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  • Isländisch: Ein Lehrbuch für Anfänger und Fortgeschrittene by Ríta Duppler and Astrid van Nahl
  • Michael Schulte
Ríta Duppler and Astrid van Nahl. Isländisch: Ein Lehrbuch für Anfänger und Fortgeschrittene. (Textbook and grammar). Hamburg: Helmut Buske Verlag, 2013. Pp. xxiii + 261 + CD-ROM.

German-speaking students who are looking for a contemporary introduction to modern Icelandic will appreciate this new book. Ríta Duppler and Astrid van Nahl have produced an up-to-date textbook and accompanying grammar course that is well suited for both self-study and group teaching. The book is a substantially revised edition of the earlier Lehrbuch des Isländischen (Langenscheidt, 1994). A team of co-editors contributed to the new layout, the choice of texts, and the illustrations. Pictures are presented at the beginning of each section and elsewhere in the text (see, for example, the list of illustrations on p. 261). The book is well organized, with each of the eighteen lessons offering two text pieces, a narrative section, and a dialogue. A section on grammar, language use, and cultural geographic information—“Sprachgebrauch und Landeskunde”—is also a part of each lesson.

The key to pronunciation is the accompanying CD-ROM, which contains high-quality recordings of the texts and dialogues. It should [End Page 481] be noted that the book avoids the use of the International Phonetic Alphabet, apart from the introduction to the alphabet and pronunciation, “Alphabet und Aussprache” (pp. xix–xxii). Various types of exercises are included in each chapter, and a list of grammatical terms and a glossary are appended (pp. 227–61). The book has a clear focus on prepositional phrases and prepositional use, not least in the glossary.

It is easy to see that this is an appealing textbook with several merits. It lends itself to adoption as a course book for university students and others genuinely interested in the Icelandic language. Compared to older models and the earlier version, Lehrbuch des Isländischen, the language of the texts appears in typical settings, with the use of various idioms and quotidian phrases. The vocabulary is up-to-date. The reader is informed, for instance, that CD in Icelandic is geisladiskur (p. 190), but we could have been told also that geisli masc. means “ray, beam.” The exercises are generally well designed; a key and a full glossary are provided for those studying on their own. As the authors mention early on (p. xiv), historical explanations have been generally omitted and no reference is made to Old Norse or Old Scandinavian. To give an impression of the content structure, suffice it to quote the titles of four chapters: chapter 3: “Keyrt til Reykjavíkur” (Driving to Reykjavík); chapter 8: “Á þingvöllum” (On þingvellir, or, Visiting the Old Thing Assembly); chapter 16: “Í Reykjavík” (Sightseeing in Reykjavík); and chapter 18: “Allt er gott sem endar vel” (All’s Well That Ends Well). This final chapter is particularly informative, as it tells us about studying at the University of Iceland.

The course book is designed for four terms, each comprising eight hours a week, including teaching, listening to the texts, watching (additional) Icelandic films, computer exercises, and online coursework (p. xv). The aim of the course program is to bring students to level B2 in the common European reference frame. As the introduction states, the aim is that

[k]omplexere Texte—auch zu abstrakten Themen—werden verstanden, ein Gespräch mit Muttersprachlern ist möglich, ein eigener Standpunkt zu bestimmten Fragen kann erläutert werden.

(p. xv)

(rather complex texts—even on abstract issues—are understood, it is possible to have a dialogue with native speakers, and one can express one’s personal attitude or point of view toward certain questions.)

Keeping in mind the intended level, I make only one critical point here. The treatment of pronunciation relies heavily on the accompanying CD-ROM; more attention could have been paid to everyday speech and rapid speech phenomena. Some twenty years ago, Margrét Pálsdóttir wrote a valuable booklet, Talað mál (Spoken Language) (Mál og Menning, 1992), where she highlighted natural speech phenomena in [End Page...

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