Category:Icelandic

    

From Namespedia - Names Meaning and Origins

Icelandic language belongs to the Germanic languages, as part of the Nordic division. In turn the Germanic languages belong to the large group of Indo-European languages. Linguistically the Icelandic language is closely related to Faroese and Norwegian. Looking at the historycal information, Iceland was settled around 870-930 A.D. by Norwegian settlers originating in Western Norway, some Sweedish settlers and some British and Irish settlers. The spoken language those days was the same spoken in Norway at that time, a dialect of Old Norse as you can check in the Norwegian section. The separation from Norwegian language took place around the 14-th century. And the change occurred in the Norwegian language, as Icelandic had a rich literature that helped the language resist the outside influences. It is not comonly seen a 21-st century reader to easily read the same language’s texts written in the 12-th century.Well, Icelanders can. If we talk about phoenetics though, things seem to be a little more different as changes did took place in this area of the Icelandic language. Another rare fact is the absence of dialects, making Icelandic a very uniform language.