By Miranda Bryant
Publication Date: 2025-11-15 10:00:00
IFormer Prime Minister of Iceland Katrín Jakobsdóttir said that the Icelandic language could be wiped out in just one generation due to the rapid rise of AI and the increasing dominance of the English language.
Katrín, who resigned as prime minister last year to run for president after seven years in office, said Iceland was experiencing a “radical” change in language use. More people are reading and speaking English and fewer are reading Icelandic, a trend they say is reinforced by the way language models are trained.
She made these comments before her appearance at the Iceland Noir crime festival in Reykjavík following the surprise publication of her second novel in the genre, which she co-wrote with Ragnar Jónasson.
“Many languages are disappearing and with them many values (and) many human thoughts are dying,” she said. Icelandic has only about 350,000 speakers and is one of the least changed languages in the world.
“With this language that…
