German declension is the paradigm that German uses to define all the ways articles, adjectives and sometimes nouns can change their form to reflect their role in the sentence: subject, object, etc. Declension allows speakers to mark a difference between subjects, direct objects, indirect objects and possessives by changing the form of the word—and/or its associated article—instead of indicating this meaning through word order or prepositions (e.g. English , Spanish , French ). As a result, German can take a much more fluid approach to word order without the meaning being obscured. In English, a simple sentence must be written in strict word order (ex. A man eats an apple). This sentence cannot be expressed in any other word order than how it is written here without changing the meaning. A translation of the same sentence from German to English would appear rather different (ex. "Ein Mann isst einen Apfel" (a man)-subject eats (an apple)-direct object) and can be expressed with a variety of word order (ex. "Einen Apfel isst ein Mann" (an apple)-direct object is eaten by (a man)-subject) with little or no change in meaning.
52-399: Opposition (10) The Reykjavík City Council ( Icelandic: Borgarstjórn Reykjavíkur ) is the local council for Reykjavík , the capital and largest city of Iceland. It is composed of 23 members elected by proportional representation for a 4-year term The Council appoints a mayor and committees under its authority responsible for the daily operations of the city government. Meetings of
104-517: A reflexive pronoun instead. The case of the pronoun depends on the case that the verb governs. As for further classification of verbs, Icelandic behaves much like other Germanic languages, with a main division between weak verbs and strong, and the strong verbs, of which there are about 150 to 200, are divided into six classes plus reduplicative verbs. The basic word order in Icelandic is subject–verb–object . However, as words are heavily inflected,
156-401: A West Scandinavian language. Icelandic is derived from an earlier language Old Norse , which later became Old Icelandic and currently Modern Icelandic. The division between old and modern Icelandic is said to be before and after 1540. East Germanic languages West Germanic languages Icelandic Faroese Norwegian Danish Swedish Around 900 CE, the language spoken in
208-433: A historical or a formalistic view: -a , -i , and -ur , referring to the endings that these verbs take when conjugated in the first person singular present. Almost all Icelandic verbs have the ending -a in the infinitive, some with á , two with u ( munu , skulu ) one with o ( þvo : "wash") and one with e . Many transitive verbs (i.e. they require an object ), can take
260-722: A monophthong and adding either /i/ or /u/ to it. All the vowels can either be long or short; vowels in open syllables are long, and vowels in closed syllables are short. Icelandic retains many grammatical features of other ancient Germanic languages , and resembles Old Norwegian before much of its fusional inflection was lost. Modern Icelandic is still a heavily inflected language with four cases : nominative , accusative , dative and genitive . Icelandic nouns can have one of three grammatical genders : masculine, feminine or neuter. There are two main declension paradigms for each gender: strong and weak nouns , and these are further divided into subclasses of nouns, based primarily on
312-403: A protectionist language culture, however, this is deep-rooted ideologically primarily in relation to the forms of the language, while Icelanders in general seem to be more pragmatic as to domains of language use. Since the late 16th century, discussion has been ongoing on the purity of the Icelandic language. The bishop Oddur Einarsson wrote in 1589 that the language has remained unspoiled since
364-599: A result, the Irish language has had some influence on both Faroese and Icelandic. The oldest preserved texts in Icelandic were written around 1100. Many of the texts are based on poetry and laws traditionally preserved orally. The most famous of the texts, which were written in Iceland from the 12th century onward, are the sagas of Icelanders , which encompass the historical works and the Poetic Edda . The language of
416-647: A standard established in the 19th century, primarily by the Danish linguist Rasmus Rask . It is based strongly on an orthography laid out in the early 12th century by a document referred to as the First Grammatical Treatise by an anonymous author, who has later been referred to as the First Grammarian. The later Rasmus Rask standard was a re-creation of the old treatise, with some changes to fit concurrent Germanic conventions, such as
468-515: Is a North Germanic language from the Indo-European language family spoken by about 314,000 people, the vast majority of whom live in Iceland , where it is the national language. Since it is a West Scandinavian language , it is most closely related to Faroese , western Norwegian dialects , and the extinct language Norn . It is not mutually intelligible with the continental Scandinavian languages ( Danish , Norwegian , and Swedish ) and
