I am visiting Iceland in July and am interested in knowing how difficult it will be for an English and Spanish speaker to navigate the country?
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1Not at all. What kind of difficulties do you expect?– Tor-Einar JarnbjoFeb 2, 2018 at 8:11
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en.m.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Iceland#talk– Andrew GrimmFeb 2, 2018 at 11:21
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Spanish is sometimes useful for communicating with Portuguese speakers (or at least I have found it to be the case), but you are not likely to encounter many of them in Iceland.– Robert ColumbiaFeb 2, 2018 at 13:41
2 Answers
Depends on what you mean by "navigate." To get from place to place, a map or GPS should be sufficient. For anything else, Spanish will be of little value (although I did manage to communicate with an Italian restaurant owner). However, English and Danish are required subjects in the Icelandic schools.
Road signs will not be in English, but the meaning of "80" is pretty obvious, and many of the symbols, shapes, and colors you are used to are international. Destinations will be their local name on signs at exits, but if you are looking for a particular place you already know its name.
If you already know some of the places you'll be, use Google Streetview to simulate going down the street and looking at the signs. Or http://walkscore.com to see what sorts of businesses are nearby
Lots of touristy marketing brochures will be available in several languages.
It's not hard to identify a restaurant, even if you can't read the menu. Or hotel.
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3Walkscore for Reykjavík results in encoding errors and Unsupported country. It also claims that daily errands require a car, which is (in Reykjavik) totally untrue, as cycling and public transportation are completely adequate.– gerritFeb 2, 2018 at 12:15
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:-) Anyone who doesn't know that the rest of the world is on the metric system should not leave England/USA without a parent or guardian. :-)– WGroleauFeb 2, 2018 at 16:41
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Sorry about walkscore. I saw the "unsupported" blurb, but since I have seen it often in other places with no errors in the maps and lists, I didn't bother to click on anything this time.– WGroleauFeb 2, 2018 at 16:43
In Iceland, everyone speaks English (except maybe an old man in a village far far away). For the rest see the WGroleau's answer.
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3In Iceland, the old man in the village far far away probably speaks English flawlessly.– gerritFeb 2, 2018 at 12:15
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Apparently my friends wife parents who live on a farm on the remote side of the Island don't speak great English, probably better than a remote farmer in the UK speaks foreign languages on average though!– TimFeb 2, 2018 at 14:24
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1@Tim, better than the average well educated English (wo)man, whatever their location of living.– Willeke ♦Feb 2, 2018 at 16:13
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@Willeke Surely you know this is not actually true. Give native English speakers some credit. Icelanders (and Scandinavians) do not, despite the stereotype, speak English better than native speakers in general. Feb 2, 2018 at 18:55
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I meant that the average Icelandic person speaks two or three languages fluently, while the average English person speaks one, although I do know quite a few who speak a second fluently. I did not mean that Icelandic people speak English better than the average English person. (Although I do know some British people who can not really be understood outside their own area.)– Willeke ♦Feb 2, 2018 at 19:31