Icelandiconline.is – a website specifically designed for people to teach themselves Icelandic – has formally opened.
Opened by former president Vigdís Finnbogadóttir at the Nordic House yesterday, the site already has 16,000 registered users from around the world.
The site, which is designed for adults, features a number of practice drills of varying levels of difficulty that can be taken. There are also videos and sound files, to help with pronunciation. The exercises are designed to deal with the language as it is spoken in every-day situations that a person living here might encounter. Dozens of students, teachers, and artists contributed to the project.
If you care to try it out yourself, registration is completely free, but if you want to give it a test drive first, sign in with the e-mail address “testing@test.is” and the password “testing”. Keep in mind that the test sign-in can only be used one time.
There is as yet no word on whether or not the time you spend on the site will count towards the required number of hours of Icelandic classes you might need for certain immigration requirements.