I've got about 40 basic verbs I've been going through recently on train journeys, in lifts and using an the Excel choose and randbetween functions to create random combinations of pronouns and verbs. I'm still a bit sketchy but it's getting there - I'm only having proper difficulty with a couple of verbs now (particularly að bjóða, að búa og að byrja (to invite, to live somewhere, to start) as their forms with the singular pronouns have roots býð, bý og býr respectively. Plus they all conjugate differently. Pretty much all the more regularly conjugated verbs I can do quickly and I have an instinct for their groups now. Once I get into using all of them in sentences it should become more natural.
I'll go through another hour or so of intensive verb conjugation then work some more on my books. In all honesty I haven't done much lately as I've been busy, but certainly after this weekend when I'm back in London I should be able to fix that.
Vertu sæl, Paul x
22 March 2010
21/03/10: Verb List
I've a verb list I'm carrying around with me now with some simple but common verbs, putting them into groups for conjugation. I'll keep reading over it during the next few days until I'm confident enough to just have a list of verbs in my pocket not sorted into tables. The conjugation's currently in the present tense only.
Someone played "Can You Feel The Love Tonight" and I remembered a couple of the lines in Icelandic so muttered along under my breath. Magical song. I'll have to write down the lyrics and carry those with me too in case that happens again ...
I spent a *long* time last night browsing the HTLAN forums, reading an interesting discussion on the effect English is having. It also directed me to a website http://lang-8.com/, designed to let native language speakers correct your notes and let you get in touch with them. I read through with ease a post by someone about their happiness that they can write Esperanto sentences. The corrections made by an Icelander made sense. I might start posting on that soon.
This entry feels so blunt but it's all good stuff.
Sæl, Paul x
Someone played "Can You Feel The Love Tonight" and I remembered a couple of the lines in Icelandic so muttered along under my breath. Magical song. I'll have to write down the lyrics and carry those with me too in case that happens again ...
I spent a *long* time last night browsing the HTLAN forums, reading an interesting discussion on the effect English is having. It also directed me to a website http://lang-8.com/, designed to let native language speakers correct your notes and let you get in touch with them. I read through with ease a post by someone about their happiness that they can write Esperanto sentences. The corrections made by an Icelander made sense. I might start posting on that soon.
This entry feels so blunt but it's all good stuff.
Sæl, Paul x
21 March 2010
20/03/10: Disney and reading ahead
Over the past few days I've been watching some (not exclusively) Disney videos lovely people have posted on Youtube, sung in Icelandic with subtitles added in Icelandic and English. The songs are from cartoons including Mulan, Hercules, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Little Mermaid and Bambi. In particular the video "Bambi learns to speak Icelandic" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNM1yGaZ468) is useful as Tunfiskurinn (who I've messaged asking where she found the songs so I can get copies of the entire films) has explained the grammar in the middle of the scene. Also that scene in Bambi is very simple, meaning that with concentration I can understand it all. It's also fricking cute. Tunfiskurinn's Youtube account can be accessed via that video. Other notable uploaders include IcelandicDisneyVids, GalacticChicken and sbsiceland.
I spent about 3 hours browsing through those today. The Lion King ones are AWESOME.
After a 5-hour trip to the pub (great fun!) I returned to read through the next couple of chapters in Hippocrene to see what to expect. Faaak. It turns out Æfingar is the plural of the feminine Æfing (exercise), not the assumed masculine æfingur, as (something that Colloquial had failed to mention in their section on plural nouns) an exception to the usual plural endings of -ir and -ur in the feminine is if the root ends in ing. I'm debating whether or not to cross through every time I wrote æfingur to mean exercise in my notes just so I can cement that into my brain.
Ah, but that's not all that made me say "faaak" today. The third, fourth and fifth possible verb conjugation patterns often have vowel changes in the singular person forms that are more or less governed by rules. I think I'm just going to have to remember those vowel changes ... also a bunch of nouns pluralise irregularly. Days of the week take different forms depending on whether you're talking about events that happen every Wednesday, events that you plan to happen on one specific Wednesday or whether you're just talking about Wednesday. I'm also pretty much half way through the Hippocrene book already and I don't want this awesome book to finish. It's too damn useful.
