loan-word terminator

Nýyrði frá vefsíða Rögnmundar Kurzveils

2010-06-18T09:13:00.000-07:00

antibodies: mætlur (from mótefni)
autoantibodies: sjálfsmætlur
graphane (chemistry, nanotechnology): netkolvetni, netkvet (kvet = KolVETni, -an, graphene = netkol)
PET (Positron emission tomography): jándaskimi (jánd = contraction of jáeind, much more flexible and skimi (skanni is too much like the international word and 'skimari' contains the 'ari-' suffix, which originates from Latin)
singularity (futurology): vélvitshvellur, tæknihvellur
Singularity Institute: Tæknihvellsstofnun
somatosensory cortices (neuroscience): líkamsskynjunarberkir

The wild adventures of ‘Þema’ and ‘skema’, two abominable ulcers on the tongue of Fjallkona!

2008-06-21T07:30:00.000-07:00

The text in the picture freely translates as 'ADAPTATIONS ARE ABOMINATIONS'.

Linguistic purism is the best thing that could have happened to Iceland and pursuing this policy in its extremest form is the best way to go. For that reason, loan-words, adapted or unadapted, are all IMPURITIES! For those who still haven’t got enough of the on-going mutilation of our favourite tongue: I’m in the mood to expose all you linguistic hard-core FRONIACS to a typical UNCLE TIMBUR-HELGI horror story. I advice you to fetch the vomit-bags quickly, for the word ‘CENSORSHIP’ is no entry in the dictionray of your good ‘ole loan-word terminator. And before I forget: Antipurists, hold your wanking-towels ready!Once upon a time there were two Greek words that had an avowedly cosmopolitan ego like most of their friends. Filled with expansion drift they traveled through Europe from tongue to tongue on the vibrations of communication. Everywhere they came they looked for the right host who could offer them a free-lodging. Swollen-headed scholars and better-class people, who liked to distinguish themselves from the maleducated mob turned out to be the most hospitable of all. Having found the right breeding ground they took their time to contrive a plan for world-domination. As time went by, the offspring of these locusts came into fashion with more and more other-class people, everywhere in the world. They adapted to all kinds of environments like the most flexible virus. Only on a sparsely populated island in the North, they had more trouble to get on firm ground. For many decades they failed to dock to the brain-cells of its linguisticly conscient inhabitants. But in the end the two were spotted by a few indigenous virus-collectors and given the right disguise so that few would notice their presence. The fears of many language-conscient skalds became a reality: Thorough-bred xenolexical locusts multiplied and multiplied and spread from mind to mind, producing ridges of fat ulcers on the tongue of the Mountain lady. Ain’t this a disgusting-piece-of-shit-story?The main reason this could happen is the fact that the Icelandic language commission has agreed to accept ‘ADAPTATION OF LOAN-WORDS’ as a way of lexical enrichment. Unbelievable! The very same people that should be on the frontline of language protection. Don’t they sense that ADAPTATIONS ARE ABOMINATIONS? Still, it would be unfair to put the blame on them entirely. The modern way of life and the influence of advanced media technology has sowed doubt about the relevance of extreme language purification in the hearts of the Icelandic people. As a result of this, it has become extremely difficult if not impossible for the language commissioners to take an extreme standpoint as did some early 19th century scholars and poets. The tradition of extreme language cleansing can only be retained if all thorough-bred Icelandic purists take the initiative to gather and to do the job themselves. And this is exactly what’s happening in Iceland today. Dozens of Crymogaians are forming a community that lays the foundation of a new tradition of speaking a pure an untainted language: THE HIGH ICELANDIC LANGUAGE COMMUNITY (HIÐ HÁFRÓNSKA MÁLFÉLAG)!

Three exciting language battle games soon to be commercialized!

