Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The Icelandic Language Council, comprising representatives of universities, the arts, journalists, teachers, and the Ministry of Culture, Science and Education, advises the authorities on language policy. Since 1995, on 16 November each year, the birthday of 19th-century poet Jónas Hallgrímsson is celebrated as Icelandic Language Day. [7]
The principal language of Iceland is Icelandic, a highly inflected North Germanic language. Danish and English are also taught in schools. Linguistic purism is strongly supported in Iceland to prevent loanwords from entering the language. Instead, neologisms are coined from Icelandic roots, creating a compound word to describe new
The history of the Icelandic language began in the 9th century when the settlement of Iceland, mostly by Norwegians, brought a dialect of Old Norse to the island. The oldest preserved texts in Icelandic were written around 1100, the oldest single text being Íslendingabók followed by Landnámabók .
Although the Icelandic or Norse language prevails, northern trade routes brought German, English, Dutch, French and Basque to Iceland. Some merchants and clergymen settled in Iceland throughout the centuries, leaving their mark on culture, but linguistically mainly trade, nautical, and religious terms.
The First Grammatical Treatise is of great interest to the history of linguistics, since it systematically used the technique of minimal pairs to establish the inventory of distinctive sounds or phonemes in the Icelandic language, [2] in a manner reminiscent of the methods of structural linguistics. [3]
Category: Culture of Iceland. 71 languages. Afrikaans; ... Cultural history of Iceland (2 C) L. Languages of Iceland (1 C, 5 P)
Its goal was "to preserve the Icelandic language and literature and therewith the culture and the honour of the land". An important publication was Almenn jarðarfræða og landaskipun eður geographia (1821–27), which contains much new genuine [ clarification needed ] Icelandic terminology.
Mid-Atlantic Ridge and adjacent plates. Volcanoes indicated in red.. In geological terms, Iceland is a young island. It started to form in the Miocene era about 20 million years ago from a series of volcanic eruptions on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, where it lies between the North American Plate and Eurasian Plate.