520-442: Is as shown in the following table: Examples: Euer is slightly irregular: when it has an ending, its stem may be reduced to eur- , e.g. dative masculine eurem (also euerem ). Only the following nouns are declined according to case: There is a dative singular marking -e associated with strong masculine or neuter nouns, e.g. der Tod and das Bad , but this is rarely regarded as a required ending in contemporary usage, with
572-563: Is currently considered archaic and is used only in certain archaic expressions like "ich bedarf seiner" (I need him). This is not to be confused with possessive adjectives . Note that unlike in English, "er" and "sie" can refer to any masculine or feminine noun, not just persons, while "es" can refer to a person described by a neuter noun: "das Kind, es..."; "das Mädchen, es..." Possessive pronouns are treated as articles in German and decline
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#1732782328363624-532: Is distinguished by a wide assortment of irregular declensions. Icelandic vocabulary is also deeply conservative, with the country's language regulator maintaining an active policy of coining terms based on older Icelandic words rather than directly taking in loanwords from other languages. Aside from the 300,000 Icelandic speakers in Iceland, Icelandic is spoken by about 8,000 people in Denmark, 5,000 people in
676-583: Is equivalent to the French pronoun on . Predicate adjectives (e.g. kalt in mir ist kalt "I am cold") are undeclined. Strong adjective declension is used when: Here is an example. Note that the ending for genitive masculine and neuter is -en . This is a source of confusion for learners, who typically assume it is -es , and also native speakers, who interpret the pronouns called der-words ( Der-Wort ), for example jed- , as adjectives with no article, to be declined strongly. Weak adjective declension
728-404: Is evident in general language discourses, in polls, and in other investigations into Icelandic language attitudes. The general consensus on Icelandic language policy has come to mean that language policy and language ideology discourse are not predominantly state or elite driven; but rather, remain the concern of lay people and the general public. The Icelandic speech community is perceived to have
780-511: Is more distinct from the most widely spoken Germanic languages, English and German . The written forms of Icelandic and Faroese are very similar, but their spoken forms are not mutually intelligible . The language is more conservative than most other Germanic languages. While most of them have greatly reduced levels of inflection (particularly noun declension ), Icelandic retains a four- case synthetic grammar (comparable to German , though considerably more conservative and synthetic) and
832-647: Is not very well known and because those Icelanders not proficient in the other Scandinavian languages often have a sufficient grasp of English to communicate with institutions in that language (although there is evidence that the general English skills of Icelanders have been somewhat overestimated). The Nordic countries have committed to providing services in various languages to each other's citizens, but this does not amount to any absolute rights being granted, except as regards criminal and court matters. All Icelandic stops are voiceless and are distinguished as such by aspiration . Stops are realised post-aspirated when at
884-458: Is sometimes possible to place the object at the front of a sentence for similar emphasis, as in: "Him I see, but I don't see John" . The table is the same as for relative pronouns . Reflexive pronouns are used when a subject and object are the same, as in Ich wasche mich "I wash myself". The pronoun man refers to a generic person, and is usually translated as one (or generic you ). It
936-555: Is still a conscious effort to create new words, especially for science and technology, with many societies publishing dictionaries, some with the help of The Icelandic Language Committee ( Íslensk málnefnd ). The Icelandic alphabet is notable for its retention of three old letters that no longer exist in the English alphabet : Þ, þ ( þorn , modern English "thorn"), Ð, ð ( eð , anglicised as "eth" or "edh") and Æ, æ (æsc, anglicised as "ash" or "asc"), with þ and ð representing
988-400: Is used when the article itself clearly indicates case, gender, and number. Source: Mixed adjective declension is used when there is a preceding indefinite article (e.g. ein- , kein- ), or possessive determiner ( mein- , dein- , ihr- , etc.). It is like the weak inflection, but in forms where the weak inflection has the ending -e , the mixed inflection replaces these with the forms of
1040-599: The Parliament in 2011, Icelandic is "the national language of the Icelandic people and the official language in Iceland"; moreover, "[p]ublic authorities shall ensure that its use is possible in all areas of Icelandic society". Iceland is a member of the Nordic Council , a forum for co-operation between the Nordic countries, but the council uses only Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish as its working languages (although