2008-06-21T07:16:00.000-07:00

This picture shows Fjallkona fighting the loan-words (adapted or non-adapted, it's all "slettur") in pure Lara Croft style. The name of the game 'SKJÓTTU SLETTUR' means 'SHOOT THE LOAN-WORDS'! This is the best possible game for the optimal development of an Icelandic child into a linguisticly responsible adult.Recent research has shown that computer games are very beneficial for the mental development of a child. In a skaldic and linguisticly puristic community like Iceland, the right language games can represent an enormous new asset in the neverending battle against the contamination of the mother-tongue. Game specialists of the High Icelandic language movement have therefore been racking their brains about the development of games that could maximally enable Fronian kids to grow into linguisticly responsible and loan-word avoiding adults. The first result was baptised , but this was nothing more than a gameboy. The second edition of the game, ‘SKJÓTTU SLETTUR 2’ compares in quality to the newest and most innovative games on the market. Instead of terminating the loan-words yourself, you can let your heroine Fjallkona, the lady of the mountains do the work in pure LARA CROFT STYLE!!

Translation: Language Wars: The return of the skalds.

And that's not all, folks! If you are a hardcore language purist and your children are die hard Star Wars fans, you can surprise them with "Tungustríð, Endurkoma skáldanna (Language wars; The Return of the Skalds). In this game the two language Jedi's Jónas Hallgrímsson and Einar Bendiktsson fight against the Anglician empire of Darth Sam and his ally John Bull the hutt. The two jedi-skalds are supported by the mountain lady, dressed to kill in a futuristic, super sexy outfit, proving her excellent swordmanship with the light-sabre equivalent of Frónbrandur. Do you want to train yourself in the skaldic force, then don't hesitate any longer!!And last but not least: For the nostalgic adolescents among you we have adapted our good old Duke Nukem to High Icelandic culture. Like in the previously mentioned games, xenologistic targets galore. Come on, young Fronians, don't give this language polution a chance! Pull the trigger with skaldic passion an wipe out that vermin! Cooool!!!!

Translation: SKALD, DESTROY THEM. A game based on the legendary DUKE NUKEM! THE MAN HAS THE FOLLOWING MESSAGE FOR ALL ICELANDERS:YOU ARE AN ICELANDER!!!YOU LOVE YOUR CHILDREN!!!YOU DON'T WANT THOSE UGLY LOAN-WORDS TO BE SEALED IN THEIR BRAIN-TISSUE!!!THEN BUY THEM ME FOR CHRISTMAS!!

The dawn of skaldic enlightenment!

2008-06-21T04:39:00.000-07:00

High Icelandic Tungutrúarmenn believe in the return of Jónas Hallgrímsson, who will save the Icelandic nation from Tungurökkur, the twilight that falls over the Icelandic language. This is a scenario completely different from Ragnarökkr in Nordic mythology. The Icelandic language religion is an optimist set of believes. Mr Frónskáld Jónas Hallgrímsson will soon appear in the streets of Reykjavík, accompanied by the fjölnismenn, his close friends, the other deceased Icelandic skalds and yes, the Mountain Lady herself. He will present his magical NÝYRÐARITNINGIN (the neologistic bible), a extravoluminous book comsisting of nanometer-thin, crease-resistant pages. Purely Icelandic equivalents of everything that has ever been orally expressed on this planet are written down in draupnir-golden ink. Yes, my friends, words for literally everything, some exotic flute from Tahiti, a god-forsaken Kuiper-belt object, just name it! Every Icelander who touches this book will be instantly filled with its knowledge and the will to keep his mother-tongue pure. At the same time he will experience a skaldic enlightening, traveling through his body like a giant star-burst. This means that the kvasir-positive factor in his blood will make full connection with the Icelandic spiritual world: the Mountain lady, the deceased skalds and the poetry-god Bragi. Skaldicly enlightened beings can conversate in any form of poetry at rattling speed without the slightest effort. This ability has nothing to do with cognitive power. It is rather comparable to the concept of “the force” in Star Wars movies. The blood of someone who possess this “force” teems with so-called ‘midichlorians’. These are microscopic life-forms that reside within the cells of almost all living things and communicate with the Force. A large amount of these life-forms endows the possessor with magical powers. The same goes for the skaldic force. The activity of the Kvasir-positive blood-factor in the blood of an Icelander is equally proportional to his spiritual capacity to feel connected with the mountain lady and Iceland’s nature. A true Icelandic skald can hear his queen whispering love-poems in a gentle morning breeze, he senses the epic description of clashing swords in the sound of thunder and volcanic activity. Poetic talent in Iceland has, in opposite to other countries, nothing to do with cognitive abilities. In Iceland there DO IS a mythical poetic force that communicates between the souls of the mortals and the spiritual world.
At the above-mentioned dawn of skaldic enlightenment, Iceland will beam out this force to the other nations in this world. Everyone will readopt the long-gone language of his ancestors. Englishmen will cease to use their by-some-called modern language and revive their Anglo-Saxon. In America, all people of European descent will personally help reviving Indian languages by adopting them as their mother-tongue. The concept of ‘language death’ will be no more. Earth will become THE epicentre of a poetic big bang traveling on the wave-lenghts of light, filling the universe with beauty.
One might think: why Iceland? Are they better than anybody else? What about Celtic bards or classical writers like Homer and Virgil. Why are Icelanders the chosen ones?

