Learn Icelandic!

[larryhammer]

The best instruction is from University of Iceland's Icelandic Online, with supplementary dictionary and readings. There's also Mentalcode's basic language lessons, and while IGLO's course has broken code, the minigrammar is there. See also Mimir's potted grammar.

For travelers, there's phrasebooks from TravLang with recordings and Wikitravel without. Notice also this pronunciation guide from the guys of Sigur Rós. For references, there's another Icelandic-English Dictionary plus a Verb Conjugator. For practice, listen to any of these Icelandic radio stations.

To distract you, there's UT-Austin's online courses in several early Info-European languages.

---L.

Comments

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I want to do this! We always fly Icelandair when we go to England to visit my in-laws, and I've always thought I'd like to learn the language and actually visit Iceland instead of just the airport :-D

Cool! I have to bookmark this entry of yours.

[larryhammer]

IcelandAir does -- or used to do -- three-day layover fares for only a little bit more. Doesn't let you see much beyond the standard Golden Triangle and a bit of Reykjavik, but that's a taste of beauty.

---L.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Did you see the movie Cold Fever (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_Fever)? The scene with the fairy starting the car was amazing, and the very end was really beautiful too.

[larryhammer]

No -- I didn't catch it. Need to add it to the Netflicks queue.

---L.

[octopedingenue]

Neat! Brainbreaking but neat! Thank you!

[larryhammer]

þú ert velkominn.

It really helps, btw, to use the sites with recordings -- thanks to TravLang, I learned that Góðan daginn isn't "goh-dan dah-gin" but something closer to "goh-than dai-yin" (only with the y closer to a glottal stop) before I went.

---L.

[madwriter.livejournal.com]

Iceland is on the list of possible places to immigrate if living in the U.S. gets too nasty politically. Provided, of course, we can live near a hot spring and not near an aluminum smelting plant.

[janni.livejournal.com]

The main problem is, if you're not Scandanavian or an EU citizen, it's really, really hard to get a residence permit for more than like 3 months, as I understand it.

[madwriter.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, we saw that on their immigration website. The only countries we found that were harder to get into were Australia, New Zealand, and Switzerland.

[janni.livejournal.com]

My brother's trying to get Swiss residency. It is hard, yeah. I think he's managed a one year permit (possibly renewable), but nothing longer.

[madwriter.livejournal.com]

My friend Kate / etako struggled to get her residency--and this was after marrying a Swiss citizen!

And as for Iceland...if I actually make it to the Continent this fall, I'm going to try getting one of those flights I've been eyeing that has a stopover at Keflavik so I can at least have a glimpse of the country. :)

[janni.livejournal.com]

Do stopover if you can. It's a really neat place.

And Icelandair flies out of BWI, which may even be within reach for you ... (They're the only airline to Iceland from the U.S., and only fly out of a limited number of eastern airports. This makes getting there from Tucson a challenge!)

[larryhammer]

You don't actually need to be near a hot spring to get the benefit -- all towns get geothermal water piped in, if there isn't a local source.

---L.

[al-zorra.livejournal.com]

As ocean levels rise I'd worry a bit about choosing an island for a re-location ....

Otherwise, I'd know exactly where I would be working to re-locate to right now.

However, as Iceland has accumulated some front-line experience with climate change in her past, Icelanders may have already been making plans?

Love, C.

[larryhammer]

It's one of the things I'm interested in discovering, this summer.

---L.