<div dir="ltr"><h1 itemprop="headline">Icelandic Has The Best Words For Technology</h1>
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<span itemprop="author">Sarah Zhang</span>
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<p>When the University of Iceland <a href="http://www.visindavefur.is/svar.php?id=1013">got its first computer in 1964</a>, Icelandic did not have a word for “computer”. So the guardians of the language invented one: <em>tölva –</em> a fusion of <em>tala</em> (number) and <em>völva</em> (prophetess) that adds up to the wonderfully poetic “prophetess of numbers”.<br>
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<p>Iceland is an isolated island of just 300,000 people, and it has
practiced a strident form of linguistic purism. Rather than let loan
words from foreign languages casually creep into Icelandic, linguists at
the Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies invent ones anew.
There are other languages preoccupied with this kind of purism — French
is another example — but Icelanders take its connection to their ancient
history most seriously.</p>
<p>Iceland’s official language policy came after the country won its
independence from Denmark in 1918. Unlike most other languages, written
Icelandic has changed very little over the past 800 years. Modern
Icelanders can read ancient texts without much trouble. (By comparison,
Beowulf was written in Old English about 1000 years ago, and is entirely
incomprehensible to modern readers.) With nationalism on the rise in
the early 20th century, language became a way for Iceland to assert its
newfound independence and connect Icelanders to their history. <em>T</em><em>ölva</em>, for example, was coined by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigur%C3%B0ur_Nordal">Sigurður Nordal</a>, a noted scholar on ancient Icelandic sagas.</p>
<p>Here are a few more examples chronicled in an <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/1987-05-31/news/mn-9256_1_icelandic-words">Associated Press article</a> in 1987, when Iceland was debating the word for AIDS. (They eventually settled on <em>alnaemi</em>, which roughly translates to “total vulnerability.”)</p>
<blockquote><p>
Telephone is “simi,” from an ancient word for thread. A jet plane is a
“thota,” from the verb “thjota,” to zoom. Even “video,” which has become
international coinage, did not last long here, quickly yielding to the
locally evolved “myndband,” or picture band.
</p></blockquote>
<p>But inevitably, some loanwords have crept into Icelandic, too: <em>banani</em> for “banana” or <em>kaffi</em> for “coffee.” In some cases, linguists aim for the best of both words: <em>ratsjá</em> comes from the Old Icelandic “to find” and it also sounds remarkably similar to what it means in English, “radar.”</p>
<p>Inventing new words sounds like a lofty proposition, but when it
comes down to it, a lot of the day to day work for linguists at the Árni
Magnússon Institute is pretty prosaic. Obscure, technical words have to
get pushed through a bureaucratic pipeline, and not all of them have
poetic meanings. <a href="https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?pli=1#search/icelandic/14cba96e586a5853">Thorsteinn Thorsteinsson</a>,
a traffic engineer who works as a technical consultant for linguists at
the Institute, sent me a page of translations of transit terms. Many
are just compounds, like <em>göngustígur</em> (footpath), <em>göngubrú</em> (footbridge), <em>brúargólf</em> (the deck of a bridge).</p>
<p>“It’s not just for the good of language,” he told me. “Nowadays we do
it because it is good for business.” For example, this list of traffic
words was important to make sure road standards were, well, standardised
across all of the European Union.</p>
<p>And that’s the irony hidden behind the work of coining all these new
Icelandic words. The new words are necessary to keep Icelandic up to
date, so that it can stay connected to the rest of the world through
commerce. But the more connected it is with the rest of the word, the
harder it is to keep the language pure.</p>
<p>“Times are changing,” says Thorstein, “There is not the same urgency for the young people.”</p>
<p>And the internet is largely responsible for this. Back in the 20th
century — you know, before we spent our whole lives online — centralised
radio and newspapers could easily set the standards for spoken
Icelandic. The internet has fractured our attention, and Icelanders
spend a lot more time reading in English. A <a href="http://www.zuckermann.org/pdf/icelandicPSM.pdf">2011 paper</a> on Icelandic word-formation by two linguists had this to say:</p>
<blockquote><p>
Language purists are now much less vocal than they used to be, and there
has been surprisingly little discussion amongst language planners of
the use of English as the language of the Internet. It is true that
there are a high number of bloggers who write in Icelandic, but it is
difficult for any small nation language policy to confront the issue of
the language of the Internet. Many of the websites that Icelanders look
at are inevitably in English. The interest in keeping the language
‘pure’ seems to have subsided slightly in the face of increasing
globalisation.
</p></blockquote>
<p>Such is the internet’s flattening effect, which few might have predicted back when Iceland got its first <em>tölva</em> back in 1964.</p><p><a href="http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2015/05/icelandic-has-the-best-words-for-technology/">http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2015/05/icelandic-has-the-best-words-for-technology/</a><br></p><br clear="all"><br>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature">**************************************<br>N.b.: Listing on the lgpolicy-list is merely intended as a service to its members<br>and implies neither approval, confirmation nor agreement by the owner or sponsor of the list as to the veracity of a message's contents. Members who disagree with a message are encouraged to post a rebuttal, and to write directly to the original sender of any offensive message. A copy of this may be forwarded to this list as well. (H. Schiffman, Moderator)<br><br>For more information about the lgpolicy-list, go to <a href="https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/" target="_blank">https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/</a><br>listinfo/lgpolicy-list<br>*******************************************</div>
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