Translation: Poetry capital of the world (Reykjavík). Of course!

The evidence that Icelanders were destined to become superior poets is obvious: The creation of poetic mead by mixing Kvasir’s blood with honey. The endeavours of Gods and Giants to obtain this magical beverage. Where else in the world has the importance of poetry been described more epicly than in Old Icelandic literature? Why were skalds the most renowned poets in medieval Europe? Why is Iceland the only country where a holiday was dedicated to its language on the birth-date of its most beloved POET?? Nowhere! Icelanders are simply the POETIC CHOSEN ONES and Reykjavík is the world’s capital of poetry! It is audible in the North-Atlantic storms, visible the flight of an eagle and scentable in the smoke of brimstone-wells. Accept it, my nordic insular friends, you are the hot-shots of poetry in the observable and yet unobserved universe, in one word, the universe. You have no other choice than finding this COOOOOOOOL! Hate it or love it, you can't deny facts!

Icelandic terminologists of chemistry should take example of their Maori colleagues!

2008-06-21T04:30:00.000-07:00

Translation: "Sisters in arms in language defence".
The picture shows Fjallkona and a Maori woman. The Maori language is the only terratongue that can compete with Icelandic with regard to extreme linguistic purism.Maori terminologists are making enormous efforts to adapt the language to the needs of Modern times. Their puristic excesses are comparable to Icelandic neologistic work. Just look at this excellent
· word-list If this continues, Icelandic will loose its world-record of being the most puristic language.In chemical terminology they even surpass Icelanders. They have actually started in something Fronian chemists have failed or refused to accomplish during the last 150 hundred years: the creation a genuine nomenclature of chemicals. Take a look at this web-page: THEY F***IN' HAVE MAORICED THE NAMES FOR THE SIMPLE HYDOCARBONS!
· SEE THISFrom the middle of the sixteenth to the middle of the 19th century, when chemistry became a modern science, Iceland was a poor country and the few intellectuals didn't have the means to terminologically keep pace with the flood of names of chemicals. The result was that the door was shut to native lexical enrichment in this field. Eighteenth century Czech and Hungarian chemists, at the frontline of development, did coin native names of chemical but these were later rejected. Only the Czech language has retained a few. It has four native names more than the rest of the European languages: gorččik (magnesium), vapnik (calcium), hlinik (aluminium) and drašlik (potassium)
· Hungarian word-list
· Old Czech periodic table Jónas Hallgrímsson would turn in his grave if he saw monsters like MEÞÝLBENSÓSÝANAT or DESOXÝRIBOSAKJARNSÝRA. Icelandic chemists have been contenting themselves with the notion that the creation of such names, if it were possible, would be impractical. Of course it would be impractical, of course it would place an enormous burden on the student who would have to learn thousands of extra names. But Icelandic deserves that effort. Iceland is THEEE language of terminological originality and going to further and further extremes in these endeavours, if it is done properly, can only strenghten the language and globally increase the Icelanders' fame as language defenders. It will prove to be a tough job, that's for sure, but once you have translated the 5000 basic names of radicals and elements you possess the necessary building blocks to construct billions of names.Icelandic chemists, take example of your Maori colleagues and start at last your own terminology! Stop the horrible adaptations of foreign chemical names, which only uglifies your precious linguistic inheritance. You’re just creating EFNAFRÆÐISLETTUR. Show your middle finger to the IUPAC's Committee on Nomenclature and Symbols and shove their internationally accepted terminology conventions up their... you know. Contact Maori chemists and analyse their results, learn their language if you have to. Work overtime everyday but free the pearl of the nordic tongues of that horrible xenologistic craaaap!

