This title includes a book and 2 CDs. A small volcanic island just south of the Arctic Circle, lceland is a place of fierce natural beauty and warmly hospitable people. Glaciers and fjords punctuate the coastline while geysers, waterfalls and hot springs dot the interior, harnessed by Icelanders to provide geothermal and hydropower energy. The island itself is composed primarily of basalt, or cooled lava. Icelandic retains ancient characteristics that today have been lost by most Western European languages. A North Germanic language related to Faroese, it is grammatically comparable to Latin or Ancient Greek, but is most closely linked to Old Norse. Written Icelandic has changed very little since the 13th century. Icelanders take the preservation of their language very seriously, and are immensely proud of the fact that the 800-year old sagas can still be read today. "Beginner's Icelandic" contains 14 lessons structured to help the student traveller gain ease and familiarity with this noble language. The dialogues follow a variety of practical situations such as shopping, transportation, discussing the weather, eating in restaurants, and renting a car or a room, while building on the grammar, vocabulary and phrases learned in previous exercises. The audio CDs follow the dialogues on the page, so that the student benefits from seeing the script while simultaneously hearing the pronunciation. A glossary of words and colloquialisms rounds out this remarkable introduction to a unique language.
Beginner's Icelandic (Hippocrene Beginner's)
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41 of 42 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Looks Good...,
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This review is from: Beginner's Icelandic (Hippocrene Beginner's) (Paperback)
Finally! I've been waiting for this book forever--Hippocrene really took their time with this one (from announcement to date of release). Let me start by saying that I have not worked through this entire book yet (I haven't had it that long). So, my review will just give you a general overview of what to expect.
Beginner's Icelandic conforms to Hippocrene's `Beginner Series' (the newer ones) format, which has been quite good, in my opinion. It is similar in form (and pedagogy) to Beginner's Norwegian, Beginner's Swedish, and Beginner's Danish. You get the book and two CD's. The book has a brief cultural intro, pronunciation guide, 14 lessons, a two-way glossary, and a CD track list. The lessons generally consist of two dialogs, a vocabulary list, a phrase list, a grammar/structure/function section, and a few exercises. The dialogs are FULLY transcribed into English (thank you, Hippocrene!), which saves so much time (not having to thumb back and forth from dictionary to dialog). The vocabulary lists could have been typeset into columns a bit better, but at least they are there! For a beginner's book, the grammar sections look to be a substantial intro to Icelandic's quite formidable grammar, but primarily stick with present tense on the verbs. As is the case with most all language books published within the last 20 years, the exercises are a bit skimpy, but they look to be good solid drilling rather than the `fluff' that many texts attempt to pass off as practice these days. The CD's have an extensive intro to the alphabet, diphthongs, pronunciation of vowels, double consonants, stress, and length of vowels. Good stuff. After these guides, there is very little wasted time in English. You get the dialogs (full speed, then slower speed on some), and the vocabulary/expression lists. There are probably some dialogs skipped somewhere along the way (I've noticed this on other Beginner's Series CD's) to keep it down to two CD's. But what is there is great--good quality audio, clear speaking, no distracting background noise, and fairly pleasant voices. As for Icelandic: although it's a member of the North Germanic family along with Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Faroese, etc, and although you hear that `North Germanic' sound to an extent, it is quite a bit more `exotic' sounding than its cousins. It brings to mind a touch of the sounds of Irish Gaelic and Russian. To me, Icelandic is one of the most beautiful languages, if not the most beautiful (of any I've heard). On the other hand, Icelandic grammar is significantly more difficult than it's cousin languages, so be prepared for that. As I get further into the book (I'm polishing my Norwegian right now) I will add to this review any annoying tendencies that present themselves. But, truthfully, it looks to be a good solid introduction from what I've seen so far... provided you are willing to put in the study time--and you WILL need to put in study time with Icelandic. :-) Good luck with this beautiful language!
19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A little disappointing,
By Ceallaigh "40 year linguist" (Everett, WA USA) - See all my reviews
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Beginner's Icelandic (Hippocrene Beginner's) (Paperback)
I agree with the other reviewers for the most part. Yes, more exercises would benefit this particular title. Icelandic is a very conservative language, linguistically speaking - very archaic. Grammar drills are very important, and I have made it a practice, when learning languages like Icelandic, to develop my own drills. Continuous practice in drilling the noun, adjective, and verbal patterns is a must in order to conjugate verbs and decline nouns quickly and accurately when speaking. The main disappointment I had with this book is that it doesn't teach the past tense of verbs. This little bit of information is only cited in the beginning of the book near the end of the introduction. While it does have some instances of past tense sentences, it was intentionally not included as part of the course. So, if you're speaking of the future or present. If you want to talk about the past, perhaps some creativity will be required.
18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A good start,
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Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Beginner's Icelandic (Hippocrene Beginner's) (Paperback)
I'm only about halfway through this--I just started on the second CD today. I would heartily second the other reviewer's comments. The book is well-structured, and introduces the tricky Icelandic grammar in small bites so it isn't overwhelming. I, too, would like more exercises, but that seems to be the modern method. Older books I've seen have LOTS of exercises, but no answer key, which kind of defeats the purpose unless you're in a class.
Pronunciation is a real issue in Icelandic. It's not at all intuitive ('á' is pronounced 'ow', while 'au' is pronounced 'oy', just to give you an idea). So I find myself going back to the first CD over and over, just to listen. The dialogs are more entertaining than is often the case, with a sort of story being played out. And yes, a couple of the chapters have two dialogs, and the second one is never on the recording. But any new words are included in the recording of the vocab list. This is a good, solid introduction to Icelandic. You won't achieve full fluency, but you can't really expect that in 14 lessons, now, can you?
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