Thread: þ and ð

English should have kept these. I think only Icelandic still retains them.

[quote=TATY]English should have kept these. I think only Icelandic still retains them.

Tor

I think should have them still too. ^_^
They're pretty.

Originally Posted by kalinka_vinnie

Tor

No, that can't be. An Icelandic friend of mine told me that they still use the old Viking dialect and hence still pronounce the "H" sounds.

did English used to have a letter for sh?

More likely to be the other way around, Danish coming from Icelandic.

It is the oldest form of any Germanic language surviving today. It is a member of the North Germanic, or Scandinavian, group of the Germanic subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages. Spoken chiefly in Iceland, where it is the official language, it stems from Old Norse, the language of the Vikings who settled the island in the 9th century.
Icelandic is one of the parent languages of English, but, unlike English, it has changed very little since the ninth century. Modern Icelandic has changed so little from its parent language, Old Norse, in the course of the centuries that Icelanders today read the Eddas and sagas of Old Norse literature more easily than speakers of English read Shakespeare. http://iaa.asn.au/en/is_language.htm
http://icct.info/litlang.html

Icelandic has evolved mostly from Norwegian settlers... And since I speak all Scandinavian languages , (better or worse) (including finnish) I can still easily understand some icelandic. For example in the recent rush around Bobby Fischer getting refuge in Iceland, he utterd the
sentence which translates to Icelandic: "L

[quote=Zhenya]Icelandic has evolved mostly from Norwegian settlers... And since I speak all Scandinavian languages , (better or worse) (including finnish) I can still easily understand some icelandic. For example in the recent rush around Bobby Fischer getting refuge in Iceland, he utterd the
sentence which translates to Icelandic: "L

Icelandic names are cool. A person's surname is just a patronymic, but unlike the other Scandanavian langauges, they do them properly:

Benediiktsson (Son of Benediikt)
Benediiktsd

Icelandic names are cool. A person's surname is just a patronymic, but unlike the other Scandanavian langauges, they do them properly:

Yes! hehe, like "Lena Einarsson"

You might of understood Bobby Fisher speak Icelandic, but I guarantee you that you will not understand a person from Iceland speak Icelandic. I am a native Norwegian and spent time in Iceland, and man did I not understand a thing!!!

hehe, HE didn't say anything on icelandic, but there was text with icelandic translation...And I DO understand some...words, and sentences here and there