Advanced language software will put an end to global anglification!

2008-06-21T04:20:00.000-07:00

The position of English in the world is stonger than ever, and the trend towards global anglification powered by mass media technology will continue to accelerate. That's how things are FOR NOW! Because at a certain point in the 21th century another trend will put an abrupt end to this. Advanced translating software combined with mature speech recognition are due to hit the market somewhere in the next three decades. At that stage, foreign web-pages will be translated into our mother-tongue the moment it appears on our screen. We will hear our foreign friends speaking our language during video conferencing. In Japan, people are already envisaging "communication glasses". The translation of the words of the foreigner you’re talking to will immediately be subtitled on these transparant glasses. Tourists will eat this technology and its popularity will equal the cell-phone boom. And these are only a few of the many possible applications. The basic technologies for these futuristic products are already in the make. And as you know, save for catastrophies, technology always evolves exponetially. We will be very surprised to see how quickly things will change in the course of the next two decades. What a major breakthrough this would be for the small and endangered language communities. Language acquisition will become a mere recreative activity and everyone will finally be able to decide for themselves to what extent they want their mother-tongue to be influenced. The days of the interpreters are numbered, but the future for minority languages, like Icelandic, looks brighter than ever. Until now, mass media technology has dealth the death-blow to many already endangered languages and has lexically contaminated many others. Ironically enough, the advance of this same technology will provide the most efficient language protection tools ever. Prophets of doom with regard to the coming monolingual world will soon become silent and the sweet vibrations of Fjallkona’s voice will keep on filling the North Antlantic air until our motherstar, the sun, burns out.

Why does that stupid Belgian sense this uncontrollable urge to stick his nose into Iceland's linguistic affairs?

2008-06-21T04:14:00.000-07:00

I don’t care a straw if I am ridiculized or despised because of my meddlesomeness. My only concern is to contribute to the purity (read “health”) of the pearl of the Nordic tongues. My duty to my spiritual queen Fjallkonan, muze of the nordophiles is my only concern. First some background information for those who are getting ready to call me a lunatic: I do am an obsessed human being as it behoves a decent neologistic skald. But I don’t suffer from schizophrenic delusions or drug-induced hallucinations. I'm sorry to disappoint you. Tell me, what’s more crazy: Feeling the magical touch of Mountain Lady in your soul or going on a pilgrimage to Lourdes in order to evoke a divine intervention to cure a terminal disease? Or am I just unfortunate because I adhere to an unestablished set of beliefs? It needs to be mentioned, though, that the vast majority of Icelanders, who are irritated by my meddlesomeness happen to be antipurists. The red hot hardcore fans of language cleansing in Iceland have always adored my nose sticking deeply into their neologistic bussiness. Since 1996, when I had a spiritual experience at Thingvellir, I am convinced that Iceland is a living organism. Yes, Fjallkona exists, gentlemen! she’s alive, despite what scientists may tell you. She’s a female being that gave me the power and the spirit to battle for the beauty of her voice. Every true skald can hear her if she or he retires into Iceland’s wilderness. Eggert Ólafsson didn’t invent her when he wrote his Ofsjónir. The man just felt the feminine aspect of Iceland’s nature. And so did Bjarni Þórarinsson, Jónas Hallgrímsson, Einar Benediktsson and so will many other skalds to come. No matter how many kings, presidents or dictators may have ruled, rule or will rule Iceland, in essence the country will always remain a SKALDIC QUEENDOM. It has always been a clear as glacier-milk to me: Iceland is Fjallkona’s body, Icelanders her soul and Icelandic her voice. True fronian poets will understand these words. The level of being tuned to the Icelandic spiritual world is equally proportional to the activity of the Kvasir-positive factor in the blood, THE SKALDIC IQ, you may make a mental note of that!

