TIMED PRACTICE · Íslenska
Icelandic typing speed test
Flow like a stream. Space commits a word, backspace fixes the last one. Tab or Esc restarts.
Testing your Icelandic typing speed
Icelandic uses the Latin alphabet you already have. The practice words here add 10 characters beyond a-z — ð, ó, í, á, ö and more.
Icelandic sits on the same QWERTY keys as English, and these practice words then ask for 10 more: ð, ó, í, á, ö, ú, æ and ý, among others. 43% of the practice words here need one — a large minority of words — which is often enough that reaching for them should be a trained motion rather than a hunt through a character map.
A frequency count of the bank explains why early progress feels fast and later progress does not. The top ten characters cover about 64% of everything these Icelandic words contain; past that you are learning characters that turn up once in a paragraph, which takes as long to automate and pays back far less often.
Most people arrive at Icelandic able to type and unable to type Icelandic, which is a narrower problem than it feels. The letter keys are already done. What is left is a small number of positions, and the willingness to reach for them rather than paste them in.
The speed test and the games draw on one bank of 94 common Icelandic words — 30 distinct characters in all, averaging 4.1 written units per word. A test can run for a fixed duration or a fixed number of words, with punctuation and numbers optional. Words are drawn at random each time, so no two runs are the same and there is nothing to memorise. The result reports net speed, accuracy, how steady you were across the run, and the five keys you got wrong most often.
- Writing system
- Latin
- Keyboard layout
- Latin QWERTY family
- Direction
- left to right
- Practice words
- 94
- Distinct characters
- 30
- Average word
- 4.1 units
Characters beyond a-z in the Icelandic practice words
- ð11
- ó8
- í6
- á4
- ö4
- ú3
- æ2
- ý2
- þ2
- é1
Counted across the 94 practice words. 43% of them need at least one.
og að í er á um ekki en það sem við meðÞorn and eth, still in use
Icelandic retains two letters that English used and abandoned: þ (thorn) and ð (eth), both representing sounds English now spells "th". Thorn survived in English long enough to be mangled by printers who substituted the letter y, which is where the mock-archaic "Ye Olde" comes from — it was always pronounced "the".
Icelandic also uses æ, ö and acute accents on all six vowels, which are separate letters rather than marked versions of the plain ones. The Icelandic keyboard gives þ, ð, æ and ö their own keys.
The alphabet has 32 letters and omits c, q, w and z, so an Icelandic keyboard has keys most Icelandic words never need — a concession to everyone also typing English.
Questions about typing in Icelandic
Do I need an Icelandic keyboard?
No. Your operating system already offers a layout that produces ð, ó, í, á and ö from the keys you have — through a dead key on some, a modifier such as right Alt on others. Which one depends on the language and on the layout you select; the hardware does not change either way.
Why is my Icelandic speed lower than my English speed?
Because you are doing two things at once: finding the key and recalling what it writes. Speed in a script you have typed for years is one motion; speed in a new one is a lookup followed by a motion. The lookup is what disappears with practice, and when it does the gap closes faster than most people expect.
Is the Icelandic typing test the same every time?
No. Words are drawn at random from the Icelandic bank on every run, so there is nothing to memorise and a second attempt is a fresh test rather than a rehearsal. You can fix the duration or the word count, turn punctuation and numbers on, or paste your own text.
What is the difference between raw and net WPM?
Raw counts everything you typed; net subtracts what you got wrong and left wrong. A large gap between the two is the most useful signal on the results screen — it means the speed is there and the accuracy is not, which is a different problem from simply being slow, and a faster one to fix.
Which Icelandic keyboard layout do these tests use?
Latin QWERTY family, plus the 10 characters beyond a-z that these practice words use. The 94 practice words between them use 30 of those 36, so 6 characters never come up in the practice text — these are the commonest words rather than an even sweep of the layout. The keyboard guide below the typing area shows the keys you actually press, which for an input method are the Latin ones already printed on them.
What will I actually be typing in Icelandic?
94 of the most common words in Icelandic, drawn at random. They use 30 distinct characters between them and average 4.1 written units each, with the longest running to about 10. Short, frequent words are used on purpose: they are the ones your hands will meet most often outside a lesson, so the practice transfers.
Is Icelandic hard to type?
Only slightly, if you already touch type. 43% of the practice words need a character outside a-z, 10 such characters appear in total, and the rest is a keyboard you already know. The difficulty is concentrated in a handful of positions rather than spread across the layout.
Do I need an account, and is it free?
Neither. There is no paid tier and no required sign-in — the 94 Icelandic practice words, the speed test and all three games are the whole product, available immediately. Signing in is worth it only if you practise on more than one device.
Also in Icelandic: lessons and typing games.
Other languages written in Latin: Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Javanese, Latvian, Lithuanian. Or browse all 86 by writing system.
Further reading
- Does your keyboard matter?Mechanical against membrane, laptop against desktop, split against straight. What genuinely changes your typing, what only changes how it feels.
- How long a typing test should beFifteen seconds, one minute and five minutes measure three different things. Which length to use, and why comparing results across them is meaningless.
- Keyboard shortcuts worth learningThe text-editing shortcuts almost nobody learns are the ones that pay. What they are on each platform, how to learn them, and why they belong to typing.