The Icelandic Canadian - 01.04.1988, Page 43

THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
41
BOOK NOTES ...
by Sigrid Johnson
Reviews Editor
Learning the Icelandic Language —
Grammars and Dictionaries
Man’s ingenuity knows no bounds when
North Americans are asked their reasons
for wanting to learn the Icelandic language.
Whether one is planning to visit relatives
or to participate in a geological expedition
to Iceland and therefore simply wanting to
do fair battle with the language on the
normal fronts of daily living, or whether
one has aspirations of becoming a serious
scholar of ancient Icelandic texts, there are
as many ways to learn the Icelandic lan-
guage as there are needs or reasons to do
so.
Undoubtedly, the best way to learn Ice-
landic is by travelling to Iceland and enroll-
ing in one of the many excellent programs
available to foreign students. Program of-
ferings include: the University of Iceland’s
two-year course in Icelandic for Foreign
Students, a course of study provided by the
Reykjavik Municipal Centre for Adult
Education (Nimsflokkar Reykjavikur) and
courses offered by private schools, most
notably Mimir.
Not everyone either wants to or can
afford to travel to Iceland to study, how-
ever, so fortunately there are alternatives
depending upon one’s needs or reasons for
wanting to learn Icelandic. Most chapters
of the Icelandic National League of North
America have at one time or another spon-
sored courses in conversational Icelandic.
The University of Manitoba, through the
Department of Icelandic Language and
Literature, offers a program of studies lead-
ing to degrees at bothlhe Bachelors and
Masters levels. For those living in areas
where organized courses are unavailable
or for those who are unable to fit organized
courses into already hectic schedules, com-
mercial offerings, such as the Linguaphone
course on record or cassette, provide a
solution.
A large plus for the Linguaphone course
is that in addition to its regular course
book and exercises, it also provides stu-
dents with a copy of Stefan Einarsson’s
Icelandic: Grammar, Texts, Glossary first
published in Baltimore by The Johns Hop-
kins University Press in 1949, and un-
equaled by any grammar textbook pub-
lished to the present day. Not only does the
grammar textbook provide the student
with a comprehensive treatment of all
major aspects of modern Icelandic but it
does so without requiring the student to
have a considerable background in lan-
guage theory. It is an important backup to
the Linguaphone material supplying an-
swers to most problems a student, beginner
or advanced, is likely to encounter.
Other grammar textbooks worth consid-
ering include J6n Fridjbnsson’s A Course
in Modern Icelandic: Texts, Vocabulary,
Grammar Exercises, Translations (Reyk-
javik: Timaritid Sk&d, 1978), and Einar
Poisson’s Icelandic in Easy Stages, No.’s 1
and 2, (Reykjavik: Mimir, 1975-1977).
Also useful to the student of Icelandic is
P.J.T. Glendening’s Teach Yourself Ice-
landic (London: The English Universities
Press, 1969).
It has been said that “Dictionaries are as
vital to the language learner as cans of
beans to the long-distance hiker, and come
in almost as many varieties.”1 Dictionaries
— Icelandic, Icelandic-English, English-
Icelandic — which no student of the Ice-