The High Icelandic world of thought.

2008-06-21T04:12:00.000-07:00

- The High Icelandic way of life is a choice everyone should make for himself. Any attempt to convert, disrespect or discriminate people with a different opinion is not the way of the neologistic skald. We are only superextrme in our avoidance of loan-words. High Icelandic ultrapurism must come from the heart of Icelanders or from nowhere at all. But the door swings both ways. If a nýyrðaskáld is attacked personally, he won't present his other cheek, he will pay back with the same currency. Provocations like the words of David Crystal about linguistic purism on the conference in Reykjavík are a shame. Don't let they call you MÁLNÖRD or beat you up in your school when you prefer to use "BJÚGALDIN" instead of "BANANI". Strike back. That's only fair!
- A neologistic skald is a native speaker of Icelandic. That means that I, Timbur-Helgi Hermannsson don't qualify. I'm just an AGENT PROVOVATOR. My endeavours are meant to make a nýyrðaskáld, a man extremely strong with the Icelandic skaldic force stand up and turn the tide.
- A neologistic skald believes that Icelanders have "kvasisjákvæður blóðþáttur" (Kvasir-positive factor in their blood). This is a metaphorical way to express that they are naturally-born skalds. In the Middle Ages, the term ‘skald’ was a superlative synonym of ‘poet’ and nýyrðaskáld call upon Icelanders to retain this reputation with all of their strenght. A normal Icelandic poet should equal a foreign poet of world-class. Nýyrðaskáld believe that neologistic work is "Kvasisjákvætt hlaut" (kvasir-positive sacrificial blood), which symbolizes the extreme efforts, the battle against Tungurökkur, the sacrifices to find equivalents for impossible loan-words.
- Nýyrðaskáld believe that every loan-word in Icelandic can be replaced by native constructions without loss of flexibility or lexical impoverishment and this by means of almost superhuman neologistic efforts. They want their language to consist but of purely Icelandic lexical elements. This implies the translation of every name or term generated in human history: e.g. Tibet (Þakland, Roof-land), Brosmeyjan (Mona Lisa, the smiling maiden), nylon (nýgarn), Bjarthrafn Hrísill (Bertrand Russell)
- The purity of his mother-tongue is the prime value-feature of the neologistic scald and every loan-word, adapted or not, is considered to be a needle to the coffin of Fjallkonan.
- Neologistic skalds believe that linguistic purism is inextricably connected with the nature of the Icelandic language. Removing loan-words is like a declaration of love for the Mountain Lady.
- Nýyrðaskáld worship skáld (Jónas Hallgrímsson, Egill Skallagrímsson,...) like heroes and consider the Mountain lady as their symbolic queen. Icelandic is not a republic to them, it's a QUEENDOM!
- Because the extremely high level of complexity of High Icelandic word building, the neologistic skald needs to optimize his cognitive abilities. He does this by choosing a specific low-calorie-diet rich in brain-stimulating food-stuffs, by avoiding alcohol and drugs and by stimulating meditation techniques (e.g. transcedental meditation). Every Icelander has the plight to help less intelligent compatriots to rise their level. Because you must show the world that you are SKALD, the greatest kind of poet!!
- A nýyrðaskáld is neologisticly obsessed as a rule.

