I picked an awesome-looking title with a <z> to lure you all into this thread, but I'll have to disappoint you; the modern Icelandic orthography does no longer use <z>, and the current spelling of the language's endonym is actually <íslenska> (do note that Icelandic, unlike English and like most languages, does not capitalise the names of languages).
I will not go through pronunciation initially. For now, let us merely focus on grammar and lexicon. What can be said to begin with? Well, the language is Indo-European, specifically Germanic and even more specifically Northern Germanic. If we're to get really intimate, it is most specifically West Northern Germanic. It has a lot of interesting stuff going on, and retains some nice quirks that have generally been lost elsewhere in Germanic, and also has several unique innovations that sets it apart from the rest of its family, away in its insular isolation in Iceland, where the tongue is mainly spoken.
The main grammatical features that one may want to be aware of is that Icelandic has 3 genders (masculine, feminine and neuter), 2 numbers (singular and plural), suffixed definite articles but no indefinite articles, personal/numeral agreement on verbs (but not gender agreement), adjectives that inflected for definiteness as well as gender, number and the 4 cases (nominative, accusative, dative and genitive) that the language has.
The default word order is SVO.
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0. Phrases
What would any tutorial be without a couple of phrases before we get to the actual grammar and separated vocabulary? Let's start with some lightweight stuff first, shall we?
Hæ.
Hello. (somewhat informal, although Icelandic doesn't really care too much)
Sæll. (said to male) / Sæl. (said to female)
Hello. (more formal)
Góðan daginn.
Good day.
Góðan morgun.
Good morning.
Gott kvöld.
Good evening.
Góða nótt.
Good night.
Sjáumst.
See you.
Bless.
Bye.
Já.
Yes.
Jú.
Yes. (said in response to negative statements)
Nei.
No.
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1. Personal pronouns
So let's move on to some more interesting stuff. Icelandic differentiates between all three genders in the third person pronouns both in the singular and plural, but not in the first or second persons. Let us look at the nominative and accusative forms of the singular pronouns to begin with.
Nominative:
ég - I (1SG.NOM)
þú - thou (2SG.NOM)
hann - he (3SG.M.NOM)
hún - she (3SG.F.NOM)
það - it (3SG.N.NOM)
Accusative:
mig - me (1SG.ACC)
þig - thee (2SG.ACC)
hann - him (3SG.M.ACC)
hana - her (3SG.F.ACC)
það - it (3SG.N.ACC)
As one can see, the third person masculine and neuter do not change in the accusative here. This is not universal throughout the language, but does happen in some other places too.
Icelandic is generally not pro-drop, even though it conjugates verbs for person, and will prefer to use pronouns along with the verbs.
Don't worry about T-V distinction crap in Icelandic.
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2. Verbs
So these pronouns will do us no good until we can use them with some verbs too. Let us take some transitive verb that we can use together with both the nominative and accusative forms that we have learned now, and conjugate them according to the persons listed. As the third person pronouns all take the same verb form, as the verbs are not conjugated for gender, I will only use hann to demonstrate this form.
Infinitives in Icelandic almost invariably end in -a, and so does the first one that we shall learn; elsk-a means to love (Icelandic does not use hyphens orthographically like this; I only use it to show the boundary between the root and the infinitive suffix - the actual written form of the word is thus simply <elska>).
Present tense, indicative mood:
ég elsk-a - I love (1SG.NOM love-1SG.PRES.IND)
þú elsk-ar - thou lovest (2SG.NOM love-2SG.PRES.IND)
hann elsk-ar - he loves (3SG.M.NOM love-3SG.PRES.IND)
In this particular conjugation, the 2SG and 3SG are indeed the same, but this does not hold true for all conjugations. This is however a conjugation that may be considered a weak one, and this is the one within which new words and loanwords tend to go. The other weak conjugation is similar but uses the endings -i and -ir instead (but the infinitive is still -a).
Now, elska governs the accusative, so let us use it together with the accusatives we have already learned too.
ég elsk-a þig - I love thee (1SG.NOM love-1SG.PRES.IND 2SG.ACC)
þú elsk-ar mig - thou lovest me (2SG.NOM love-2SG.PRES.IND 1SG.ACC)
hann elsk-ar hana - he loves her (3SG.M.NOM love-3SG.PRES.IND 3SG.F.ACC)
hún elsk-ar hann - she loves him (3SG.F.NOM love-3SG.PRES.IND 3SG.M.ACC)
2.1. Questions
To turn an affirmative statement into an interrogation in Icelandic, the word order is changed to VSO. The 2SG has a special unstressed form here, where the conjugted verb is merged with the pronoun þú. Depending on the final consonant of the conjugated verb, the suffix is either -ðu, -du or -tu (note that the acute accent is removed). I will use hyphens here as well, but Icelandic doesn't actually use hyphens to write the merged words; the endings are just tacked on with no divider of any sort. For conjugated verbs ending in -r, the ending is -ðu.
elsk-a ég þig? - do I love thee? (love-1SG.PRES.IND 1SG.NOM 2SG.ACC)
elsk-ar-ðu mig? - dost thou love me? (love-2SG.PRES.IND=2SG.NOM 1SG.ACC)
elsk-ar hann hana? - does he love her? (love-3SG.PRES.IND 3SG.M.NOM 3SG.F.ACC)
elsk-ar hún hann? - does she love him? (love-3SG.PRES.IND 3SG.F.NOM 3SG.M.ACC)
The stressed, non-merged 2SG form is used for emphasis.
elsk-ar þú mig? - dost thou (as opposed to someone else) love me? (love-2SG.PRES.IND 2SG.NOM 1SG.ACC)
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Exercise #1
So let us begin with some practice. I will give you some new verbs and then some sentences to translate.
hat-a - to hate
hopp-a - to jump
hitt-a - to meet (this verb uses the aforementioned -i and -ir instead of -a and -ar)
snert-a - to touch (also conjugated like hitta)
Please translate the following: