Customer Reviews

Teach Yourself Icelandic Complete Course Audiopack

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If you're traveling to the land of glaciers and geysers and want to learn practical Icelandic before the trip, this book/CD set is just what you need. Unlike other many other Icelandic courses that tend to throw tons of declension and conjugation paradigms at their readers, Jonsdottir's work presents all grammatical material in immediately-useful and up-to-date structures (conversations and exercises). Noun and adjective declensions are presented gradually, and tons of serviceable vocabulary pervade the book's 16 chapters. Although perhaps not as grammatically rigorous as some other English texts on learning Icelandic, the book covers all the necessary grammar for correct modern speech, and the set serves well its purpose of teaching basic-to-intermediate communication in Icelandic to speakers of English. The accompanying CD's are indispensable, and the actors' voices and their pronunciations thereon are perfectly clear.

This is an excellent resource for those who want to learn the language of the Icelanders. I am very impressed at the tight relationship between the book and the CD's. Lessons on the CD follow exactly those in the book.

After only using this course for a month, I already have a greater understanding of the cases of words (nominative, accusative, dative and genitive) than I ever had in 3 years of studying German. The course materials naturally flow from basic conversation (What is your name? My name is....) into more and more complex sentences, and explain in-depth the case changes as they become relevant.

If I had one recommendation for this course, I would suggest more time within the CD lessons to repeat what has been said in Icelandic. There is very little space given to practice saying the words on your own, and you may find you need to manually pause the CD in order to say the words. Since the CD lessons are conversational, this can become frustrating over time.

My husband is Icelandic, and unfortunately this book was NO help at all... It's perfectly fine for the traveller, but in trying to live everyday life, conversing with new family members forget it. I would have liked to have seen a more comprehensive grammatical section, something that was laid out in something easy to look at and understand. If you are quite serious about learning this language I would honestly recommend saving the 20 bucks and buying the bit more expensive Colloquial Icelandic. For me at least, it's quite easier to understand, has complete grammatical charts in the back, as well as a fairly decent dictionary... Again, if you are only learning for business trips and such, then this would be a good option... For those of us actually moving there, her book is not so good...

I've had a fascination with Icelandic for a while now, and I've tried many books. The Colloquial books suck. period, the end. Don't buy the Colloquial Icelandic book. They just MENTION case very late in the book, and just throw a giant chart at you and have only ONE exercise.

This book is jsut the opposite. It gently introduces the topic of case at the beginning, and it is discussed throughout the entire book. The CDs are excellent. Icelandic is a hard langauge, and not learnable in one book, but this book gets you pretty darn close.

Great language pack. Not only is it useful to teach basic Icelandic; but also great for those studying Old Norse for either a hobby or a religious language (Asatru, Heathni, etc.)

The two languages are similar so it should not be all that difficult. Also great for reading Newspapers on the web in Icelandic.

Over all, a great product from a company that knows language.

I've always been a fan of the Nordic languages and now Hildur Jónsdóttir brings his experience from teaching at the University of Cambridge through this nice and concise book. The course takes you through a conversational route and subtly introduces grammar concepts as you go along. The book definitely glues the information to your head. It lacks grammar summary charts in the back, which are in most language books, but I don't take too much off for that since you learn it as you go along anyways. My main problem with the course is the CD's, though the speaking is very clear, there is too much English; They say a sentence in Icelandic and then translate it in English. It'd be nice if they thought enough of their course to let you translate on your own as you go along, instead they ruin it for you by giving you the translation right after each sentence, or they could just give you side by side translation as in Laura Žiūkaite-Hansen's Beginner's Norwegian. In any case, for the price tag you just can't complain.

I have not completed this course yet, but I have looked ahead. This is an excellent resource to start learning Icelandic. It starts out with pronounciation and works you through simple questions like What is your name? to more complex sentences and words. Cases and gender are introduced right at the beginning.This is a great resource and I recommend it for those who want to start learning Icelandic.

The Icelandic learning program is well-presented and well-written. The dialogues are concise and aidful enough to allow the learner to understand the language much easily. The audio CDs is a must for the program as this is a language which requires careful listening and imitation of the sounds.
Overall, the vocab. is sufficient and the grammar tools provide a great feedback on allowing the learner to either have a thorough knowledge or the language or learn it all together.

This is a good course for the more technically minded student. It starts simply and gives more in depth information with each chapter.

It focuses a lot on the grammar, cases and declension of Icelandic and is perhaps more suited to someone who has already studied a language besides english (I am a German speaker).

It gives a good understanding of how Icelandic works as a language and the CDs help a lot with pronounciation and understanding the spoken language.

I've liked the book a lot. It is well written and comprehensive.
Myself, speaking fluent Swedish and a little Nynorsk, I found it very helpful!