Pimsleur Icelandic Conversational Course | Level 1 Lessons 1-16 CD: Learn to Speak and Understand Icelandic with Pimsleur Language Programs (1)

Icelandic is a difficult language for a non-native speaker to learn --even for someone who speaks another Germanic language (English). These CDs are fantastic. I learned commonly used phrases and words, and was able to converse with native Icelandic speakers and be understood. These lessons also prepared me to read Icelandic. I moved on from these CDs to the next lessons up.

Favorable Factors 1)It exists. Courses on Icelandic are hard to find. It is not represented in Duolingo, Rosetta Stone, or Babel. So, I was happy to find this set of CDs. 2)On the whole, it is a good course. It uses the Pimsleur method, which I found to be effective for teaching a foreign language. On a recent visit to Iceland, I was mostly understood—and appreciated—when I used these words and expressions. 3)It uses native speakers of Icelandic to teach pronunciation. By imitating them, you will speak in a way understandable by Icelanders. 4)Icelandic is basically medieval Norwegian, Old Norse, so by learning this language, you will speak the language of the Vikings. Students who have already studied modern Norwegian will be helped by the numerous cognates shared by the two languages. Negative Factors 1)There is no printed material whatsoever with this course. It really should have a printed guide that shows each word or expression taught in each lesson, as well as their phonetic pronunciations. It really helps both to learn and to retain information, particularly if you wish to return at a later date to this language. In the absence of a guide, I made my own, showing phonetic values and definitions for each word I learned. I compiled these onto an Excel spreadsheet. 2)For each of the last six lessons of this sixteen-lesson course, the Icelandic speakers pronounce 20 additional words for the stated purpose of helping one to read the language. However, nowhere are these words defined, so you are left with 120 words, which you can pronounce but have no idea what they mean. An online guide shows how to spell these words, but again without knowing what they mean, they are useless. Once again, the lack of a printed guide is a major flaw in the course. Conclusion Whenever I go overseas, I try to learn the local expressions for “Excuse me” and “Thanks.” Learning these expressions earns one some respect from the locals. This course satisfied those needs and more. Judging by the encouraging words from Icelanders, they appreciated my sincere attempt to learn their language, which is spoken by fewer than 400,000 people. So, I hesitate to give this course a low rating. I’ll give it a 4 out of 5, because it really helped me during my recent visit to Iceland.

This is an excellent tool for getting you started in being able to converse in the world’s oldest spoken language. Icelandic is a difficult language to master in that it is not based in Latin or any Romance language. If you are heading to Iceland for business or pleasure buy this course of instruction.

We are going to Iceland this spring so I wanted to get familiar with the language and hope that I can at least understand some of what is being said. I think this is a very good set and the speaking is very clear though because some of the sounds of the words are so different than ours it is sometimes hard to know what exact sounds they are making and sometimes the same word will have a sound like 'th' and at other times it sounds like 'v' as an example. They say not to try to write anything down but I found what is working best for me is to write down the words as they are introduced on flashcards, then I look them up on Google Icelandic/English dictionary and write the Icelandic spelling on the back along with the phonetic pronunciation. This has made a world of difference and it allows me to start recognizing some of the Icelandic words which I hope will help with signs, etc. (some words look nothing like how they are pronounced!) I usually spend 2-3 days on each lesson to be sure I have it down. My only real complaint is that sometimes the words they use don't coincide with what the dictionary says but it has definitely helped me to become familiar with the language. I would recommend it, with my revisions!

Very good way to learn this (or any) language. Very easy to follow.

I bought these CDs to give me a starting point for learning Icelandic. They were very easy to use and worked perfectly for my 40 minute commutes. They focus strictly on listening to and speaking Icelandic. You learn words and phrases most common to casual conversation. As someone who has spent thousands of hours learning a language I can say their concept of "learning a language" is a bit simplified. You won't be fluent in Icelandic after you master the course but you'll have a good start.

have learned a lot from listening to these cds... I travel to iceland yearly and this has helped me with understanding and speaking this cool language.. waited until this cd was released and bought it asap.. pimsleur did a super job once more

first, let me say that i am a foreign language teacher and have also used another language course to prepare for a different overseas trip, and it was very helpful. we were planning a trip to iceland and i wanted to be able to speak some of the language. however, this course had several drawbacks: 1. there is nothing written, so you never learn how anything written is pronounced. if you were to see something written that you know how to say, you probably wouldn't know it, because the alphabet is different. 2. the words are pronounced differently by the different people on the cd's, making you very unsure of how to actually say some of the words. 3. it takes forever for the course to finally get to phrases that you might actually use in iceland (where is the bathroom, my name is..., how do you do); you know, the mainstays of conversational language. my daughter in law also had a set of cd's and she found the same problem. very disappointing.