hands on. Some things to consider:
Get paperbacks of literary classics and modern classics, works by Laxness, Einar Már Guðmundsson, Arnaldur Indriðason, maybe some Jónas Hallgrímsson, etc. Get audiobooks, seriously they have fantastic audiobooks and you shouldn't have a problem in finding audiobooks in Iceland, and from what I've seen they are of very high quality. Dare I suggest that if you get a book, be it hardcover or paperback, you'd get the same book as an audiobook as well so you can really get a feel in how the pronunciation works and so on. Some textbooks I suggest you get your hands on: Jón Friðjónsson - A Course in Modern Icelandic -a very good book, it has 22 chapters and it goes through approximately 1000 most common lemmas of modern Icelandic in the 11 first chapters, although mildly outdated there is still a lot every learner of Icelandic can use Stefan Einarsson - Icelandic: Grammar, Texts, Glossary -some would say this book is painfully comprehensive, it is a fantastic resource for learning Assorted books I would recommend as well: Colloquial Icelandic -not half bad, a rather good book, gets a bit tough around chapter seven, so you could work through the first six and lay it down for a while Teach Yourself Icelandic (both editions) -the older version is filled to the brim with painfully meticulous explanations of grammar, the newer one is of the frasebook-ish type of modern TY-books, should supplement one another used in conjunction I'll expand on this once I get home. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| caam_imt Triglot Senior Member Mexico Joined 4862 days ago 232 posts - 357 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2, Finnish Studies: German, Swedish | Message 8 of 11 17 March 2014 at 10:23am | IP Logged |
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Thanks Pierre-Emmanuel, Iversen and Henkkles for your suggestions. Now I guess I have to
worry about how much money I can spend! By the way, Henkkles, since you study Icelandic, I suppose that you have come across the Finnish-Icelandic-Finnish dictionary by Tuomas Järvelä. Have you used it? how does it compare to the dictionaries Iversen/Pierre suggested? I live in Finland so I could get that one instead, if it happens to be better than the other bilingual dictionaries (I'm afraid I'm not that good in Swedish or German to use Norstedts or Pons' dictionaries). Edited by caam_imt on 17 March 2014 at 10:24am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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