On a nicer side, "usually" the future tense is just the present tense with reference to future dates (Ég fer í kvöld (lit. "I go tonight") means "I will go tonight"). Although the word "usually" is ominous, that might mean that I pretty much don't have to learn an entire tense. As much as that's similar to English (just ignoring the word "will"), English has lost most of its grammar forms whereas Icelandic is renowned for being one of the most grammatically difficult languages, so hallelujah.
Tomorrow I might write and expand upon noun lists and start conjugating plurals. I could also work on verbs as now I know the five essential verb groups.
Vertu sæl, Paul x
I spent about 3 hours browsing through those today. The Lion King ones are AWESOME.
After a 5-hour trip to the pub (great fun!) I returned to read through the next couple of chapters in Hippocrene to see what to expect. Faaak. It turns out Æfingar is the plural of the feminine Æfing (exercise), not the assumed masculine æfingur, as (something that Colloquial had failed to mention in their section on plural nouns) an exception to the usual plural endings of -ir and -ur in the feminine is if the root ends in ing. I'm debating whether or not to cross through every time I wrote æfingur to mean exercise in my notes just so I can cement that into my brain.
Ah, but that's not all that made me say "faaak" today. The third, fourth and fifth possible verb conjugation patterns often have vowel changes in the singular person forms that are more or less governed by rules. I think I'm just going to have to remember those vowel changes ... also a bunch of nouns pluralise irregularly. Days of the week take different forms depending on whether you're talking about events that happen every Wednesday, events that you plan to happen on one specific Wednesday or whether you're just talking about Wednesday. I'm also pretty much half way through the Hippocrene book already and I don't want this awesome book to finish. It's too damn useful.
On a nicer side, "usually" the future tense is just the present tense with reference to future dates (Ég fer í kvöld (lit. "I go tonight") means "I will go tonight"). Although the word "usually" is ominous, that might mean that I pretty much don't have to learn an entire tense. As much as that's similar to English (just ignoring the word "will"), English has lost most of its grammar forms whereas Icelandic is renowned for being one of the most grammatically difficult languages, so hallelujah.
Tomorrow I might write and expand upon noun lists and start conjugating plurals. I could also work on verbs as now I know the five essential verb groups.
Vertu sæl, Paul x
20 March 2010
19/03/10: Work, drink
5 hours' work done today! Well, maybe not all work but between 10:30am and 4pm the majority of my efforts were focussed upon Icelandic. That's a good thing. I got through a fair few chapters between each book - two in Hippocrene that I'd read over the day before in the subway then one after realising I was way behind in the Colloquial book - and they seem to be tying in nicely with each other.
I also answered a Facebook message about baking cakes in Icelandic without being corrected; either he was being nice or I was correct. It was a pretty simple sentence "Have you finished cooking? It's been 46 minutes!" but it was confidence-boosting to be able to use the combination að vera búinn að (infinitive) (lit. to be finished to (verb), or "to be finished with ...") that I'd just learnt today. Upon further browsing of the library it seems as if the Icelandic section is *expanding*? Impossible surely. There's a poetry book in there which might be quite useful as several of the poems seemed quite easy to read. However English poetry doesn't tend to be the most syntaxical representation of the language so I might err on the side of caution here ...
This evening we started drinking at 7:45pm and by just gone 9 I'd been forced to down a dirty pint and wasn't feeling great as a result. Also some pictures just went up on Facebook of me looking tired and drunk during a period I don't remember. I'm almost certain I went into the bathroom, threw up for the second time (properly), fell asleep on the floor, got up and went to bed ... but apparently not.
Let's hope tomorrow's this productive anyway. Note to self: I need more speaking and vocabulary practise as the last few days have been almost exclusively book work.
