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Icelandic () is a North Germanic language, the language of Iceland. It is an Indo-European language belonging to the North Germanic or Nordic branch of the Germanic languages. Historically, it was the westernmost of the Indo-European languages prior to the colonisation of the Americas. Icelandic, Faroese, Norn, and Western Norwegian formerly constituted ''West Nordic''; Danish, Eastern Norwegian and Swedish constituted ''East Nordic''. Modern Norwegian Bokmål is influenced by both groups, leading the Nordic languages to be divided into mainland Scandinavian languages and ''Insular Nordic'' (including Icelandic). Most Western European languages have greatly reduced levels of inflection, particularly noun declension. In contrast, Icelandic retains a four-case synthetic grammar comparable to, but considerably more conservative and synthetic than, German. By virtue of its being in the Germanic family, which as a whole reduced the Indo-European case system, it is inappropriate to compare the grammar of Icelandic to that of the more conservative Baltic and Slavic languages of the Indo-European family, many of which retain six or more cases, except to note that Icelandic utilises a wide assortment of irregular declensions. Icelandic also has many instances of oblique cases without any governing word, as does Latin. For example, many of the various Latin ablatives have a corresponding Icelandic dative. The conservatism of the Icelandic language and its resultant near-isomorphism to Old Norse (which is equivalently termed Old Icelandic by linguists) means that modern Icelanders can easily read the Eddas, sagas, and other classic Old Norse literary works created in the tenth through thirteenth centuries. The vast majority of Icelandic speakers—about 320,000—live in Iceland. There are over 8,000 speakers of Icelandic living in Denmark,〔(Statbank Danish statistics )〕 of whom approximately 3,000 are students.〔(Official Iceland website )〕 The language is also spoken by some 5,000 people in the US〔 Based on 2000 US census data. 〕 and by over 1,400 people in Canada,〔(Canadian census 2011 )〕 with the largest group living in Manitoba, notably Gimli (''Gimli'' being an Old Norse word for 'heaven'). While 97% of the population of Iceland consider Icelandic their mother tongue, the language is in decline in some communities outside Iceland, particularly in Canada. Icelandic speakers outside Iceland represent recent emigration in almost all cases except Gimli, which was settled from the 1880s onwards. The state-funded Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies serves as a centre for preserving the medieval Icelandic manuscripts and studying the language and its literature. The Icelandic Language Council, comprising representatives of universities, the arts, journalists, teachers, and the Ministry of Culture, Science and Education, advises the authorities on language policy. Since 1995, on November 16 each year, the birthday of 19th-century poet Jónas Hallgrímsson is celebrated as Icelandic Language Day.〔〔(【引用サイトリンク】 url = http://www.menntamalaraduneyti.is/malaflokkar/Menning/dit/ )〕 == History == (詳細はIceland from the 12th century onward, are the Icelandic Sagas. They comprise the historical works and the eddaic poems. The language of the sagas is Old Icelandic, a western dialect of Old Norse. 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. Though more archaic than the other living Germanic languages, Icelandic changed markedly in pronunciation from the 12th to the 16th century, especially in vowels (in particular, ''á'', ''æ'', ''au'', and ''y/ý''). The modern Icelandic alphabet has developed from a standard established in the 19th century primarily by the Danish linguist Rasmus Rask. It is ultimately based heavily on an orthography laid out in the early 12th century by a mysterious document referred to as ''The First Grammatical Treatise'' by an anonymous author who has later been referred to as the First Grammarian. The later Rasmus Rask standard was a re-creation of the old treatise, with some changes to fit concurrent Germanic conventions, such as the exclusive use of ''k'' rather than ''c''. Various archaic features, as the letter ''ð'', had not been used much in later centuries. Rask's standard constituted a major change in practice. Later 20th century changes include the use of ''é'' instead of ''je'' and the removal of ''z'' from the alphabet in 1973. Apart from the addition of new vocabulary, written Icelandic has not changed substantially since the 11th century, when the first texts were committed to vellum. Modern speakers can understand the original sagas and Eddas which were written about eight hundred years ago. The sagas are usually read with updated modern spelling and footnotes but otherwise intact (as with modern English readers of Shakespeare). With some effort, many Icelanders can also understand the original manuscripts. 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「Icelandic language」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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