The official language of Iceland is Icelandic, which is spoken by at least 300,000 of the 336,000 people who live there (if not more) . Icelandic is a North Germanic language spoken by about 314,000 people, the vast majority of whom live in Iceland where it is the national language. It is most closely related to Faroese and Western Norwegian. Icelandic is a rather idiosyncratic language, and this is somewhat by design. It has been intentionally preserved through language purism efforts to keep the language from absorbing foreign influences. Icelandic is closely related to Faroese; the written forms of the two languages are very similar, but their spoken forms are not mutually intelligible. It is not mutually intelligible with the continental Scandinavian languages (Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish) and is more distinct from the most widely spoken Germanic languages, English and German, than those three are. While Icelandic is the national language, most Icelanders can speak fluent English, in addition to other languages like Danish, German, Spanish, and French. English is taught as a second language in Iceland, and almost every Icelander speaks the language fluently.