Bless, Paul x
I also answered a Facebook message about baking cakes in Icelandic without being corrected; either he was being nice or I was correct. It was a pretty simple sentence "Have you finished cooking? It's been 46 minutes!" but it was confidence-boosting to be able to use the combination að vera búinn að (infinitive) (lit. to be finished to (verb), or "to be finished with ...") that I'd just learnt today. Upon further browsing of the library it seems as if the Icelandic section is *expanding*? Impossible surely. There's a poetry book in there which might be quite useful as several of the poems seemed quite easy to read. However English poetry doesn't tend to be the most syntaxical representation of the language so I might err on the side of caution here ...
This evening we started drinking at 7:45pm and by just gone 9 I'd been forced to down a dirty pint and wasn't feeling great as a result. Also some pictures just went up on Facebook of me looking tired and drunk during a period I don't remember. I'm almost certain I went into the bathroom, threw up for the second time (properly), fell asleep on the floor, got up and went to bed ... but apparently not.
Let's hope tomorrow's this productive anyway. Note to self: I need more speaking and vocabulary practise as the last few days have been almost exclusively book work.
Bless, Paul x
19 March 2010
18/03/10: St Paddy's, Sir Patrick's and some actual work
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17 March 2010
16/03/10: Generally slacked for the sake of some awesome films
I suppose that's partially true if you just regard my tangible output for today: Two exercises (but composing full sentences! ... no, still ...). However, I did have some otherwise nice experiences:
- Browsed the Morgunblaðið articles, finding out the Chelsea score at half time and reading an article about panda bears being given food in a Chinese zoo.
- Posted again on a thread that's developed into me finding two (yes, TWO) people who're at the "beginner" stage of learning Icelandic. That's on the How To Learn Any Language forum. The posters directed me to a website giving verb conjugations.
- I was forced to learn (finally, after having used the phrase "le/la tense parfait" many many times in French lessons) what the perfect tense actually means so that I could ask someone if they've ever seen the film Brick or just liked that my Facebook status said I wanted to be effortlessly cool/inward/heartbroken etc.
I didn't do much, as I said, but Brick, Into The Wild, plenty of pasta and a new Her Name Is Calla song bringing me to joy each of the first four plays today made up for it.
I'll make up for it tomorrow, he says. Oh wait, St. Patrick's day, he realises.
Sjáumst (with a potential "headache with regret", as the Gaelic literally says), Paul x
- Browsed the Morgunblaðið articles, finding out the Chelsea score at half time and reading an article about panda bears being given food in a Chinese zoo.
- Posted again on a thread that's developed into me finding two (yes, TWO) people who're at the "beginner" stage of learning Icelandic. That's on the How To Learn Any Language forum. The posters directed me to a website giving verb conjugations.
- I was forced to learn (finally, after having used the phrase "le/la tense parfait" many many times in French lessons) what the perfect tense actually means so that I could ask someone if they've ever seen the film Brick or just liked that my Facebook status said I wanted to be effortlessly cool/inward/heartbroken etc.
I didn't do much, as I said, but Brick, Into The Wild, plenty of pasta and a new Her Name Is Calla song bringing me to joy each of the first four plays today made up for it.
I'll make up for it tomorrow, he says. Oh wait, St. Patrick's day, he realises.
Sjáumst (with a potential "headache with regret", as the Gaelic literally says), Paul x
16 March 2010
15/03/10: Textbook recaps
This'll be a shorter post as it's so late.
Today I finished going through lessons 1 and 2 of each book, copying out all the dialogues and writing vocabulary notes as I went. Colloquial is proving to be a pain in the arse for writing new vocabulary raised in dialogues in the list. In fact in a couple of cases today it wasn't even in the glossary/mini dictionary at the back. Ah well. One of the exercises asked me to name items in my immediate area and describe their colour. I distinctly remember last time thinking "I can't do that at all", while this time I managed to name around 15 objects around me and describe their colour, pluralising when necessary. Clearly the kitchen items noun list I made a few days ago helped!
