Favorite Thing: I'm not an expert on the Faroese language, but I have a great interest in languages, and here are my impressions of it.
Faroese is closely related to Icelandic. They are similar enough in print that Icelanders can read most Faroese, and vice versa. However, the accents are very different, such that Icelanders do not understand spoken Foroese. However, Foroese do, for the most part, understand Icelandic. This may be because they have a greater exposure to Icelandic than Icelanders do to Faroese, or just because Icelandic is more phonetic a language than Faroese (which sounds very different than it spells).
I first heard Faroese on the airplane on my flight from Reykjavik to Torshavn. At first, I thought it must be some other language - it didn't sound like a Nordic language at all ! In fact, to my ear, it sounds more like Turkish ! This is because of all the 'ch' and 'j' sounds (that's English 'ch' and 'j' sounds, I mean). For example, the 'kj' combination is pronounced like 'ch' in English.
But if you listen closely, you also hear some Scandinavian words and sounds that you expect from a Nordic language. So to my ear, it sounds like Turkish with an Icelandic influence !
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Faroe Islands
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on Feb 10, 2006
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