Faroese vs Icelandic: Old Norse and its daughters

Faroese (Føroyskt) is the language spoken in the Faroe Islands (Føroyar), located between Scotland, Norway and Iceland. Faroese people’s ancestors were Norsemen, and despite centuries of Danish rule, they managed to preserve their language through oral tradition. Faroese and Icelandic are closely related to Scandinavian languages, but still look much more like the language of their ancestors.

How similar is Faroese to Icelandic, and Scandinavian languages?

As follows, some basic expressions in Faroese, Icelandic, and Swedish/Danish/Norwegian. Although Faroese and Icelandic are closer, you can easily see that they belong to the same language group.

	Faroese	Icelandic	Scandinavian
yes/no	ja/nei	já/nei	ja/ nej/nei
thank you	takk	takk	tak(k)
excuse me	orsaka	afsakaðu	se:ursäkta / no,dk:un(d)skyld
sorry	umskylda	fyrirgefðu	se:förlåt/ no:beklager
here you go/you’re welcome	ger so væl	gjörðu svo vel	varsågod
what’s your name	hvussu eitir tú?	hvað heitir þú?	(h)va(d) heter/hedder du?
good day	góðan dagin	góðan daginn	god dag

Faroese-Icelandic Differences in Spelling: tell them apart

Faroese has a written form based on etymology, making it look much closer to old Norse (and Icelandic), than its pronunciation.

• No Þ (thorn) in Faroese: þ, pronounced as English th in mouth, is not present in the Faroese alphabet. Where Icelandic has a Þ, Faroese usually has a T: tú (you); tað (this) vs þú, það. In Scandinavian languages this is usually a D: du, det
• No é in Faroese: Faroese alphabet does have just like Icelandic and unlike Scandinavian languages several accented vowels: Á Í Ó Ú Ý, It does however not have é (‘I’ in Faroese: eg, Icelandic: ég)
• Faroese Ø/ Icelandic Ö
• -ggj ending in Faroese: oyggjar, nýggj, kríggj (islands, new, war)

Learn to tell Iceland and Faroese apart from all Nordic languages

	Faroese	Icelandic	Scandinavian
þ?	x þú, það	usually T: tú, tað	often turned into a D: du, det
ð?	x hvað, við	x (silent, sometimes T: hvat, vit)	– usually D/T/silent: (h)va(d)
é?	x ég (I)	– eg	–
á, í, ó, ú, accented y	x	x	no accents
ö/ø	ø	ö	dk/no: ø/ se: ö
æ/ä	æ	æ	dk/no: æ/ se: ä
å?	– often á when Scandinavian has å: ár, fá, blá	– often á when Scandinavian has å: ár, fá, blá	X år, få, blå,

Faroese vocabulary: Language purism, Danish loanwords, and a sprinkle of Irish

A language committee has invented words to prevent more influential languages to take over Faroese, similarly to Icelandic language purism. The Faroese Jóhan Hendrik W. Poulsen (1934-2022) invented words as:

• Telda (computer), Fartelda (laptop), Far­tele­fon (mobile phone) – In Icelandic (far)tölva and (far)sími
• Tal­gild­­ur (digital), fløga (CD) ‘thick slice’
• tyrla (helicopter) – in Icelandic þyrla from tiril=whirl, Far­støð (terminal) ‘distance/travel place’
•  flogbóltur (volleyball), ‘fly ball’
• Gosbað (jacuzzi) ‘air bath’

At the same time, being under the Kingdom of Denmark, Faroe islanders incorporated loanwords form Danish in their language: snakka, forstanda – speak, understand – are used colloquially instead of tosa and skilja (Icelandic tala, skilja). Bike is súkkla (cykel in Danish, reiðhjól in Icelandic), War is kríggj (krig in Danish, lögregla in IS)

Faroese vocabulary is of course North Germanic, but as Norsemen brought Celtic women from their settlements in the Irish Sea, you also find a few traces of that, mainly regarding cattle and fields apparently.

Grammar: genders, declensions, verbs

Faroese and Icelandic are Insular North Germanic languages- and thanks to their isolation they retained many aspects of Old Norse that Swedish, Danish and Norwegian dropped.