Anyway, bedtime. I've a tutorial to be up for at 2pm. Last Public Policy one EVER.
Góðan daginn... Paul x
Today I finished going through lessons 1 and 2 of each book, copying out all the dialogues and writing vocabulary notes as I went. Colloquial is proving to be a pain in the arse for writing new vocabulary raised in dialogues in the list. In fact in a couple of cases today it wasn't even in the glossary/mini dictionary at the back. Ah well. One of the exercises asked me to name items in my immediate area and describe their colour. I distinctly remember last time thinking "I can't do that at all", while this time I managed to name around 15 objects around me and describe their colour, pluralising when necessary. Clearly the kitchen items noun list I made a few days ago helped!
Anyway, bedtime. I've a tutorial to be up for at 2pm. Last Public Policy one EVER.
Góðan daginn... Paul x
15 March 2010
14/03/10: Organisation
First day report! I've got Rush's 2112 blasting out of my laptop speakers. "IT DOESN'T FIT THE PLAN!" *solo*. Epic.
Anyway,
Today I bought a folder, 500 sheets of white A4 paper (no lines as Tesco Express felt the need to accommodate late-night printing shifts instead), 350 post-it notes (could be handy ... flashcards? Labelling everything in the flat?) and 50 folder wallets. £4. What most astonished me was that the paper, albeit lacking lines, cost £2 for the 500 sheets. I won't ever get through that before I lose it.
After finally rousing myself at 3pm after a heavy night out at Nice'n'Sleazy's, interluded by some drunken passionately emotional band-talk ("Guys, I seriously am proud of these tunes. I like what we've got here. I think we're forging our own sound" - hmm) I realised I still had my list of common fruits (ávaxtar) up. Nine of them are specifically fruits that most people, including myself until recently, mistake for vegetables or other subspecies altogether (chillis, nuts, tomatoes etc.). Nine of them are berries, including the generic "berry" (ber). The rest are more regular. Peach is a wanker. Ferskja? Most of the other regular fruits are derived from loan words, assumedly because until anyone with a warm climate started trading with Denmark most fruits weren't known to the Icelanders. But ferskja? It's not that it's difficult, it just doesn't relate at all to anything I can think of, at all. Ah well - it's not too often that I say peach in English anyway.
(By the way, I'm italicising all the Icelandic in here. It just so happens that italicising ferskja in the above paragraph helped in two ways).
With my list of common fruits I went about finding the Vokabel website, then testing myself on all my listed fruits in the standard form and with the definite article ("the" is a suffix in Icelandic; hneta -> hnetan (nut -> the nut), with the combination of end letters changing upon gender - this helps me to remember the genders quickly) about 200 times, mainly slipping up when I got into a cycle of not adding "the" to the end or when encountering bloody ferskja.
Then I ate food. The eggs were slightly off but not to an extreme, so I was able to make myself a Saint Agúr omelette. After a good couple of hours of unassociated boredom I bought those above listed items in Tesco Express (still open at 8pm on a Sunday) and spent a few hours in the library. I started a basic verb list (to eat, to be, etc.) in one of the plastic wallets and dedicated two more wallets to book exercises, then almost finished (for the third time now) Lesson 1 of the Colloquial, copying out all of the dialogues to full comprehension. Then I thought, "these last 2 hours have been productive. I should start a blog to ensure I don't start slacking off". Then I came back and set up this blog. Then we tried to go out to meet my roommate to wish him a happy birthday. He'd gone right into town as the local club was closed. I desperately needed a pee. I turned back and started to write something for these blogs. By the time I finished the blogs for the day I was limiting myself to short sentences, but happened upon a sudden dramatic expansion of vocabulary range and my sentence compositional skills improved to the point of nearly rabid regicide (what?) while Rush's 2112 drew to a dramatic close. "YOU DON'T GET... SOMETHING FOR NOTHING... YOU DON'T GET... FREEDOM FOR FREE!"
