Icelandic Names and Language tidbits

As an aside, typing Jon Gunnar Aranson's name reminded me that I should mention the peculiarity of Icelandic naming customs, which persist to this day. People's last names consist of their father's given name plus "son" or "dottir" depending obviously on whether it's a boy or a girl. Hence, given this scheme, I could be Carrie Bobsdottir, whereas Robbie would be Robbie Bobsson. Dad would be Bob Ottosson (or Otto Ottoson) and Mom would be Anna Williamsdottir. Alexa would be Alexa Robertsdottir. Mike would be Michael Larrysson. So you could easily have a household with a mom, dad, son and daughter who all have different last names. In the phone book people are listed in alphabetical order of their first name, not their last, and as you probably have a lot of "Jons" "Gudmunders" and "Snorri's" you end up with a lot of Jon Jonssons, Jon Gudmundersson, Snorri Jonsson etc. So they also helpfully will add information like the person's profession to help you figure out who it is you are looking for. Also, I found it interesting that in Icelandic, the way to say "What is his last name" is "Whose son is he?"

Icelandic is a Germanic language, and it is sort of like the Old English, or the Alligator of the Scandanavian languages. It's stayed the same while Danish, Swedish and Norwegian have gone off to become their own languages. They are even more uptight than the French if that's possible about the allowance of foreign words into their vocabulary. It is an *absolute* no no. They just either make up new words (THere is an "Icelandic Language Institute" to advise on such things,) or use old words to say new things, i.e. the word for "telephone" is an old fashioned word that used to mean "string" or "wire", and a fax machine literally translates as a paper-phone (or Paper-string I suppose). This doesn't mean they are anti-English. In fact everyone speaks English. Just that English is English and Icelandic is Icelandic.

English is the third language they learn in school, after Icelandic (Islenska) and Danish (since it wasn't even completely independent from Denmark until the 1940's). However, a teacher told me that English is beginning to replace Danish as the second language. People then go on to learn a FOURTH language of their choosing (Spanish, French, German, etc)

Icelandic seems really hard to master. It's full of things I dont understand, like genitive verbs, inflections and declensions and they have about 12 words for the number three. Plus the fact that they have 4 letters in their alphabet that look like nothing in our alphabet, one of which sounds like the "Th" in "Thing," and one of which sounds like the "Th" in "This," while the letters "TH" together sound like the "Th" in "coathook"