	Faroese	Icelandic	Scandinavian
genders/articles	3 (m/f/n)	3 (m/f/n)	2 (m/n)
cases	3 (often 2 when spoken)	4	–
verb endings (present)	3/4: -i,-r,-a/u (plural=1 ending)	5/6: -,-t, -r,-um,-ið,-a/u	1: -r

Here are explanations regarding the table above:

Genders

Both Icelandic and Faroese have masculine, feminine and neuter gender.

in Scandinavia, only Norwegian partially kept the masculine/feminine distinction, while Swedish and Danish have only general and neuter – Norwegian was actually grouped as West- North Germanic together with Faroese and Icelandic before shifting towards the languages in the continent. What is neuter in Icelandic and Faroese usually is also in Scandinavian, as feminine when used in Norwegian. There is some overlap also with German and Dutch, so speaking multiple Germanic languages helps when in doubt!

The gender can be often assumed from the endings:

• Masculine: -UR, -I: dagur, matur (day, food)- Scandinavian languages lost the ending: dag, mat; tími
• Feminine: -, -A: bók, nátt/nótt; kirkja, gøta/gata (book, night, church, street). A often stays in Swedish, but is an E in Danish: kyrka/kirke, gata/gade
• Neuter: -, -I, A: barn, hús, stykki, kaffi, eyga/auga, eyra/oyra, hjarta (child, house, piece, eye, ear, heart)

In addition, Faroese and Icelandic have declesions for numbers until 3 (Faroese) and 4 (Icelandic). The number changes depending on the gender: ein maður/kona, eitt barn; tveir menn, tvær konur, tvey børn and so on. This does happen in Scandinavian languages only for one/a: en bok, ett barn.

	Faroese	Icelandic
1/a man, woman, child	ein maður/kona, eitt barn	einn maður, ein kona, eitt barn
2 men, women, children	tveir menn, tvær konur, tvey børn	tveir menn, tvær konur, tvö börn
3	tríggir, tríggjar, tryy	þrir, þrjar, þrjú
4	–	fjórir, fjær, fjogur

What about articles?: there is no undetermined article. ‘a man’ is simply maður. As in all North Germanic languages, the determined form is made by adding a suffix to the substantive, which varies by gender:
-in, -n, -ið: Masculine maðurin(n) (the man), feminine-n konan (the woman), neuter-ið: husið (the house).

in Scandinavian you do have en/ett as undetermined article, becoming -en, -et for the determined form: ett hus, huset. Norwegian might also have feminine ei as ei bok (a book), becoming boka, the book. Another interesting common trait with some varieties of Norwegian is that the possessive adjective can be put after the noun: boka mi – bókin min vs min bok/bog in Swedish and Danish.

Cases

In Faroese and Icelandic, a noun changes depending on the grammatical case according to its gender/number, and the prepositions it follows.

• Faroese: Bátur(in): (the) boat – eg síggi bátin: i see a boat
• Icelandic: bátur(inn) – ég sé bát

Icelandic retained 4 cases: Nominative (subject), accusative (object), dative, genitive, as for example German does – while Faroese 3, dropping the genitive, considered obsolete, very formal, or only in fixed expressions- or even 2, as in spoken Faroese the accusative is often used instead of dative!

So the name of the Faroe Islands is Føroyar, but: í Føroyum (in the Faroes), and you have the Føroya Banki (Bank of the Faroes); the Faroese language is called Føroyskt, but in Faroese is á føroyskum.

How to Learn Faroese?

You find resource to learn Faroese, Icelandic and all Scandinavian languages in my free language resources list – many of these are free!

https://talkinfaroese.com/best-faroese-resources

• Faroese is now available on google translator, though the Faroe Islands started their own translation service Faroe Islands Translate in 2017, with sentences human-translated.
• talkinfaroese.com has a lifetime subscription for 97 USD.
• some publishing company Sprotin has online dictionaries. Listen to Faroese with public radio KVF. The crime drama TROM is set in the Faroe islands
• You can join Faroese language summer courses at the Faroe islands university!

Sources for this article:

• Faroese – a language course for beginners – J. Adams, P. P. Petersen
• talkinfaroese.com
• setur.fo
• Discoverfaroeislands, Guide to faroe islands

Thanks to @ malmedmatze for reminding me of some points!