On September 11, Lilja Dögg Alfreðsdóttir, Minister of Culture and Business Affairs, formally launched m.is, a new website overseen by the Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies, at an event in the auditorium of the Reykjavík Women’s College.

This new website is specifically designed for younger users and those learning Icelandic as a second language, though it can, of course, benefit anyone seeking information about the Icelandic language.

In this first version, users can look up words in three dictionaries maintained by the Árni Magnússon Institute: the Dictionary of Contemporary Icelandic, the Icelandic-English Dictionary, and the Icelandic-Polish Dictionary. The latter two are still works in progress but are far enough along to be useful.

In addition to providing definitions and examples of word usage from the dictionaries, the site also displays word inflections using data from the Database of Modern Icelandic Inflection (BÍN). What’s more, the site supports translation between Icelandic and English based on machine translation tools.

In many ways, m.is is a more compact and simplified version of málið.is, a website maintained by the institute since 2016. While málið.is offers users an overview of 17 linguistic databases and directs them to the relevant sites, m.is sources information from four dictionaries and presents it all in a unified interface. Users are guided through the content, and linguistic terms are explained. Significant effort has been made to ensure that the design and layout are clear, even on mobile devices. The site is built on new language technology, for example, entering search terms through voice-to-text instead of typing them.

The aim is for the website to be further developed in response to the needs of young people and others learning Icelandic.