Postby Soffía » Tue Aug 09, 2016 6:20 pm
Back now from the Faroes. In the lead up to the trip I was busy enough that I had no time to read my Icelandic books, much less start learning Faroese. But it was an interesting language experience nonetheless.
With the exception of a word or two here and there, I found spoken Faroese completely incomprehensible. Very disorienting. But when it came to the written language, my Icelandic was extremely useful: I could read menus, signs, leaflets, etcetera without really thinking about it that much. Convenient.
I brought a favourite Icelandic book with me, Jón Gnarr's "Sjóræninginn," and managed to read nearly 200 pages of it while in transit and sitting in various cafes.
And I was relatively restrained when it came to buying books. I bought a big doorstopper reference grammar (which turns out to be available from Amazon UK after all, oh well!) and lucked out in the small Red Cross bookshop on the harbour (payment by an honesty box). Two books for 5kr each (about 50p): "Úti á leysum oyggjum" by Marianna Debes Dahl and a translation of "Sagan af bláa hnettinum" by Andri Snær Magnason. In retrospect I wish I'd sprung for a new copy of "Feðgar á ferð" by Heðin Brú, but maybe I'll read it in English first.
I'd thought it might be possible to pick up some Icelandic books while there, but no. Their reading seems to be dominated by Danish as a second language - or as a first, really - even though Icelandic is much closer in linguistic terms. (While Icelanders obviously read much more in English.)
For the time being - until that online course comes out, maybe - I intend to ignore Faroese as a spoken language. But I'll have a bit of fun with the grammar and the books that I've bought. How awesome that by learning Icelandic, you almost get three languages (Old Norse being the third) for the price of one!
Fair warning, I intend to count my Faroese reading towards the Super Challenge. If I don't have to do extra study in order to read it (so goes my theory), it counts towards the same goal.
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