I would like to learn either Icelandic or (Scottish) Gaelic. Which is the richer and more complex language?

Question

I am speaking of declension, conjugation, and overall complexity of thoughts expressed. I think that the reason that the language of Shakespeare is so much richer than modern English is due to it's relative closeness to older Germanic languages. This would suggest that Icelandic is better for my purposes. Does Gaelic show these subtle complexities? Thanks.

Answer 1

An English speaker would recognize much more vocabulary in Icelandic than Scottish Gaelic. Both languages belong to the Indo-European family of languages but one belongs to the Germanic branch of Indo-European (Its nearest relatives are still Norwegian and Swedish, maybe the extinct Anglo-Saxon) and the other, a descendent of Old Irish, beclongs to the Celtic branch.

Icelandic would thus be a little easier to learn for an English speaker than Scottish Gaelic but not by much. Both languages have archaic grammars, more like Russian and Armenian in some ways, than other Western European languages. Both languages are phonetically complex too. This means that good pronunciation would be more important to making yourself understood in them than in languages with less complex phonologies like English, German, Dutch and the Romance languages.

Since few people speak Icelandic or Scottish Gaelic, unfortunately, you may have to rely mostly on some good sets of tape cassettes for learning them.

Answer 2

They are both rich languages from a grammatical point of view. Icelandic is a 'living' language whereas Gaelic is spoken only by a relatively small number of bilinguals. You'll find little connection between Shakespearean English and Icelandic. The latter is apparently very close to Old Norse and, as such, would give you a great insight into many of the Germanic languages.

I tried reading an Icelandic newspaper and understood less than 1% of the words, even though I have studied Old English and Middle English. There's a challenge for you!

Answer 3

So your definition of rich is something like "more inflected", right? I feel sorry for you. In that case, why not learn Georgian? (the language spoken in the former Soviet republic). It has something like 23 case/mood combinations.

I'm being a little facetious, but seriously, all languages are capable of expressing many complex thoughts. I'm sorry that you don't see that.

Just because English isn't very inflected doesn't mean that it isn't complex in other ways. The pronunciation of English, for example, involves many more sounds than many other languages. I really do think that you need to revise your definition of what makes a language valuable.

Answer 4

Both are from same roots and equally rich!