lusentoj (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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linguaphiles2018-01-31 10:11 pm
lusentoj) wrote in linguaphiles2018-01-31 10:11 pm
Icelandic/Faroese
Hey, is anyone learning (or can already speak) Icelandic or Faroese? I studied Icelandic some years ago and can read some amount of it; Faroese I understand about 95% of any given topic when I read. But I haven't had any friends to talk to who speak either language so I haven't ever written or spoken them and I can't really understand the spoken languages in general. Recently I've been thinking I want to improve my skills, so I'd like a friend who'll use them with me no matter how bad I am, I guess is what I'm saying...
If you'd like to learn either one I can help you "understand" things, like texts or bits of grammar, but I can't teach you something like correct writing since I can't write myself! If you're more advanced we could have a kind of book/media club where we read/watch the same pieces as each other each week and discuss if we had trouble with them.
I also speak Swedish, Esperanto and Japanese so if you're better at one of those than English, we can do things that way.
If you'd like to learn either one I can help you "understand" things, like texts or bits of grammar, but I can't teach you something like correct writing since I can't write myself! If you're more advanced we could have a kind of book/media club where we read/watch the same pieces as each other each week and discuss if we had trouble with them.
I also speak Swedish, Esperanto and Japanese so if you're better at one of those than English, we can do things that way.
Sorry for spamming
I started learning Icelandic in 2008, at the time there was a LOT less of ANYTHING online in or about Icelandic than there was even just 2 years later (when I quit learning). For example, the "Learn Icelandic!" site was completely different and taught almost nothing in comparision to how it was in 2010; there was also absolutely nothing on Wiktionary or Wikipedia, etc. I managed to convince my parents to let me study Icelandic at a/the university in Iceland, but that didn't go well as the classes were meant only for people who actually already knew Icelandic (literally all my classmates were living with Icelanders, and/or had lived in Iceland for 8+ years etc).
And thanks to stuff like the bad dictionary and bad "textbooks" (which were actually phrasebooks + one huge book entirely full of conjugation charts + 2 crappy books written entirely in Icelandic), I didn't even know stuff like words like "fireman" are put together out of compound words until about a year and a half into my studies, and was constantly thwarted by that the dictionary was literally telling me the wrong meanings of things, etc etc.
Well after 2 years of "learning" by simply tackling everything with a dictionary (despite living in Iceland, I had no Icelandic friends and all my fellow "learner friends" dropped out/off) I quit Icelandic. Moved to Sweden, learned Swedish and Esperanto, the former giving me more vocab for Icelandic and the latter making me suddenly understand the entirety of Icelandic grammar. But I had no one to use Icelandic with etc and a lot of bad memories from Iceland (ex. if I wanted an Icelandic documentary/TV show, I'd literally see people I knew from my time there who treated me really badly) so I just shelved it out of bad feelings.
Until now!!
Re: Sorry for spamming
If you don't mind my asking, what's made you decide to pick up Icelandic again now? (Since it sounds from your journal like you have a lot of other languages on your plate.) And what are your goals for it?
Re: Sorry for spamming
Anyway. I never intended to completely give up on Icelandic, partially because I do actually like it and partially because I'd feel terrible knowing I "wasted" years of my life studying it and that I'd be proving everyone right that "No foreigner can learn Icelandic", "Icelandic is useless", and the exchange-student cliché of "as soon as you leave the country you forget the entire language"... It's sort of a self-challenge to finally master this monster haha. I'm at a point in my other languages where I don't really have to study all that much anymore - Japanese is my newest and weakest language (in reading) and yet now I can read novels and do everyday-life stuff, so it doesn't seem like I have a REAL "language-learning" project anymore. So it's time to pick up an old one I think.
With all my languages, ideally I'll eventually get to the same level as a native speaker. It just depends on the language with how hard I try for it, like Swedish and Icelandic (maybe Icelandic'd be more pressing if I had Icelandic friends to talk to) I really don't care "when" reaching that level happens but with Japanese I want it to happen ASAP haha.
In general my weakest language is actually Chinook Jargon but considering it only has like 1,000 words in its vocabulary, if I tried really hard I could be fluent in 2 weeks so it doesn't really count lol. I was thinking that after Japanese I might try Russian, Korean, Chinese or something but I don't really care about those languages/cultures and they're "normal" languages so they're not so easy, so I think I'd drop them really fast... I dunno. Maybe we can learn Russian together too haha.
Re: Sorry for spamming
I was thinking that after Japanese I might try Russian, Korean, Chinese or something but I don't really care about those languages/cultures and they're "normal" languages so they're not so easy, so I think I'd drop them really fast... I dunno.
Doesn't sound like you're particularly keen on any of them, to be honest. Personally I'm less into the pure linguistics side of language learning (though it does interest me) and much more motivated by interest in specific countries, histories or cultures. Though sometimes I think I'm just learning in order to have an excuse to buy more books! There's a surprising amount that I'm really keen on reading in Icelandic, given that it has a relatively small publishing output. Then French is obviously one of the world's great languages for literature and culture, plus I'm keen on cycling and French is one of the key languages of the sport. With Russia, I've recently fallen in love with the history/culture and I've always been interested in the literature, so it seems an obvious next step.
After that, I tell myself that I would rest content, but I probably wouldn't!
Re: Sorry for spamming
So ex. I like Vladimir Nabokov and that makes me want to learn Russian, but outside of that I don't have an interest in Russia. If I were to learn Russian I'm sure I'd find various interesting things but it'd just be a side-effect. Or, I think learning Greenlandic would really open up my brain a lot for the next languages I learn so I want to learn that (but can't really since I'm dirt poor).
If you ever do go to live in Iceland I extremely strongly suggest living anywhere that's not the capital, which is full of foreigner-hate (or just discrimination) and general bad attitude and stuff like that.
I've never liked any romance language(s so far), I know Esperanto but that's out of convenience (the "brain-expanding" thing) and it's only "romance" in the sense of the very basic words anyway.