Fjallstúlkusaga

2008-06-21T01:55:00.000-07:00

Twenty first century High Icelandic folk-tales reveal some of Fjallkona’s antecedents before she became known as the female incarnation of Iceland. Nobody knows that prior to the mid-18th century, before she was first depicted in the poem Ofsjónir by Eggert Ólafsson, she was called ‘Fjallstúlka’ (Mountain Girl). But her first name has always been "Fróndís", and some refer to her as the "Thulean insular queen" or "Crymogaia".
Like in the original drawing by the German J. B. Zwecker, she has always worn a crown of ice on her head , a crown from which flames dart upward. On her shoulder is a raven, Iceland's most characteristic bird, Óðinn's old comrade and favorite of the poetsHer descent remains a mystery, but her birth took place around the time Ingólfur Arnarson set foot on Icelandic soil. It was said that she was found between coastal rocks by a raven, who learned her to use her inborn poetic powers. No one knows whether she was the child of a colonist who had exposed her or a hybrid of a man and some supernatural being. The fact that she managed to stay young for 1000 years and was able to bear the child of a rock-giant arises the presumption of a superhuman nature.

The girl of the mountains at thingvellir.

She was raised by fylgjur (protective spirits) during the first four centuries of her life. They nourished her with reindeer milk, which gave the girl a high muscular strenght. At the age of 200 (the equivalent of 4 human years) she was already able to brandish her five feet long sword called "Frónbrandur". Its unbreakable blade was composed of the heart of a axe and the soul of an shield and forged in the fire of Iceland by the dwarfs Brokkur and Eitri, the most renowned skalds of anvil and hammer. Óðinn personally saw to the perfection of her swordmanship and trained her regularly near the glacier of Hofsjökull. When the fleet of the Danish king Haraldur Gormsson attempted to invade Iceland, she sat on the necks of the the four Landsvættir (Dragon, eagle, bull and rock-giant), augmenting their battle greed with her shrill catching shrieks (Ólafs saga Tryggvasonar). Fjallstúlka was hardly ever tired and and almost never slept. One could ofter catch her sitting at the edge of Almannagjá humming on the rhythm of the northern lights. All were filled with astonishment at the ease with which the young girl composed rhymes and sagas. Her future looked as bright as a neversetting sun.

Odin perfecting the Mountain Girl's swordmanship near the glacier Hofsjökull.

But one day, when she had just reached the age of seven (Age of the Sturlungs) a terrible illness struck her. Unbearable pains tormented her body and her skin looked red and felt hot like fresh flowing fire-mud. The Fylgjur were very worried and went out searching for a skilled healer but there was no such one to be found. When all hope seemed lost an eldskessa (fire-trolless) called Hyrrokkinn showed up. Her heavily wrinkled face was so much covered with soot that no one could tell whether she smiled or sulked. She smelled of brimstone and wore a dress made of tatters and root-twigs. Because of her appearance, the fylgjur were distrustful at first, but Hyrrokkinn won them over by claiming to possess the right medicin to cure the sick child. They couldn't bear the thought of loosing their little sweet lady, so they let the trolless proceed. Thrice a day, Hyrrokkinn administered small portions of her concentrated 'ætihvannarsoð' (a broth of garden angelica) and the mountain girl's condition seemed to improve. But the fire-trolless said that her broth wouldn't cure the child completely. In addition to the drug, the hot air of Iceland's inner earth was needed to make a full recovery. She gave her word to bring her back as soon as she was cured. The fylgjur were so stupid to believe the fire-trolless, for she would take the sick girl down and never return from the dephts of the troll kingdom. Evil beings had been hunting Mountain girl ever since her very early childhood, but until now every attempt to catch hold of her had ended with an unsweet carress of Frónbrandur’s blade. But this one short vulnerable period became her undoing. All this happened around the mid-13th century, at the time when the Icelandic nation lost its independence through a personal union with the Norwegian king

Hyrrokkin eldskessa (The fire-trolless Hyrrokkin). Her name means either 'she who is wrinkled (hrokkin) by fire (hyr)' or 'she who is darkened (rokkin) by fire (hyr)'.

