Bending words

Hi everyone! This week I wanted to take a little bit of time to talk about the Icelandic class I’ve been taking this semester. I’m currently studying at Múltikúlti and am about halfway through my Icelandic One course. Having taken Spanish in school, I thought I knew what I was in for– the boring readings and the vocabulary that you know you’ll never use in conversation. But that wasn’t at all what I found. Taught in English, I was surrounded by peers from China, Poland, Denmark, and even other American students, who all made class really fun.

Throughout class, the vocab we learn is directly applicable to real life, and I’ve learned a lot about both the history of Iceland, traditional Icelandic holidays, and what it’s like to live here today. During class we talk about a variety of topics, and do different activities, though admittedly one of my favorite things we’ve done so far (unrelated to our actual learning) is listen to “The Hardest Karaoke Song in the World” which features a variety of Icelandic words, and was fun for us to sing along to in class.

As we progress I can also feel myself becoming more comfortable with the language–not to mention my pronunciation has gone from flat out terrible, to somewhat understandable. While a little embarrassed to speak up at the beginning, having small class sizes with familiar people, who, just like me were starting to learn the language, made speaking and reading much more comfortable and enjoyable.

I have to admit though, that it hasn’t all been easy. I knew that Icelandic had some complicated “word bending” but I didn’t know the full extent of it until class. Not only do Icelandic speakers conjugate verbs, but they’ve taken it upon themselves to assign objects, people, places, etc. genders, and thus conjugate their nouns and adjectives accordingly. This became most clear to me last week when we were going over the numbers. My teacher explained that when telling time hours are said in the “neutral” form. For example, the number “two”– “tveir” in Icelandic– becomes “tvö” the neutral form of two. So, you get “klukkan er tvö” (It’s two o’clock). But she explained, if you want to say it’s two minutes to two, then you have to use the feminine form for the first “two” followed by the neutral form for the second “two.” This is because minutes are feminine and hours are neutral. So, two minutes to two becomes “tvær mínútur í tvö.” C’mon!

 That being said, with half of the course down, I’ve gone from knowing absolutely nothing to being able to give simple directions, have short conversations, ask about events, needs, and times, and count to at least a million! I would definitely recommend this course to anyone in Iceland looking to learn Icelandic in the future– though for now I’m just looking forward to finishing up course One, and hopefully enrolling in Icelandic Two over the summer!