The Inheritance and Characteristics of Icelandic

The ancestors of Icelanders were immigrants from western Norway from the 9th century to10th century. Because Iceland is far away from the European continent, Icelandic has always maintained the characteristics of the western dialect of old Norwegian, and its vocabulary is rarely influenced by foreign words. Some linguists call it one of the "most conservative" languages in Europe. Icelandic once absorbed the words of Danish, Celtic, Latin and Romance, but after19th century, due to the development of pure language movement, these loanwords have given way to Icelandic. Scientific and engineering terms are also made up of Icelandic elements. Grammatical changes in case, nominal differences, personal changes at the end of verbs, and syllable combinations, especially the combination of the first syllable, all retain the characteristics of old Scandinavian. Modern Icelanders can still read the ancient Icelandic epic written 1000 years ago.

The stress in Icelandic is always on the first syllable. It maintains a complete buckling change system. Verb is the change of person and tense; Nouns have four cases (nominative case, nominative case, dative case and objective case); Nouns, adjectives and pronouns are divided into masculine, feminine and neutral (other Scandinavian languages are only generalized and neutral), and they are singular and plural; The definite article is usually attached to a noun as a suffix. The grammar and vocabulary of Icelandic are stable, but the pronunciation of modern Icelandic is very different from that of ancient times. Icelandic uses Latin characters, but the letters and in the ancient Nordic characters are still used to indicate the unvoiced sound and the voiced sound respectively. Iceland has 200,000 inhabitants who speak Icelandic. Icelandic is one of Scandinavian languages. Scandinavian language is a branch of Germanic family, which belongs to Indo-European family.

Icelandic is very similar to Scandinavian Gunos, which was introduced to Iceland from Norway in the ninth century. Other Scandinavian languages are strongly influenced by the languages of neighboring countries; However, because Icelandic is an island language and has no connection with other languages, it has remained primitive for hundreds of years. Therefore, children in Iceland have no difficulty in reading the great epic "The Legend of Iddas" written by Cournot. Icelandic is the mother tongue of other modern Scandinavian languages, and it has many similarities with Old English, which is the result of Scandinavian invasion of Britain in the ninth century.

Another factor to keep Icelandic pure is that it has no international vocabulary to express modern ideas and inventions. Icelanders prefer to make up pure Icelandic by themselves and try to avoid using international vocabulary. So "telephone" is Sami in Icelandic, and Sami is an ancient Icelandic word meaning "line". The word "radio" is a trap in Icelandic. The name of the "car" is bill, but it can also be called bifreie (riding something moving). "electricity" is rafmagn (the power of linear smokeless powder)

Bad weather, dark and colorless sun, intermittent storms, as an independent island country, "storytelling" has become the main spiritual food for Icelanders, and Saga (legend), which has long been included in English dictionaries, is Icelandic. The natural environment and the tradition of "telling stories" make Icelanders love reading novels and writers come forth in large numbers. The criminal reasoning novels of the Icelandic writer Arnaldur Indridason are unique and widely circulated in Northern Europe. It turns out that Icelandic literature has been passed down continuously for nearly a thousand years. 1955, the Icelandic writer Laxness (1902- 1998) won the Nobel Prize in Literature, which has been talked about by Icelanders so far.