📘 Beginner's Icelandic: A Review

62 Hours Learning Icelandic

Jun 09, 2023

This post is both a review and a reflection of my progress in Icelandic so far. At this point, I’ve spent a total of 62 hours learning Icelandic. Out of those hours, 13 to 14 hours were spent using the Beginner’s Icelandic (BI) textbook.

Before I started using BI, I spent time using Icelandic Online’s Survival Course and completed a few units on Ylhýra. In total, I’ve spent 27 hours using both.

In most of my experiences learning languages, textbooks were not my thing. I mostly watched shows and used YT videos to expose myself to the language. Beginner’s Icelandic is the first textbook that I have enjoyed using and wished there were more lessons.

🇮🇸 Beginner’s Icelandic

I’m all too familiar with learning languages that don’t have many resources (Cantonese). Beginner’s Icelandic was a textbook that initially felt too challenging for me when I first dabbled in Icelandic. At that time, all I had done is review a few cards on Memrise’s Icelandic course so my knowledge of Icelandic was next to none.

While the textbook is called Beginner’s Icelandic, I’ve found that having some knowledge of Icelandic (the alphabet, pronunciation, and a few words) goes a long way.

Before the first lesson, there are pages that go over pronunciation in Icelandic. I mostly skipped over this section because at the time I had no reference for what the letters in the alphabet were supposed to sound like. Once I got to the first lesson, I realized that not knowing any Icelandic would make using the textbook a challenge.

Despite the name, the textbook didn’t feel beginner friendly.

It wasn’t until I took a break from the textbook, and started using the Icelandic Online survival course and the Ylhýra website that I gained a foundational understanding of Icelandic. With this knowledge and awareness of the language, I was able to follow each lesson and make sense of what I was learning.

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📖 Lesson Structure

The textbook is relatively short consisting of 14 lessons. Each lesson begins with a dialogue you can read and listen to if you have the audio. I didn’t have the audio so I focused on reading the dialogue and highlighting words or phrases that were new to me. Since I had used other materials and had already been exposed to “beginner” words, not every single word was new to me. This was rewarding as I could see the progress I had already made from other materials.

You can watch this study with me video where I work on a lesson in Beginner’s Icelandic.

💬 Vocabulary and Grammar

After each dialogue section is a list of vocabulary and sections that explain grammar points found in the dialogue.

Just reading the dialogue and the vocab list wasn’t enough for me to learn each word. When I started creating vocab decks on Kaards1 using the vocabulary lists in BI, I realized that many of the words I had seen in the first few lessons, I had already forgotten. The only ones I did remember were the words I had learned using Icelandic Online or Ylhýra. For me at least, some kind of flashcard tool or repetition method is necessary to retain vocabulary, especially as a beginner.

The explanations of verb conjugations and grammar points were helpful. Tables were included to show how verbs conjugated with the stems being highlighted. Conjugating verbs is new to me and I found that BI did a great job in simplifying and explaining grammar in each lesson.

✔️ Exercises

The exercises were my favourite part of the textbook!

If you’ve read my weekly study logs, you’ve heard me share how much I enjoyed correcting my mistakes. I’m usually hesitant to make mistakes in my other TLs but BI has made me look forward to practicing what I just learned and comparing my answers to the answer key.

Some exercises were easier than others but I still enjoyed noticing where I made a mistake. Mistakes show me what I need to work on and which lessons I may have to go back to review.

Lesson 8 Exercise: Singular and plural nouns

The exercises took only a few minutes to complete and completing a whole lesson took me 45 minutes on average. Knowing that I wouldn’t be spending hours to get through a lesson is also what made me enjoy my study sessions with BI.

❓ What’s next for me with Icelandic?

After 62 hours, I’m still very much so a beginner but I’m feeling good about my progress in Icelandic especially since it isn’t one of my focus languages.

If there were another textbook that followed Beginner’s Icelandic, I’d probably use it next. Since there isn’t one, I plan to use Teach Yourself’s Complete Icelandic along with the audio. Some of the topics and vocabulary are similar to BI but I think it’ll be a good way to learn more vocab and review some old ones.