I should have titled this thread, "Stop Me Before I Sign Up For Yet Another Online Course". Nevertheless, www.icelandiconline.is It's free from the University of Iceland. I admit to the fascination but my linguistic efforts would be much better directed at improving my somewhat wobbly Spanish. But for the "cool" factor, Icelandic even LOOKS like it's from Lord of the Rings!
Another cool thing - the language has hardly changed in 900 years. Any Icelander who can read his/her morning paper (and that's ALL of them - literacy is pretty well 100%) can read Iceland's 12th Century literature. Eitt tungumál er aldrei nóg. (One language is never enough.)
English proficiency there is pretty well 100% as well. I don't know about old people in the countryside, but I didn't encounter a single person there who didn't: people in pubs, maids at my hotel, people in little shops, etc.
I was told that the nearest landmass to Iceland is Scotland and that Scottish (would that be a version of Gaelic?) is the third language of Iceland. It must be true because I saw it on the interwebs.
Well, if you saw it on the Interweb, it must be true. (NOT) According to Wiki, Gaelic was the native language of many early Icelanders. On the surface, the Interweb claim could make sense - there were many Scandinavians (Vikings) who settled in the North of Scotland and in the Orkney Islands. But there aren't all that many Gaelic speakers in Scotland, these days. 57,000 or so, according to the last census - 1.1% of the pop. over 3 years of age. Here's the whole Wiki. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Iceland It turns out that Gaelic is NOT the third language of Iceland - this article says that's German, with only 0.31 of the population conversing in it. https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/what-languages-are-spoken-in-iceland.html Then again, that article is also from the Interweb.
