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The history of the Icelandic language began in the 9th century when the settlement of Iceland, mostly by Norwegians, brought a dialect of Old Norse to the island. The oldest preserved texts in Icelandic were written around 1100. The majority of these texts are poems or laws, preserved orally for generations before being written down. The most famous of these, written in Iceland from the 12th century onward, are without doubt the Icelandic Sagas, the historical writings of Snorri Sturluson; and eddaic poems. The language of the era of the sagas is called Old Icelandic, a dialect of (Western) Old Norse, the common Scandinavian language of the Viking era. Old Icelandic was, in the strict sense of the term, Old Norse with some Celtic influence. The Danish rule of Iceland from 1380 to 1918 had little effect on the evolution of Icelandic, which remained in daily use among the general population: Danish was not used for official communications. The same applied to English during the British (and later American) occupation of Iceland during World War II. Though Icelandic is considered more archaic than other living Germanic languages, especially in its morphology and other grammatical aspects, as well as in its lexicon, the language has nevertheless been subject to some important changes. The pronunciation, for instance, changed considerably between the 12th and 16th centuries, especially that of vowels. Nevertheless, written Icelandic has changed relatively little since the 13th century. As a result of this, and of the similarity between the modern and ancient grammar, modern speakers can still understand, more or less, the original sagas and Eddas that were written some 800 years ago. This ability is sometimes mildly overstated by Icelanders themselves, most of whom actually read the Sagas with updated modern spelling and footnotes—though otherwise intact. ==The language of the Norwegian settlers== Most of the original settlers of Iceland came from Western Norway, bringing with them the western dialect of Old Norse. Due to its geographic isolation and consequent lack of influence from other stratum languages, the development of the language was entirely independent. However, it would be wrong to suggest that the language that was brought to Iceland was completely homogeneous; even though most of the settlers were from western Norway, there were a number from other parts of the country and also from other Scandinavian countries. Therefore the language that grew up in Iceland was influenced by all of the Norwegian dialects of the time. The close intermingling of the people of the island, especially at the ''Alþingi'' (the general meeting that took place at the beginning of each summer at Þingvellir) contributed to even out the differences between the various dialects: traits common to all dialects were reinforced, while the most marked differences gradually disappeared. Although it is not known exactly how the language developed, modern Icelandic has evolved less than other Scandinavian languages. The unique development of Icelandic, which eventually resulted in its complete separation from Norwegian and the other Scandinavian languages, began with the ''landnám'' or first settlement. Icelandic has lost all trace of the tonal nature of early Scandinavian languages, traces of which are noticeable in modern Norwegian and especially Swedish. Research has been carried out to identify certain traits of the language, for example the so-called ''preaspiration'', but the results were inconclusive. Icelandic shares such characteristics with two other languages: Faroese and the Swedish spoken in Finland. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「History of Icelandic」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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