Summary:
- Groggy, late, typical start
- Tested myself on common and commonly mistaken fruits and their genders
- Raged about peaches, and to a lesser extent cranberries
- Bought organisational materials
- Used them for that purpose, repeating Lesson 1 of Colloquial to full comprehension and starting an ungrouped verb list with their pronoun variations
- Made this blog
- Listened to Rush
- Finished this blog
These posts will hopefully get progressively shorter as my extracurricular life gradually gets sucked away learning obscure grammar forms for tenses we deserted several hundred years ago.
Hurrah.
Sjáumst! Paul x
Anyway,
Today I bought a folder, 500 sheets of white A4 paper (no lines as Tesco Express felt the need to accommodate late-night printing shifts instead), 350 post-it notes (could be handy ... flashcards? Labelling everything in the flat?) and 50 folder wallets. £4. What most astonished me was that the paper, albeit lacking lines, cost £2 for the 500 sheets. I won't ever get through that before I lose it.
After finally rousing myself at 3pm after a heavy night out at Nice'n'Sleazy's, interluded by some drunken passionately emotional band-talk ("Guys, I seriously am proud of these tunes. I like what we've got here. I think we're forging our own sound" - hmm) I realised I still had my list of common fruits (ávaxtar) up. Nine of them are specifically fruits that most people, including myself until recently, mistake for vegetables or other subspecies altogether (chillis, nuts, tomatoes etc.). Nine of them are berries, including the generic "berry" (ber). The rest are more regular. Peach is a wanker. Ferskja? Most of the other regular fruits are derived from loan words, assumedly because until anyone with a warm climate started trading with Denmark most fruits weren't known to the Icelanders. But ferskja? It's not that it's difficult, it just doesn't relate at all to anything I can think of, at all. Ah well - it's not too often that I say peach in English anyway.
(By the way, I'm italicising all the Icelandic in here. It just so happens that italicising ferskja in the above paragraph helped in two ways).
With my list of common fruits I went about finding the Vokabel website, then testing myself on all my listed fruits in the standard form and with the definite article ("the" is a suffix in Icelandic; hneta -> hnetan (nut -> the nut), with the combination of end letters changing upon gender - this helps me to remember the genders quickly) about 200 times, mainly slipping up when I got into a cycle of not adding "the" to the end or when encountering bloody ferskja.
Then I ate food. The eggs were slightly off but not to an extreme, so I was able to make myself a Saint Agúr omelette. After a good couple of hours of unassociated boredom I bought those above listed items in Tesco Express (still open at 8pm on a Sunday) and spent a few hours in the library. I started a basic verb list (to eat, to be, etc.) in one of the plastic wallets and dedicated two more wallets to book exercises, then almost finished (for the third time now) Lesson 1 of the Colloquial, copying out all of the dialogues to full comprehension. Then I thought, "these last 2 hours have been productive. I should start a blog to ensure I don't start slacking off". Then I came back and set up this blog. Then we tried to go out to meet my roommate to wish him a happy birthday. He'd gone right into town as the local club was closed. I desperately needed a pee. I turned back and started to write something for these blogs. By the time I finished the blogs for the day I was limiting myself to short sentences, but happened upon a sudden dramatic expansion of vocabulary range and my sentence compositional skills improved to the point of nearly rabid regicide (what?) while Rush's 2112 drew to a dramatic close. "YOU DON'T GET... SOMETHING FOR NOTHING... YOU DON'T GET... FREEDOM FOR FREE!"
Summary:
- Groggy, late, typical start
- Tested myself on common and commonly mistaken fruits and their genders
- Raged about peaches, and to a lesser extent cranberries
- Bought organisational materials
- Used them for that purpose, repeating Lesson 1 of Colloquial to full comprehension and starting an ungrouped verb list with their pronoun variations
- Made this blog
- Listened to Rush
- Finished this blog
These posts will hopefully get progressively shorter as my extracurricular life gradually gets sucked away learning obscure grammar forms for tenses we deserted several hundred years ago.
Hurrah.
Sjáumst! Paul x
Resources and Methods
Ok, so I really started learning quite a while ago but haven't put much time in until recently (probably the last month or so, and even then it's only been two decent two-hour sessions a week or some audio tape repetition). I'll call this a proper start. Resources and methods to go, then I’ll make my NEXT post be the start of the ‘blog’.
Resources
A couple of days ago the book "Beginners' Icelandic" from the Hippocrene series arrived, being the only Amazon favourite yet to be given any negative review comments (read: mentioned) by PhD. Alexander Argüelles on his website (I’ll elaborate later). It’s good. I don’t know what exactly polyglots look out for in resource books but it launched straight into some basic grammar and believable dialogue (“Are you also a student?” “No, I teach history” “So you’re a teacher?” “Yes”) and immediately expanding upon some elements of greeting multiple people that I’d been confused about after the first sixty pages of “Colloquial Icelandic” by lecturer Daisy Neijmann. I’ve had the second book for ages and it’s taught me some solid basics, so I’m happy.
As far as audio goes, I’ve got the CDs that came with both books (the Colloquial CDs have too much English and too many pauses and I’m yet to listen to the Hippocrene ones, but it’s helpful to hear some slower Icelandic) and radio stations ... when they decide to play. Blah. http://dagskra.ruv.is/ras1 and http://dagskra.ruv.is/ras2 are the two I’ve been trying to listen to recently – both excellent, but the second’s more conversation-centric I think. Classical jazz mixed with friendly Icelandic voices doesn’t go amiss from RÁS1 though. Of course I can’t currently understand much of it but I’m just trying to picture the sentences in my head, which I hope is improving my understanding of sentence fluidity. There’s a website I’ve not saved (but is easy to find on Google) with plenty of links to other radio stations in Icelandic.
The DVDs “Nói Albinói“ and “101 Reykjavík” count as my audio training. Fully accurate subtitles for 90 minutes each and interesting stories to follow; yay. I’ll look out for more DVDs as they come up on Amazon. I wish Sigur Rós’ “Heima” had more Icelandic ... I suppose it was marketed to an audience of more than 320,000 and they can’t be blamed for doing that.
Inspiration, motivation and tips count as resources to me. The great and aforementioned Alexander Argüelles runs the website http://foreignlanguageexpertise.com/. A serial polyglot for years – he doesn’t seem to ever list how many languages he knows to a good standard but jeez does he have a lot of books – he’s trying to set up a language learning institute in America with the aim of teaching people how to learn languages efficiently. It’s been his life’s work so I think he’s well and truly trained for it; good luck to him. I stumbled across his website after he’d posted a video on Youtube giving an introduction to the Icelandic language (http://youtube.com/watch?v=m_b9V_gbUNw), a language he’s been learning as a base for Germanic languages for 20 years. Although a lot of what he writes I won’t need to take into consideration, I hope to use ‘shadowing’ (speaking over audio files without delay to force your accent into shape) someday soon, once I get decent recordings. I went through all his textbook series reviews but, much to my disappointment, most of the ones mentioned don’t have Icelandic publications (only Colloquial, which he quite likes, and Teach Yourself, which I’ve decided against getting after reading some Amazon reviews alongside). The forum “How To Learn Any Language” (http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/), as cheesy as the name is, has some extremely knowledgeable people on it and great ideas to help people of all types go about learning languages. I hope to draw some influence from there.
I’ve of course got my own resources I’ve created, but they’re rather limited right now. Noun lists for common fruits, vegetables and articles household equipment are all it’s really amounted to. The website http://www.vokabel.com/creteste.html seems like it may become an excellent resource. You get to create tests that can be as simple as something like: “Question: Cranberry” “Answer: mýraberjalyng” with up to 100 questions. That’s sufficient for most vocabulary lists with variations and could be used for entire sentences, grammar forms etc. Aye, I’m in love. It probably wouldn’t be too hard to make a program in VB for that but that’d force me to remind myself of computing last year...