Hyrrokkinn arrived in the Troll-kingdom and was received as a heroine. The trolls couldn’t wait to taste a piece of the girl’s flesh so rich in magical kvasir-positive blood. But first she had to recover and gain weight. So they fed her "ætihvönn" and reindeer-milk until she looked consumable. But as Fróndís was recovering her mental powers returned and she quickly worked out a survival strategy. Any other living soul would have met with a certain death, but this time events took a different course. This small vulnerable maiden managed to manipulate these subterrestrial brutes with her unequalled narrative power. She lied that she had once known an stone-spirit who told her about the ancient history of their race. Trölldrápur full of epic grandeur about the heroics of ancient troll-kings mesmerized her captors and they soon forgot about their voracity. They promised not to devour her as long as her stories kept on entertaining them. This symbolizes the role of the mother-tongue in the struggle for independance along with the fact that Icelandic didn't succumb to the pressure of danification.In the meantime, the four protectors of Iceland, fylgjur and elves were desperately looking for her but she was nowhere to be found. The search continued as centuries went by. Fjallstúlka grew into an attractive young woman. Her 24 carat golden hair had never been cut since she was taken captive and was so long that it almost reached the ground. Having almost lost all hope, she still managed to keep the trolls at a distance with her skaldic powers. One time, she almost succeeded to escape by persuading a troll-child to steal the keys of her cage, but she was recaptured as she was about to leave the cave. (The short liberation of Iceland by Jörundur Hundadagakóngur in 1809). A century later, when Iceland became partly independant, she heard the pounding steps of the rock-giant and his companions right above her, but they didn't realize she was just beneath them and the sound of the footsteps died away. But somehow this event made Fjallstúlka realize that the "Landvættir" and there adherents hadn't stopped looking for her and she was refilled with hope

Garmur, the Hellhound, accompanied by Bergrisi, finds the cave where Fjallkona is held captive.

And yes, a short while later Bergrisi forced a breakthrough by deciding to make a dangerous travel to Gnipahellir and abduct Garmur, the huge hell-hound who still owed him a favour. The monsterous creature was endowed with the most sensitive olfaction known and its eyes peered through nocturnal darkness as excellent as a falcon spotting its prey in broad daylight. Bergrisi knew that Fjallstúlka had once been struck by drops of poetry mead raining down from the beak of Óðinn, who had taken the shape of an eagle after stealing the mead from Suttungs daughter. Garmur swiftly scented out minute trace amounts of the magic beverage, which easily led him to the cave where Fjallkona was held captive. This happened around 1944, when the independant republic of Iceland finally saw the light of day. The mountain high Rock-giant started pounding his iron staff to the ground to make the trolls flee from the place where Fjallkona was held. Some fylgjur went inside and quickly found the key of the cage, which was left behind by the panic-stricken trolls. While she was running towards freedom, the Mountain Lady couldn't resist the temptation to take a souvenir and scrambled along a golden egg. It became her most precious possession. The ‘Fjöregg’ (egg of live), as it is called, is a familiar motif in Icelandic folklore, where one can destroy trolls, giants, etc., by finding where their "life-egg" is hidden and hurling it at them so that it hits them in the head. Many Icelanders consider their language as the ‘vital egg’ of their culture.The trolls possessed only one golden egg, which one of their ancestors had stolen from the nest of Valur, the Gyrfalcon, the national bird of Icelandic. Months before the theft, the bird had emptied Óðins goblet filled with mead of poetry into which a little bit of gold dust, excreted by the ring Draupnir, had fallen. As a result of this the falcon laid a precious but vulnerable egg with a soft 24 carat golden shell.Translation of the text in the picture: Kvasis dreyri (The blood of Kvasir), er fjöreggs rauða (is the yolk of the egg of life) Into its yolk (in Icelandic ‘eggja-rauða’, literally “egg-red”), the concentrated blood of Kvasir accumulated from the mead. The egg became the show-piece of the Troll-queens and later the most precious possession of Fróndís fjallkonan. When Fjallbarn was born in 1996 at Thingvellir, the Æsir decided to present her with something special. Thor personally forged two helmets in the fires of Iceland, assisted by the two dwarfs Eitri and Brokkr. When the job was finished he rode to Thingvellir and asked Fjallkonan to put the helmets around the vulnerable egg, whereupon he soldered them together with ligntning.

