Soffía's Icelandic log

[Soffía]

Just a note: what you did wasn't extensive reading, it was more intensive than extensive. Extensive implies not looking words up; that was I tried to do for my languages in 2014-2015 and prevented me from progressing for a long time. When I decided to look up the main important words, then I saw progress happen again.

I feel like there must be somewhat of a continuum between extensive and intensive reading.

For me, intensive reading is when you spend 10 minutes puzzling over a page and trying to get everything right. Whereas when you're reading along to get the gist, and stop every ten minutes to look up a word... well, that's extensive reading that you interrupt every ten minutes, if you see what I mean. Basically I think of extensive reading as being focused on the quantity of language you take in.

But I can certainly believe that if you never looked a word up, that would be a good bit less useful.

[Soffía]

In other news, I've booked a short trip to the Faroe Islands for next month! So now I have an excuse (you can see the way a language learner's mind works...) to study a little bit of Faroese. Not too much, because I really don't want to break my streak in Icelandic, but it would be really good to learn the basic pronunciations. Otherwise when I go, they'll think I'm an Icelander.

Icelandic will be super-useful for reading Faroese, at least, if not for speaking it. Everything looks pretty familiar.

[Elenia]

I want to go! (Again, for reasons of knitting tourism ) Have a ton of fun on the islands and with the language!

[aeroflot]

In other news, I've booked a short trip to the Faroe Islands for next month! So now I have an excuse (you can see the way a language learner's mind works...) to study a little bit of Faroese. Not too much, because I really don't want to break my streak in Icelandic, but it would be really good to learn the basic pronunciations. Otherwise when I go, they'll think I'm an Icelander.

Icelandic will be super-useful for reading Faroese, at least, if not for speaking it. Everything looks pretty familiar.

I'm super happy for you and jealous that you get to go to such places.

This will be a great time for you to get some experiences. The Faeroe islands seem like a beautiful place, and a part of me wants to live there for a while to understand the dynamic of living on an island with a small town atmosphere, while also being somewhat remote and in the north.

[Soffía]

I want to go! (Again, for reasons of knitting tourism ) Have a ton of fun on the islands and with the language!

Thank you! I'm not a knitter myself but my mother is, and I do love the end result.

The Faeroe islands seem like a beautiful place, and a part of me wants to live there for a while to understand the dynamic of living on an island with a small town atmosphere, while also being somewhat remote and in the north.

That's exactly what fascinates me about places like that. Small village Iceland as well, although this is even more extreme! I will report back.

[Soffía]

Small random observations:

For obvious reasons I've got into the habit of subvocalising when I read in Icelandic. I don't think it slows me down, given that I'm slow enough already, and it probably helps me to think about how the words are pronounced. BUT when I picked up an English book yesterday, for the first time in a while, the habit seems to have transferred to my English reading as well! Argh. I don't imagine that it will stick but it's one of those 'don't think of an elephant' situations, sadly...

In other news, there is always someone who speaks a language worse than you. I've been gaining great consolation and amusement (perhaps unkindly) from this video of Jørgen Niclasen, a leading Faroese politician, attempting to speak Icelandic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YigkHdZm9x8

[Allison]

In other news, there is always someone who speaks a language worse than you. I've been gaining great consolation and amusement (perhaps unkindly) from this video of Jørgen Niclasen, a leading Faroese politician, attempting to speak Icelandic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YigkHdZm9x8

Yes! Or even just people better than you who make mistakes. I've taken great consolation from, for example, hearing terrible accents from government agency officials who surely only know Spanish as a second language but are on the news anyway, seeing bilingual people forget Spanish words and just say the English words, and successfully solving Spanish language puzzles on game shows before the contestants do.

[Olekander]

Hey soffia,

Don't know if this is of any use to you but I stumbled across It by accident and thought you might want to take a look.

It's an old Icelandic primer http://www.gutenberg.org/files/5424/5424-h/5424-h.html

[Soffía]

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.

[Soffía]

I have two Icelandic books that I expect to finish by the weekend, plus a third where I only have a hundred pages left. So it looks like I'm going to hit my goal for "pages read in 2016" any day now.

Trying to decide what's a reasonable new goal to set. 4000 is reasonable, but also a funny number. 5000 is well ahead of the pace that I've set so far - a good challenge or setting myself up for failure? The other option is just to switch to tracking the Super Challenge and therefore put off this decision until next year.