'Icelandic is kicking my ass'

This is what the librarian from Harvard (who is in my class) said about his experience learning Icelandic: "Icelandic is kicking my ass." This is the guy who is totally fluent and cunningly excellent with his accents in French, German, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Spanish, Japanese, and a few others too . . . He can speak with everyone in the course in their own native tongue, and he's really really good at them all it seems. He says of himself that, "I can speak French, German, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Spanish, Japanese, etc..., but I can't cook, dance or do math." He's a funny guy, and I can't really see him being a librarian at all. He's very happy and aloof about being in Iceland, and he sort of expected that after only four weeks he'd be fluent (also after pre-requisite individual study prior to the course), and his experiences learning other languages have reinforced this expectation. After three weeks of classes and living in Reykjavik, however, he has concluded with this statement: "Icelandic is kicking my ass." He's pretty good at it, but it's still very very tough and slow going. Some people have lived here for more than a year and still do not feel comfortable or competent in the language. It's just tough and different - has a lot more stuff going on in it that many other languages - declensions, cases, etc... and the sounds are tough to speak and hear sometimes.

So . . . I have concluded that hearing someone as linguistically tallented and experienced as Chip (the librarian at Harvard) say something like that, that I really should feel alright with where I'm at (and not at) with the language. I'm also VERY glad that I decided to spend more time here - a four week course is simply not enough: just feel like things are getting started when it's over . . . So hopefully I can hook up with some old people (they are usually easier to understand) over my time here and get a lot more practice and feedback on how I'm doing! I don't expect I'll ever pass as fluent, though - even Kristofer (my landlord), who has been here for ten years now (originally from Toronto) still talks in English with a lot of people, even though he can easily speak Icelandic.

here´s one of the lovely things that makes Icelandic difficult - ´ég á á á á´ - that is a complete sentence, meaning ´I have a small farm beside a glacial river.´ Several words are pronounced exactly the same, but have entirely different meanings. ´Mál´, for instance, can mean ´bowl´, ´problem or issue´, and also ´language.´ There are three genders (feminine, masculine, and neuter) and four cases, and EVERYTHING declines depending on how you use it.

I could go on . . . and don´t even get the many linguists in the program started on talking about Icelandic . . . it is a fascinating, lovely, and troublesome tongue . . . If you want to hear some, try going to www.ruv.is, and click on anything that says ´hlusta´or ´horfa´. . . This is the equivalent of the CBC in Iceland. RUV - Ríkisútvarpið - rík: kingdom or nation (i.e. Bishop-ric) útvarp: broadcast. -ið: this is an enclitic definite article, the equivalent of ´the´in English, except it is attached at the end of nouns in icelandic, and it takes all manner of declensions depending on number and case.

back to studies!
- Leif