1092-501: The bishop and members of parliament . Early Icelandic vocabulary was largely Old Norse with a few words being Celtic from when Celts first settled in Iceland. The introduction of Christianity to Iceland in the 11th century brought with it a need to describe new religious concepts . The majority of new words were taken from other Scandinavian languages ; kirkja ("church"), for example. Numerous other languages have influenced Icelandic: French brought many words related to
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#17327823283631144-444: The genitive singular and nominative plural endings of a particular noun. For example, within the strong masculine nouns, there is a subclass (class 1) that declines with -s ( hests ) in the genitive singular and -ar ( hestar ) in the nominative plural. However, there is another subclass (class 3) of strong masculine nouns that always declines with -ar ( hlutar ) in the genitive singular and -ir ( hlutir ) in
1196-470: The voiceless and voiced "th" sounds (as in English thin and this ), respectively, and æ representing the diphthong /ai/ which does not exist in English. The complete Icelandic alphabet is: The letters with diacritics , such as á and ö , are for the most part treated as separate letters and not variants of their derivative vowels. The letter é officially replaced je in 1929, although it had been used in early manuscripts (until
1248-445: The 11th century, when the first texts were written on vellum . Modern speakers can understand the original sagas and Eddas which were written about eight hundred years ago. The sagas are usually read with updated modern spelling and footnotes, but otherwise are intact (as with recent English editions of Shakespeare's works). With some effort, many Icelanders can also understand the original manuscripts. According to an act passed by
1300-764: The 14th century) and again periodically from the 18th century. The letter z was formerly in the Icelandic alphabet, but it was officially removed in 1974, except in people's names. Ragnarsson, Baldur (1992). Mál og málsaga [ Language and language history ] (in Icelandic). Mál og Menning. ISBN 978-9979-3-0417-3 . German cases As a fusional language , German marks nouns , pronouns , articles , and adjectives to distinguish case , number , and gender . For example, all German adjectives have several different forms. The adjective neu (new), for example, can be written in five different ways (neue, neuer, neues, neuen, neuem) depending on
1352-462: The 16th century, especially in vowels (in particular, á , æ , au , and y / ý ). The letters -ý & -y lost their original meaning and merged with -í & -i in the period 1400 - 1600. Around the same time or a little earlier the letter -æ originally signifying a simple vowel, a type of open -e, formed into the double vowel -ai, a double vowel absent in the original Icelandic. The modern Icelandic alphabet has developed from
1404-619: The City Council take place on the first and third Tuesday of each month. According to Article 8 of Icelandic municipal laws, the Reykjavík Council is in charge of legislation regarding city affairs and the financial budget for implementation of projects. The council appoints a mayor who serves as the chief executive of the Reykjavik city council. The 2022 council elections were held on Saturday May 14. The results meant that
1456-416: The English "the". The indefinite articles ( ein , eine , etc.) correspond to English "a", "an". Note: ein is also a numeral which corresponds to English "one" (i.e. 1). Ein has no plural; as in English, the plural indefinite article is null, as in "There are cows in the field." ("Es gibt Kühe auf dem Felde."). Instead, the declension of the pronoun kein (no, not any, not one) is given, which follows
1508-602: The Faroes was Old Norse , which Norse settlers had brought with them during the time of the settlement of Faroe Islands ( landnám ) that began in 825. However, many of the settlers were not from Scandinavia , but descendants of Norse settlers in the Irish Sea region. In addition, women from Norse Ireland, Orkney , or Shetland often married native Scandinavian men before settling in the Faroe Islands and Iceland. As
1560-603: The United States, and more than 1,400 people in Canada, notably in the region known as New Iceland in Manitoba which was settled by Icelanders beginning in the 1880s. The state-funded Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies serves as a centre for preserving the medieval Icelandic manuscripts and studying the language and its literature. The Icelandic Language Council, comprising representatives of universities,
1612-432: The above examples, the conjugated verbs veit and fór are always the second element in their respective clauses. A distinction between formal and informal address ( T–V distinction ) had existed in Icelandic from the 17th century, but use of the formal variant weakened in the 1950s and rapidly disappeared. It no longer exists in regular speech, but may occasionally be found in pre-written speeches addressed to
