Icelandic

Icelandic is a North Germanic language spoken by about 314,000 people, the vast majority of whom live in Iceland where it is the official language. It is most closely related to Faroese and Western Norwegian. Unlike most other Germanic languages, Icelandic has not undergone the West Germanic sound shift, as a result of which the Icelandic language has a very similar phonology to Old Norse. Icelandic is the largest and most populous of the North Germanic languages. It is also the language with the largest number of speakers in the West Germanic languages. Icelandic is the only living Germanic language that has not undergone the West Germanic sound shift. The main features of Icelandic phonology are: - The presence of a voiceless velar fricative [x] - The retention of the voiceless glottal fricative [h] - The change of Proto-Germanic *b to [p] - The change of Proto-Germanic *d to [t] - The change of Proto-Germanic *g to [k] - The change of Proto-Germanic *gw to [kw] - The change of Proto-Germanic *w to [v] - The change of Proto-Germanic *z to [s] - The change of Proto-Germanic *ð to [d] - The change of Proto-Germanic *r to [ʀ] or [l] Icelandic has a complex verbal morphology, with four grammatical conjugations and two grammatical genders. It has also retained the use of the subjunctive mood and the optative mood from Old Norse. The Icelandic alphabet is based on the Latin alphabet, with the addition of the letters ð and þ. The letter ð is pronounced [ð], as in English "this", while þ is pronounced [θ], as in English "thin". Icelandic is the only Germanic language to use the latin alphabet as its standard writing system.