Icelandic Language and History

            The Icelandic language has several unique characteristics to it, and these can help us understand about Icelandic culture and how it values its history. The fact that Icelandic has these features actually tells us a lot about just how important preserving the culture is for most Icelanders.

            First of all, Icelandic employs a unique system of adopting foreign words into the language. Instead of just adopting the word straight into the language, they will form a new word out of existing Icelandic words. For example, telephone becomes talsimi, which combines the Icelandic word tal for talk, and simi which means thread. Thus, talsimi, or talking thread.

            Because of this system, Icelandic has not changed very much, even over hundreds of years. People who speak Icelandic today can still read Old Norse sagas from hundreds of years ago. This aspect of the language shows us just how much Icelanders value their history and traditional culture.

            For many Icelanders, their traditional language is a very important part of their history and culture. If they change their language, they feel that they will lose their heritage. This has led to an intensifying of the preservation of Icelandic in everyday life. Unfortunately, the rise of globalization and the spread of languages like English threaten the continued preservation of the language.

            If Icelandic does become extinct or less prevalent, it will be interesting to see whether or not the history and culture is destroyed as well. If they are so tightly bound together, it seems that losing the one would cause the other to be lost as well.

Bibliography

Cox, P. (2015, June 3). Will Icelanders one day ditch their language for English? Retrieved November 11, 2016, from http://www.pri.org/stories/2015-06-02/will-icelanders-one-day-ditch-icelandic-english

Icelandic Language. (1957). The encyclopedia Americana. USA: Americana Corporation.

ICELANDIC LANGUAGE. (2016). Retrieved November 11, 2016, from http://www.nat.is/travelguideeng/icelandic_language.htm

Ísleifsdóttir, B. (2015, August 18). Son and Dóttir. Retrieved November 11, 2016, from             http://icelandreview.com/magazine/2015/08/18/son-and-dottir

Jóhannesson, G. T. (2013). The history of Iceland. Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood.

Karlsson, G. (2000). The history of Iceland. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.