The most predominant characteristics of Old feelandie as a Scandinavian language are. in the main, the following: To an extent unknown to the other members of the Germanic group, Ice landie exhibits a consistent and widely developed process of assimilation in consonants and vowels; under this head falls the extraordinary extension of umlaut, which is here not merely a process of palatalization. as elsewhere in the Germanic languafres, but of labialization as well. There is besides this a characteristic preference for suf fixes. as exhibited in the use of the suffixed defi nite article with substantives, masc. -an, fern. -a, neut. -t: the formation of an entirely new medio-passive conjugation by the suffixal use of the reflexive pronoun: and the expression of negation by an added -a, or -at. Other im portant characteristics are the universal shorten of the vowels of inflection and of derivation; the disappearance of final it in the so-called weak inflection of substantives and adjectives. and in the infinitive of verbs. whose accompanying preposi tion. furthermore, is at, instead of du (:111. as in the other Germanic languages. and the use of the consonantal case ending -r, elsewhere retained only in Gothic as -s. in masculine and femi nine substantives. There are, in addition, many oat r !Mikr ix.enliarities in sounds, inflections, and syntax. Contrasted with and lid (1111•111111•11ta ty 1'1'11111111, from 1251 and 1:129 respectively, Old Ice landic possesses. as a whole, as is to be expected, a much more ancient character in sounds and in inflectional forms. It is, however, by no means insariably the most conservative. The far greater extension of the process of umlaut, for instance. in old Icelandic, results iv a large number if forms that are more recent than the corresponding ones in the other Scandi navian languages in their oldest period. The notabiy wide vocabulary of old Icelandic shows some admixture of foreign elements. These are Latin words, introduced mainly through the Citu•eh after the l'hristianiz.ation of leeland in the year 1000; Celtic words, introduced in con siderable number as a result of the contact of Celtie•speaking people in the British Islands with the Norwegian settlers of leeland, many of whom saute by the way 14 Scotland, Ireland, the orkneys, the Hebrides, and the Shetlands, where they had previously lived fur longer or shorter periods; Anglo-Saxon words, which came in as a consequenee of the close contact of lee binders in England with the people, their lan guage, and their culture; and finally. a few French and Oennan words, due to the list. in literature of foreign material, derived either di rectly or remotely from these sourees.
The history of New Icelandic, or the present period of the language, begins with the Refor mation, although the conditions that characterize it eau already be observed in proeess of develop ment in the transitional period at the end of old Icelandic. The earliest literary monument of New Icelandic is the first. Icelandic printed book, the New Testament. translated by (hid Ilotts kalksson. and printed at Itoeskilde. in 1)emna•k. in 1540. In general. 10bl:oldie has still retained. to the present tithe, along broad lines, in inflec tions and vocabulary. its archaic eliaraeteristies, so that to-day it is on the whole the most ancient in appearance of the Germanic tom.nies. Since 'the beginning of the period the language has, however. in reality undergone a continual inter nal development. This is particularly true of
the sounds. which have been very materially changed in pronunciation. although frequently the conservative rutootion of the old orthography gives no .111e to it. \\•int has helped Icelandic to retain its .arty conditions is, more than any thing else, its relative isolation and the conse quent mininoim eonta, t with other languages, on the one side, and the fact 14 its unbroken use in literature I al the other. The produetton of literature in Iceland. although it dwindles in value and amount after the classical period until it is awaken. d to new life by the Reformation. has never wholly ceased sine.. its very beginning. :111 this. with the continuous enIture of the old literature. which has in some form or other never been forgotten, has tended to keep the language phenomenally pure and homogeneous throughout the island. .1fter 113s0 when Iceland. which since the end of the Republic. in 12(12 had belonged to Norway, fell with that eountry under the soy of Denmark. a Danish influenee was exerted upon the language which has continued, with varying effect, down to the present time. This influence was particularly active in the two eenturies immediately following the Reformation, when, as a consequence of the reawakened literary activity, which brought with it many translations of foreign. and espeeially of Danish books, it made itself felt in vocabulary and orthography to such an extent that the language seemed on the way to lose forever its eharacteristie purity. It was an appeal to the old literature which fur nished the missing norm. and not only eliecked the further introduction of Danicisms, but set on font a reactionary tendency toward the forms and orthography of the elassicai period of the language. This puristic movement began toward the end of the eighteenth century. but was par ticularly furthered by the formation of the lee landie Literary Society by the Danish philologist ];ask in 1816. Since that time an influence lots been carefully and intelligently exerted, both to eliminate foreign elements from the VOUS' 1 a ry, and either to rehabilitate old forms or to set in their place new forms made out of the old elements of the language, and to reform the orthography from the standpoint of etymology. A printed page of Icelandic at the present day has as a consequence a much more primitive character than the facts of its pronunciation ac warrant. In vomparison with the other Oermanie languages. elmng,cs ha ye, nevertheless, been relatively few, and Icelandic, not only ap pa•ently. but in reality, as it is in use to-day, is inherently the best preserved of this entire group.
The present territory of Icelandic, aside from small settlements in the roiled States and in British .1nieriea, is the island of Ireland, when, it is the spoken and written language of the 70,000 inhabitants. The literary language of the present time is to all intents and purposes the spoken speech. not of any particular region or of any separate elass, but of the people of the whole eountry, with the reservation that in the capital and the trading places along the coast nmeh Danish is in use. and the spoken language is no longer as pure as As in tit. old period, there are no dialects in modern Icelandic, although there are still, as then. minor differences that give the language of certain part,: of the country a local color.