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1664-591: The arts, journalists, teachers, and the Ministry of Culture, Science and Education , advises the authorities on language policy . Since 1995, on 16 November each year, the birthday of 19th-century poet Jónas Hallgrímsson is celebrated as Icelandic Language Day . Icelandic is an Indo-European language and belongs to the North Germanic group of the Germanic languages . Icelandic is further classified as
1716-408: The beginning of the word, but pre-aspirated when occurring within a word. Scholten (2000 , p. 22) includes three extra phones: [ʔ l̥ˠ lˠ] . Word-final voiced consonants are devoiced pre-pausally, so that dag ('day (acc.)') is pronounced as [ˈtaːx] and dagur ('day (nom.)') is pronounced [ˈtaːɣʏr̥] . Icelandic has 8 monophthongs and 5 diphthongs. The diphthongs are created by taking
1768-505: The council does publish material in Icelandic). Under the Nordic Language Convention , since 1987 Icelandic citizens have had the right to use Icelandic when interacting with official bodies in other Nordic countries, without becoming liable for any interpretation or translation costs. The convention covers visits to hospitals, job centres, the police, and social security offices. It does not have much effect since it
1820-502: The court and knightship; words in the semantic field of trade and commerce have been borrowed from Low German because of trade connections. In the late 18th century, linguistic purism began to gain noticeable ground in Iceland and since the early 19th century it has been the linguistic policy of the country. Nowadays, it is common practice to coin new compound words from Icelandic derivatives. Icelandic personal names are patronymic (and sometimes matronymic ) in that they reflect
1872-522: The exception of fossilized phrases, such as zum Tode verurteilt ("sentenced to death"), or titles of creative works, e.g. Venus im Bade ("Venus in the Bath"): In these cases, the omission of the ending would be unusual. It also retains a certain level of productivity in poetry and music where it may be used to help with meter and rhyme, as well as in extremely elevated prose (such as might be found on memorial plaques). The genitive case for personal pronouns
1924-439: The exclusive use of k rather than c . Various archaic features, such as the letter ð , had not been used much in later centuries. Rask's standard constituted a major change in practice. Later 20th-century changes include the use of é instead of je and the replacement of z with s in 1974. Apart from the addition of new vocabulary, written Icelandic has not changed substantially since
1976-626: The gender of the noun that it modifies, whether the noun is singular or plural, and the role of the noun in the sentence. English lacks such declinations (except for rare and exceptional ones, such as blond/blonde) so that adjectives take only one form, or in the case of pronouns, such as I, me, my, mine, she, her, etc., which show the remnants of nominative, accusative, and genitive case markings. Modern High German distinguishes between four cases— nominative , accusative , genitive , and dative —and three grammatical genders —feminine, masculine, and neuter. Nouns may also be either singular or plural ; in
2028-422: The immediate father or mother of the child and not the historic family lineage. This system, which was formerly used throughout the Nordic area and beyond, differs from most Western systems of family name . In most Icelandic families, the ancient tradition of patronymics is still in use; i.e. a person uses their father's name (usually) or mother's name (increasingly in recent years) in the genitive form followed by
2080-639: The middle voice is a voice or simply an independent class of verbs of its own, as every middle-voice verb has an active-voice ancestor, but sometimes with drastically different meaning, and the middle-voice verbs form a conjugation group of their own. Examples are koma ("come") vs. komast ("get there"), drepa ("kill") vs. drepast ("perish ignominiously") and taka ("take") vs. takast ("manage to"). Verbs have up to ten tenses, but Icelandic, like English, forms most of them with auxiliary verbs . There are three or four main groups of weak verbs in Icelandic, depending on whether one takes
2132-418: The morpheme -son ("son") or -dóttir ("daughter") in lieu of family names. In 2019, changes were announced to the laws governing names. Icelanders who are officially registered with non-binary gender will be permitted to use the suffix -bur ("child of") instead of -son or -dóttir . A core theme of Icelandic language ideologies is grammatical, orthographic and lexical purism for Icelandic. This
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2184-445: The nominative plural. Additionally, Icelandic permits a quirky subject , that is, certain verbs have subjects in an oblique case (i.e. other than the nominative). Nouns, adjectives and pronouns are declined in the four cases and for number in the singular and plural. Verbs are conjugated for tense , mood , person , number and voice . There are three voices: active, passive and middle (or medial), but it may be debated whether