Oh yeah, and the University of Glasgow (open 19 hours a day) has a full two-way dictionary. Unfortunately it’s not a very modern dictionary and I can’t take it back to London with me for the three months I’ll be away this summer, but it’s excellent to use when I’m here.
Methods ...
... or a summary.
At the time of posting I’ve got two books designed for a first year university course level, an abundance of post-it notes, some advisory websites, a public dictionary that nobody ever uses and some audio from radio, CD and DVD. There’s also an Icelandic IRC chatroom but because it’s revolved around a multiplayer game there’s a lot of Englandic thrown around – not particularly helpful sometimes, although undoubtedly amusing.
Every day (hopefully) I plan to go through a few book exercises, switching between the textbooks. I’ll repeat lessons regularly, so it’ll take me a good while to go through both - by which time I should be able to confidently stride through them without getting confused or needing a dictionary. Whenever I’m alone and I don’t feel like listening to music I’ll listen to Icelandic radio. DVDs whenever I please too. I’ll try and create a lot of tests on that Vokabel website, incorporating nouns, adjectives, inflections etc (Icelandic has a lot of inflections ... English has almost none most of the time). I’ll discover and experiment with new methods as I find them on the forums etc. I’ll get my iPod back into shape once I’ve got some selected audio so I’ve got something to listen to on journeys.
1000 words. Jájá!
Bless. Paul x
Resources
A couple of days ago the book "Beginners' Icelandic" from the Hippocrene series arrived, being the only Amazon favourite yet to be given any negative review comments (read: mentioned) by PhD. Alexander Argüelles on his website (I’ll elaborate later). It’s good. I don’t know what exactly polyglots look out for in resource books but it launched straight into some basic grammar and believable dialogue (“Are you also a student?” “No, I teach history” “So you’re a teacher?” “Yes”) and immediately expanding upon some elements of greeting multiple people that I’d been confused about after the first sixty pages of “Colloquial Icelandic” by lecturer Daisy Neijmann. I’ve had the second book for ages and it’s taught me some solid basics, so I’m happy.
As far as audio goes, I’ve got the CDs that came with both books (the Colloquial CDs have too much English and too many pauses and I’m yet to listen to the Hippocrene ones, but it’s helpful to hear some slower Icelandic) and radio stations ... when they decide to play. Blah. http://dagskra.ruv.is/ras1 and http://dagskra.ruv.is/ras2 are the two I’ve been trying to listen to recently – both excellent, but the second’s more conversation-centric I think. Classical jazz mixed with friendly Icelandic voices doesn’t go amiss from RÁS1 though. Of course I can’t currently understand much of it but I’m just trying to picture the sentences in my head, which I hope is improving my understanding of sentence fluidity. There’s a website I’ve not saved (but is easy to find on Google) with plenty of links to other radio stations in Icelandic.
The DVDs “Nói Albinói“ and “101 Reykjavík” count as my audio training. Fully accurate subtitles for 90 minutes each and interesting stories to follow; yay. I’ll look out for more DVDs as they come up on Amazon. I wish Sigur Rós’ “Heima” had more Icelandic ... I suppose it was marketed to an audience of more than 320,000 and they can’t be blamed for doing that.
