r/learnIcelandic • u/Plastic-Piece4116 • 12d ago

I'm stuck

Hi everyone!

I started learning Icelandic a few years ago and recently picked it up again because I visited Iceland and bought some new materials. During my first phase of learning, I bought the book Icelandic for Beginners and started Icelandic Online. Along with these, I methodically filled up 3 vocabulary notebooks and 6 regular notebooks.

I also bought the Íslenska fyrir alla book series and have just finished the second volume. They are useful books, but I feel like they just throw information at you without actually helping it sink in.

I’ve also been studying with AI for that reason, I usually ask for wordlists for conjugation and doing sentence translations that systematically make me practice grammar points like the conjugation in past and present tense, dative/accusative cases and the definite article. I just can't find enough practice materials for these.

Right now, I'm trying to find usable materials that cover fixed prepositional phrases and structures. Unfortunately, the AI regularly sends me incorrect information, and I'm tired of it constantly mixing up the accusative and dative cases, creating non-existing structures or providing example sentences that don't match the given structure, or having inaccurate translations. I also have Stefan Drabek's Icelandic Step by Step, which helps, but it doesn't explain the rules either. Íslenska fyrir alla 3–4 reinforces the A2 level, but doesn't go any further and I think I am above that A2- level for a long time.

I would like to reach B1, but I feel like at this rate it will take forever, and I’ve completely lost my motivation to study.

So what should I do? I don't want to give up just like that.. I know I might need a teacher, but apart from that...

Can anyone help me giving advice or send me some useful materials for self-study?

I am mostly a visual learner, and gaining grammatical confidence is essential for me before I start speaking.

Thank you for your help!

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u/DetectiveIll3712 Intermediate 12d ago

Hello,

I come at the problem from the other direction. I consume Icelandic material (virtually all reading) and dive in to grammar when I hit something that bothers me. I too use AI and agree you have to be very careful with it. It's useful when it draws your attention to a real pattern that you can observe in real world language. I'm somewhere in the B1+ zone and I'm still finding most of my effort goes into acquiring vocabulary. Here are some links to books that are 1st/2nd/3rd grade level. They are *very* roughly in order of difficulty but should generally be in the A2/B1 neighborhood. If you want easier or harder books, let me know.

 https://vefir.mms.is/flettibaekur/namsefni/allir_vinna/  Math oriented;

 https://vefir.mms.is/flettibaekur/namsefni/koslikamann   1st/2nd grade;

 https://mms.is/sites/mms.is/files/atoms/files/graedlingur1.pdf

  https://vefir.mms.is/flettibaekur/namsefni/skrimslid_i_skoginum/  comic book 2-3grade??? 

  https://vefir.mms.is/flettibaekur/namsefni/dundurstrakurinn  math oriented;

 https://vefir.mms.is/flettibaekur/namsefni/koslandogthjod/ (2nd/3rd grade; 

  https://vefir.mms.is/flettibaekur/namsefni/margfold_vandraedi  math focused, early grade level;  https://vefir.mms.is/flettibaekur/namsefni/runa_jafnar_leikinn   math oriented; Claude grade 2-3;

  https://vefir.mms.is/flettibaekur/namsefni/stud_a_stae/  math oriented;

  https://vefir.mms.is/flettibaekur/namsefni/alfakrilin/   

  https://vefir.mms.is/flettibaekur/namsefni/handan_vid_brunacomic book 2-3grade??? 

  https://vefir.mms.is/flettibaekur/namsefni/island_landid_okkar/

  https://vefir.mms.is/flettibaekur/namsefni/isbjorn  

  https://vefir.mms.is/flettibaekur/namsefni/humlur/bees! Claude est 3/4;

   https://vefir.mms.is/flettibaekur/namsefni/anamadkar/  (28 pages, book on worms)

 https://vefir.mms.is/flettibaekur/namsefni/hallo_heimur_1/  (132 pages; very long but starts pretty easy)

  https://vefir.mms.is/flettibaekur/namsefni/hallo_heimur_2/

  https://vefir.mms.is/flettibaekur/namsefni/refurinn/ (28 pages, foxes, 2-3 grade?  )

  https://vefir.mms.is/flettibaekur/namsefni/hrafninn/  (28 pages, crows,  )

 https://vefir.mms.is/flettibaekur/namsefni/tunglid/ (28 pages, the moon)

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u/Plastic-Piece4116 12d ago

Thanks, I will need some new texts too. :) Generally, I focus mostly on expanding my vocabulary anyway; whatever I read, I extract and list the words in their dictionary form. I've only looked at a few so far, but are there any reading comprehension exercises available for this?

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u/DetectiveIll3712 Intermediate 12d ago

I haven't found much in the way of reading comprehension exercises. I usually know if I understand what I'm reading and use AI to break down sentences that are giving me trouble or if I want to check myself. I too maintain a word list via Anki. I've found a few pdfs online that have questions associated with some of these books. I just put the book title into my preferred search engine and look for URLs that appear to be associated with a school in Iceland (and they're almost always pdfs). I haven't done much with them as they would mostly be testing my writing ability which is pretty low priority for me right now. If you have an AI subscription plan you could drop a small book (or a chapter of a large one) into the model and have the AI ask you questions on the main points. Or if it's a book I enjoy, I could pump out some questions. (Force me to do some writing...) I personally enjoy the books on nature and those with strong story lines. The ones that focus on teachig lifeskills--not so much.

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u/Lysenko B1-ish 12d ago

When you say you are studying "with AI," what exactly are you doing? What tools are you using and what kinds of problems are you trying to solve with it?

I've been using ChatGPT for Icelandic language voice chat and Claude Sonnet 5 for correcting written text. I have Claude set up to use the Icelandic Morphology MCP, which greatly improves its accuracy in choosing correct word endings. I have heard that both OpenAI and Anthropic sometimes quietly route free users to lower-quality models, so using a paid account may make a difference in quality of output.

I think that some drilling of endings in context can help, but generally the universe of Icelandic morphology is way too huge for intensive analysis of grammar to be much help overall unless you are trying to correct your own written text. Icelandic grammar rules are often bent or broken in modern usage, certain set phrases (t.d. "góðan daginn") contain fixed grammatical errors, and Icelanders themselves often get endings wrong. (I had an entire group of Icelanders once tell me that the singular dative of "fiskur" is "fisk," and showing them the page on Árnastofnun's BÍN site got them very confused.)

After you learn the outlines of grammar, what you really should do next is listen and read extensively and study the vocabulary you discover. Greater exposure to a wide range of written text will give you a lot more to reach for in terms of putting grammatical rules in perspective.

If you set yourself a goal of achieving perfect grammar from day one, you will never begin speaking Icelandic, because the only way to speak grammatically correct Icelandic at speed is to build automaticity through extensive practice, and to do that you'll have to have already been speaking for a long time.

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u/Synthegeysir 12d ago

are you using any online dictionaries? Íslensk nútímamálsorðabók lists cases and has specific examples for how phrases can be put together. I'm constantly using them when I study.

edit: typo