2236-496: The plural by adding -n : die Reisen ("the journeys"). Many neuter or masculine nouns ending in a consonant, like das Blatt or der Baum ("the leaf" and "the tree") form plurals by a change of vowel and appending -er or -e : die Blätter and die Bäume ("the leaves", "the trees"). Historically, these and several further plural inflections recall the noun declension classes of Proto-Germanic , but in much reduced form. The definite articles ( der , die , etc.) correspond to
2288-407: The plural paradigm. Certain adjectival pronouns also decline like der : all- , dies- , jed- , jen- , manch- , solch- , welch- . These are called der -words ( Der-Wort ). The general declension pattern is as shown in the following table: Examples: Adjectival possessive pronouns (or possessive determiners ) and kein decline similarly to the article ein . The general declension pattern
2340-440: The plural, one declension is used regardless of gender – meaning that plural can be treated as a fourth "gender" for the purposes of declining articles and adjectives. However, the nouns themselves retain several ways of forming plurals which often, but not always, correspond with the word's gender and structure in the singular. For example, many feminine nouns which, in the singular, end in e , like die Reise ("the journey"), form
2392-1297: The previous ruling coalition (S+C+P+V) lost its majority. The Progressive Party had the largest increase in votes, going from 0 to 4 council seats. Unofficial talks about forming new coalitions started on Monday May 16 and the negotiations were expected to last up to a few weeks. Majority Majority Majority Majority Majority Majority Majority Majority Majority Majority Majority Majority Majority Majority 11. June 2006 – 16. October 2007 Majority 24. January 2008 – 21. August 2008 Majority 21. August 2008 – 29. maí 2010 Majority 16. October 2006 – 24. January 2008 Majority 24. January 2008 – 21. August 2008 Majority 16. October 2006 – 24. January 2008 Majority 16. October 2006 – 24. January 2008 Majority 11. June 2006 – 16. October 2007 Majority 16. October 2006 – 24. January 2008 Majority 21. August 2008 – 29. maí 2010 Majority Majority Majority Majority Majority Majority Majority Majority Majority Majority Majority Majority Majority Majority Icelandic language Icelandic ( / aɪ s ˈ l æ n d ɪ k / eyess- LAN -dik ; endonym : íslenska , pronounced [ˈistlɛnska] )
2444-464: The sagas is Old Icelandic , a western dialect of Old Norse . The Dano-Norwegian , then later Danish rule of Iceland from 1536 to 1918 had little effect on the evolution of Icelandic (in contrast to the Norwegian language), which remained in daily use among the general population. Though more archaic than the other living Germanic languages, Icelandic changed markedly in pronunciation from the 12th to
2496-443: The same way as kein ; see Indefinite article above. These may be used in place of personal pronouns to provide emphasis, as in the sentence "Den sehe ich" ("I see that "). Also note the word ordering: den corresponds to "that", and ich corresponds to "I". Placing the object at the beginning of the sentence places emphasis on it. English, as a generally non-declined language, does not normally show similar behavior, although it
2548-544: The strong inflection (shown in light blue). Many German locality names have an attributive word associated with them which ends in -er , for example Berliner for Berlin and Hamburger for Hamburg, which are not marked for case but always end in -er . Die Berliner Mauer (‘the Berlin Wall ’) and das Brandenburger Tor (‘the Brandenburg Gate ’) are prominent examples of this. Note the -er ending despite
2600-446: The time the ancient literature of Iceland was written. Later in the 18th century the purism movement grew and more works were translated into Icelandic, especially in areas that Icelandic had hardly ever been used in. Many neologisms were introduced, with many of them being loan-translations. In the early 19th century, due to the influence of romanticism , importance was put on the purity of spoken language as well. The written language
2652-458: The word order is fairly flexible, and every combination may occur in poetry; SVO, SOV, VSO, VOS, OSV and OVS are all allowed for metrical purposes. However, as with most Germanic languages, Icelandic usually complies with the V2 word order restriction, so the conjugated verb in Icelandic usually appears as the second element in the clause, preceded by the word or phrase being emphasised. For example: In
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#17327823283632704-479: Was also brought closer to the spoken language, as the sentence structure of literature had previously been influenced by Danish and German . The changes brought by the purism movement have had the most influence on the written language, as many speakers use foreign words freely in speech but try to avoid them in writing. The success of the many neologisms created from the movement has also been variable as some loanwords have not been replaced with native ones. There
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