Pimsleur Icelandic Conversational Course Level 1 Lessons 1-16 CD

Pimsleur(R) equals success. Just one 30-minute lesson a day gets you speaking and understanding like no other program.

This course includes Lessons 1-16 from the Icelandic Level 1 program - 8 hours of audio-only effective language learning with real-life spoken practice sessions. Each lesson provides 30 minutes of spoken language practice, with an introductory conversation, and new vocabulary and structures. Detailed instructions enable you to understand and participate in the conversation. Practice for vocabulary introduced in previous lessons is included in each lesson. Topics include: greetings, numbers, meals, shopping, telling time, scheduling activities, and asking and giving directions. The emphasis is on pronunciation and comprehension, and on learning to speak Icelandic.

Reading lessons begin in Lesson 11 to provide you with an introduction to reading Icelandic. These lessons are designed to teach you to sound out words with correct pronunciation and accent. A Reading Booklet to be used with the audio lessons in PDF format must be downloaded.

The Icelandic Language

Icelandic, the official language of Iceland, is spoken by the island nation's entire population of just over 330,000. In addition, approximately 8,000 speakers live in Denmark and 6,500 in North America. Descended from Old Norse, Icelandic is one of the Nordic languages belonging to a subgroup of Northern Germanic languages which also includes Norwegian and Faroese (spoken in the remote Faroe Islands off the coast of Denmark). The insular Icelandic language has not changed significantly since the Middle Ages and is considered a part of the country's national identity. The government's Icelandic Language Committee, charged with maintaining linguistic purism, keeps foreign words from influencing the language by coining new terms (usually constructed by combining old words) to describe modern concepts. For example, the word "computer" did not exist in Icelandic, so a new word, tölva, was created. Tölva is a combination of two existing words, tala (number) and völva (a prophetess or magical seer) or, literally, "number prophet".

Tech Talk

- CDs are formatted for playing in all CD players, including car players, and users can copy files for use in iTunes or Windows Media Player.

Dr. Paul Pimsleur devoted his life to language teaching and testing and was one of the world's leading experts in applied linguistics. After years of experience and research, Dr. Pimsleur developed The Pimsleur Method based on two key principles: the Principle of Anticipation and a scientific principle of memory training that he called "Graduated Interval Recall." This Method has been applied to the many levels and languages of the Pimsleur Programs.

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