Icelandic is an Indo-European language, a North Germanic language branch. The oldest texts that have been found in Icelandic were written 1000 years ago. The Icelandic Sagas, written in the 12th century, are written versions of many epics and folk tales.
Iceland was ruled by Denmark from 1380 to 1918, but surprisingly Danish had little impact on Icelandic. Danish has been a spoken language for Icelanders for about a hundred years, but the language has not changed.
The Icelandic language and translator english to icelandic has not changed much since the 13th century, which means that modern native speakers of Icelandic can also read and understand epics that were written more than eight hundred years ago. In the 18th century, measures were taken to purify the Icelandic language and get rid of words that were borrowed from other languages. Instead of adding foreign words to the dictionary for new terms, new words
(neologisms) were invented, or old words were restored and given new meanings. For example: “simi” is a telephone, “tolva” is a computer, “thota” is an airplane, “geimfar” is a spaceship. Today, Icelandic does not have the status of an official language. Iceland is a member of the Scandinavian Council, but the Council also has not yet decided to use Icelandic as the official language, instead they use Danish, Swedish and Norwegian for negotiations and official meetings.
Icelandic speakers primarily live in Iceland, although there are a small number of Icelandic speakers also in the USA, Canada and Denmark. Approximately 3000 Icelanders each year become students at universities in Denmark.
The Icelandic alphabet was developed in the 19th century. It was based on the Latin alphabet, although there are 32 letters in the alphabet to accommodate additional vowel sounds. There are few phonetic differences, and only minor differences in dialect, which helps to understand all dialects.
Iceland is one of the richest and most developed countries in the world. If you want to live in a technologically advanced country with a unified healthcare system.
By the way, due to the fact that the Icelandic language has the same roots with the English language, many words have a similar root, then if you already know English, you can also learn Icelandic. In addition, in relation to literature, learning Icelandic you will be able to read poetry and sagas from the 12th century.