Customer Reviews

Teach Yourself Icelandic Complete Course

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(13)

 

 

People have said this book is poor for beginners and for those who don't learn languages by learning difficult grammar right from the start. I've used it; they're completely right. Unfortunately, the pedantically outdated and pathetically small vocabulary also makes it difficult for people that know other languages as well, even similar inflectional languages (i.e. languages dependent heavily on grammatical forms).

This book, by trying to satisfy everyone's needs, ends up satisfying nobody's needs. For proof, just consider the first chapter. It describes the 8 forms each for approx. 10 different kinds of nouns all at once, and the vocabulary is so small that there's no way to practice all those forms anyway, even if all this could justifiably be covered in 5 pages!

Look for another book. They're few and far between, that's for sure. I would seriously recommend contacting Iceland directly. Try Iceland's biggest bookstore with web site http://www.mm.is/default2.htm for instance. From living here in Reykjavík, I can tell you the selection is much much greater than you can find anywhere else. Ask about "Icelandic for Beginners," with or without the cassette tape, if you are not a grammatical juggernaut. An intermediate but very well written book is also the possibly out-of-print "Course in Modern Icelandic." It was definitely my "best value" language resource, although I caution that you have to start with an easier text first. Stefan Einarson's "Icelandic: Grammar, Texts, Glossary" is also excellent, although only for reference. It was written during WWII and the exercise vocabularies are mostly 'pastoral' e.g. 'farm,' 'sure-footed horse,' or obsolete, teaching you the outdated word for "radio," for example. This last one's only for the ultraserious and only for looking up all the minute, beautiful details of Icelandic.

Anyway, have fun. Remember that it is very difficult to be even conversational in Icelandic if you don't know another Nordic language or grammatically heavy language like Russian. In that case it will take a lot of time to learn. I knew four other languages before I came here, and I still thought learning Icelandic was difficult. But it was very rewarding indeed, and if you invest enough time I'm sure you'll agree.

All of the reviews for this book seem to be directed at the previous edition, written by P.J. Glendenning. As most of them correctly point out, that edition was woefully out of date, and not a particularly useful book for a student interested in learning conversational Icelandic.

As a student of Icelandic for quite some time, I'm aware of how difficult it is to find materials worthy of recommendation. The new edition by Hildur Jonsdottir is just such a book, vastly superior to the earlier editions. It follows the new Teach Yourself style of introducing the language through conversation rather than rote grammar memorization. It starts with useful greetings and moves on to everyday conversation smoothly, introducing the necessary grammer gradually and naturally.

If you need to learn Icelandic, this seems like a very reasonable aid. Don't let all the negative reviews for the old edition scare you away from this new one.

Although Glendening's book is full of useful grammatical information, this book is not very user-friendly. The shortage of Icelandic learning materials will naturally guide an eager learner to this book, and the book is fine and serves a purpose. Compared with some of the other materials that are widely available this book is among the best. I would suggest, however, some texts and materials that are available in Iceland and which are used in the degree program for Icelandic language designed for foreigners at the University of Iceland (mostly written by U of Iceland faculty and published by the university). One book that is good for basics and provides explanatory information is Icelandic for Beginners by Stanislaw Jan Bartoszek and Anh-Dao Tran. It comes with a cassette and is a great place to start learning Icelandic. In the meantime, however, Glendening's efforts are to be applauded. The book provides a lot of information but just is not very accessible. One bonus, though, if you can get past the layout of the book, is that it is affordable, unlike a lot of materials.

It says on the back of this book that it's "invaluable both to the absolute beginner and the student of Icelandic literature and its culture."

Unless you're a very academically-minded beginner, I don't think this is true at all. This book assumes that you already understand something of the way Icelandic works. And it assumes that you know ENGLISH grammar pretty well. If you don't, you might want to get a book on English grammar at the same time so you know what this book is talking about.

This was the first Icelandic book I bought, and at first I discarded it as useless. Then I spent some time with Daisy Neimann's 'Colloquial Icelandic' and came back to this one when I felt a little more comfortable with the basics. Now it starts to make sense.

It's a bit like a school book, but I think useful for those fairly tedious taks that you can't avoid, like learning how to decline nouns, adjectives, prepositions...

Having said that, it does seem old fashioned. The long list of idioms near the back are full of archaic phrases that seem a pointless inclusion. I notice that the letter 'z', abolished by the Icelanders some time ago, also makes an appearance throughout this book.

I am not very pleased with this book. It is essentially all grammar-translation, with very little emphasis placed on being able to speak the language. I would prefer to know how to greet people and count, then be able able to translate: "Now the clergyman has come to find the father" into Icelandic. Also, not enough information is given in the lessons to be able to complete the exercises at the end of each lesson. I do not recommend this book, in fact I regret having bought it.

This book is old school in a bad way. There's no possible way that you could learn how to speak Icelandic through this book. For example, he teaches you all 47 prepositions at one time...without any real practice for them. He also teaches you the formal forms for "you", which aren't used anymore...it's just outdated...horribly outdated.

Having been to Iceland and wanting to return, I decided to explore the Icelandic language. I wanted to learn basic conversational and written Icelandic, and that is exactly the subject of this book. It should be obvious, but let me say it clearly: this is not an easy exercise. This book is also available with practice recordings to listen to, and while more expensive, I highly recommend spending the extra money. Trying to flip back and forth between the pronunciation keys and the exercises was often laborious.

The book itself is very fast paced, and my biggest issue with it is that it presupposes a strong grasp of grammar and parts of speech, and quickly rushes into things like nominative, dative, accusative, and genitive forms, obscure rules about irregular forms varying by gender (Icelandic has masculine, feminine, and neuter), and some extremely unwieldy tenses and verb conjugations, which combined with the Icelandic alphabet and unusual pronunciations, make this a very challenging book. As an example, on page 121 she discusses plurals of feminine nouns with this passage: "It should be pointed out that the genitive plural form of some weak feminine nouns is very seldom used and many native speakers of Icelandic have problems deciding whether to use the ending -na or -a." If native speakers don't find this useful, perhaps it could be edited from a book for beginning students of Icelandic. My point here is not that the book is bad; it just is a bit advanced for absolute beginners.

On the positive side, the book is current and topical with discussions of modern technology, web pages, and e-mail addresses ("netfang"), which given the predisposition of Icelanders to be early adopters of technology, is a very useful feature.

Jonsdottir picked an extremely difficult and complex subject to tackle in a 216 page book, but attempts to cover the myriad of complicated rules and grammar issues completely. Her explanations of things like the u-umlaut vowel change rule, and pronunciation and grammar tips are good overall, although there are a couple of places where editing could have helped (for instance there is an exercise asking the reader to tell time on page 64, while the lesson teaching how to tell time starts on page 69.)

The book claims to move at "an energetic pace," and that is a vast understatement. Despite my toils with this book, I recommend it overall with the understanding that is not the equivalent of "Icelandic for Dummies" (which I wish existed), but is a challenging introduction to Icelandic which will definitely make you think. I recommend augmenting this with Icelandic language CDs or tapes. As for me, I eventually hope to attend the one month Icelandic summer program at the University of Iceland for native English speakers.

Good luck!

I think this book has been updated since the edition from P.J.T. Glendening; I am unfamiliar with the later edition(s), so will restrict my comments to the Glendening book, lest someone make the same mistake I did, and become tempted by a great price.

I assumed, admittedly with some arrogance, that the negative comments for this book were simply due to the fact that some readers had attempted to tackle a complex, archaic, and highly inflected language, and came away with their fingers burned. Since I have studied similarly complex languages like Gothic and Russian, I reasoned, I will find this book easy going. I have also studied languages (Danish and Attic Greek) using old textbooks and pedagogical methods, and so was comfortable with that as well.

The Glendening book, however, is simply sadistic. I'm not much on conspiracy theories, but I can almost believe that his (her?) purpose was to intimidate and frighten away students of Icelandic.

Chapter One introduces strong masculine nouns of Type 1a; six irregular masculine nouns which must be memorized in all forms; three Types of strong feminine nouns; and two Types of strong neuter nouns. These are presented in singular and plural in all cases (nominative, genitive, dative, and accusative) - so, eight distinct forms per noun. Since Icelandic words can have extensive vowel modifications based on a number of factors, these are quite a few forms to digest in a single lesson. To give a final twist of the knife, Glendening includes an exercise in categorizing nouns by gender and Type. In one's first lesson in Icelandic, how could someone possibly know, for example, that "foss" is masculine Type 1 and "hross" is neuter Type 1?

Chapter Two gives the student the weak nouns, as well as the definite article, in all three genders and all four cases. Chapter Three gives about 47 prepositions, some governed by (followed by in a specific case) Genitive, others by Dative, some by Accusative, and some by either Dative or Accusative, depending upon usage. In all languages I have studied, 3-4 prepositions are introduced per lesson, but Glendening, it seems, has given them all in this lesson. Jumping ahead, Chapter Five gives 17 irregular verbs in all persons (1st, 2nd, and 3rd), numbers (singular and plural), four tenses (present & past indicative, present & past subjunctive), as well as the infinitive, supine (whatever that is - not explained until much later), and present participle - 27 separate forms, per verb.

The exercises seem designed for failure rather than success and building confidence and experience with the forms encountered in the lessons. Vocabulary and expressions are encountered from future lessons or no lesson at all; some words are not even in the glossary, as an extra guarantee of failure. Since I don't like to move on to the next lesson until I have mastered the current lesson, much frustration ensued when I tried to use this book.

I could go on, but I think my point has been made. If you want to study written Icelandic, although admittedly in an old-fashioned form, try Stefan Einarsson's book. I have used it with great success, and pleasure. If you want to study modern, colloquial Icelandic, look beyond this book - there seem to be several highly rated options on Amazon.

This book is not like the other fine books of the Teach Yourself series, as it has not been revised like the other language books have. If you want to learn Icelandic this book will not really help you to do so, it has a difficult layout and is not geared toward learning to speak & understand. It's really only a good book for linguists interested in Icelandic grammar. TY books really should publish a newer edition.

While this book may be reasonable for linguists or people with extensive experience with Scandinavian languages, it is virtually intractable for newcomers to the field. Grammatical concepts are merely sketched with little or no explanation. The pronunciation guide is extremely cumbersome, listing phonetic symbols without clearly telling students which Icelandic letters represent which sounds. Translation exercises require grammatical concepts before they have been introduced in the text and the glossary is woefully incomplete. Definitely NOT a text for beginners!