Inspiration, motivation and tips count as resources to me. The great and aforementioned Alexander Argüelles runs the website http://foreignlanguageexpertise.com/. A serial polyglot for years – he doesn’t seem to ever list how many languages he knows to a good standard but jeez does he have a lot of books – he’s trying to set up a language learning institute in America with the aim of teaching people how to learn languages efficiently. It’s been his life’s work so I think he’s well and truly trained for it; good luck to him. I stumbled across his website after he’d posted a video on Youtube giving an introduction to the Icelandic language (http://youtube.com/watch?v=m_b9V_gbUNw), a language he’s been learning as a base for Germanic languages for 20 years. Although a lot of what he writes I won’t need to take into consideration, I hope to use ‘shadowing’ (speaking over audio files without delay to force your accent into shape) someday soon, once I get decent recordings. I went through all his textbook series reviews but, much to my disappointment, most of the ones mentioned don’t have Icelandic publications (only Colloquial, which he quite likes, and Teach Yourself, which I’ve decided against getting after reading some Amazon reviews alongside). The forum “How To Learn Any Language” (http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/), as cheesy as the name is, has some extremely knowledgeable people on it and great ideas to help people of all types go about learning languages. I hope to draw some influence from there.
I’ve of course got my own resources I’ve created, but they’re rather limited right now. Noun lists for common fruits, vegetables and articles household equipment are all it’s really amounted to. The website http://www.vokabel.com/creteste.html seems like it may become an excellent resource. You get to create tests that can be as simple as something like: “Question: Cranberry” “Answer: mýraberjalyng” with up to 100 questions. That’s sufficient for most vocabulary lists with variations and could be used for entire sentences, grammar forms etc. Aye, I’m in love. It probably wouldn’t be too hard to make a program in VB for that but that’d force me to remind myself of computing last year...
Oh yeah, and the University of Glasgow (open 19 hours a day) has a full two-way dictionary. Unfortunately it’s not a very modern dictionary and I can’t take it back to London with me for the three months I’ll be away this summer, but it’s excellent to use when I’m here.
Methods ...
... or a summary.
At the time of posting I’ve got two books designed for a first year university course level, an abundance of post-it notes, some advisory websites, a public dictionary that nobody ever uses and some audio from radio, CD and DVD. There’s also an Icelandic IRC chatroom but because it’s revolved around a multiplayer game there’s a lot of Englandic thrown around – not particularly helpful sometimes, although undoubtedly amusing.
Every day (hopefully) I plan to go through a few book exercises, switching between the textbooks. I’ll repeat lessons regularly, so it’ll take me a good while to go through both - by which time I should be able to confidently stride through them without getting confused or needing a dictionary. Whenever I’m alone and I don’t feel like listening to music I’ll listen to Icelandic radio. DVDs whenever I please too. I’ll try and create a lot of tests on that Vokabel website, incorporating nouns, adjectives, inflections etc (Icelandic has a lot of inflections ... English has almost none most of the time). I’ll discover and experiment with new methods as I find them on the forums etc. I’ll get my iPod back into shape once I’ve got some selected audio so I’ve got something to listen to on journeys.
1000 words. Jájá!
Bless. Paul x
Sæl!
Welcome.
My name is Paul Lambeth and I am a full-time student at the University of Glasgow, 19 at the time of writing. I've created this blog to document my process - partially so I can see how I've progressed and partially so I don't slack too much - of learning Icelandic. I don't really intend that anyone reads this regularly except me (learning a tiny language is a rather silent exploit) but if you do, thanks.
Why learn it?
I first visited Iceland two years ago with my dad. I found the people, the landscape and the culture fascinating - the way the people relied on but mostly let be the countryside was inspiring. My prior contact with the country had been minimal (mainly the band Sigur Rós and seeing Eiður Guðjónsson assist Chelsea towards Champions League qualification and Russian riches...). My lust for the country rose further after visiting again last year, between which time I'd picked up just enough Icelandic to be able to say 'coffee' 'thanks' and 'little' (I hoped Subway steak baguette was a masculine noun). After previously staying around Reykjavík and its suburbs with a few day trips out, we (me and dad) desired to visited the less touristy region of the north-west fjörds this time. We got a taste of the way the sparsest communities operate (the village Djúpavík has two all-year residents). It all helped to cement my will to visit for a longer while after I finish university.
The language is so beautiful and the nation so proud of it that it´d be daft not to at least be reasonably fluent before trying to integrate with a community, surely? That's why I'm learning.
Next post, blogging actually starts.
Bless! Paul x
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