Translation: The blood of Kvasir is the yolk of the vital egg

From that moment onward, the egg became known as Brynfjöregg (armoured egg of life) and symbolizes the most utterly strong determination to protect the Icelandic language, the pearl of the Nordic tongues.

Nýyrðaskáldskapur (neologistic poetry), an unrecognized form of literature!

2008-06-21T01:51:00.000-07:00

Nýyrðaskáldskapur (neologistic poetry) has definitely shaped the modern Icelandic language and it is by no means exaggerated to state that it is the most typically Icelandic art of the last 200 years. Nevertheless, the creation of new words has never been considered as a form of poetry let alone as an independant form of literature. In Iceland, neologisms are mostly introduced in newspapers or published in terminological word-lists but have never been published in booklets resembling poetry volumes. An recent example of something that is the closest to such kind of publication is the “Pétrísk-íslensk orðabók”, a word-list coined by the Reverend Pétur Þorsteinsson, who is also president of the High Icelandic language movement. Although the focus in this list doesn’t lie on extreme language purism like in High Icelandic, it is a clear example of isolated words presented as an artistic expression.Words sometimes equal the preciousness of almost perfectly cut gems, but what does this beauty signify in the eyes of the blind. Even the most brilliant neologistic creations can be rejected or ridiculized to pieces by the ignorant. The acceptance of a new word by the general public is as inpredictable as the behaviour of subatomic particles in quantum mechanics. Even artistic brilliance can be insufficient. Many motivated neologists have therefore regrettably ended their activities. But I tell you: "A neologistic skald should never quit!!!" He should be unbreakable. Even if all his compatriots would have closed their eyes for his art, he has the moral obligation to continue: For Iceland, the mountain lady and his honour as protector of the language!!! You are the linguistic equivalent of the EINHERJAR! Act as one!!Neologistic skalds should publish their words in booklets, every one of them large-fonted and covering a page, the explanation written in small characters at the bottom. There's a reason for this. Don’t underestimate the graphical sensation of a beautiful neologism when it is printed in large and thick fonts. Some while ago, I took a thick black marker and wrote the insanely beautiful LJÖRVI (laser) on a paper. I pinned it to the wall, sat down and stared at it for several minutes. What an ASS-KICKER! It mesmerized me MANTRICALLY. If only there were somewhat more Icelanders who realized the magical aspect of neologistic art. Guðmundur Andri Thorsson was right when he called it “HVÍTIGALDUR OKKAR ALDAR” (the white magic of our time). You should all try this sometimes: Write ‘tölva’ on a paper and stare at it. Let it mesmerize you! And while you’re staring you must think what would have happened if Sigurður Nordal hadn’t created this baby. You would have ended up with unwords like “KOMPJÚTUR’ or abominable adaptations like ‘PJÚTI’ or ‘DATARI’ or who knows what other kind of crap.Nýyrðaskáldskapur is a magical and unfortunately unrecognized form of literature and its importance in this era, when our language is at its most vulnerable, should exceed that of any other form of literature. Where prose writers are like architects and skalds like sculptors or painters, neologistic skalds are juwelers. They fumble at the lexical fundaments of language in search of beauty and linguistic purity. They are the true health-keepers of the mother-tongue. Let’s cherish them and walk in their footsteps. There is still so much to be explored and discovered in that weird and interesting universe called Icelandic.

Frónhaf (Atlantic ocean)

2008-06-21T00:54:00.000-07:00

Why can't we name the Atlantic ocean after Iceland? This has nothing to do with far-going hubris. Icelanders are the only native people who inhabit the largest part of new land formed on the MID-Atlantic Ridge. Yes, they are the only ones among the native Atlantic people (Guanches, Faroese, Icelanders, that's all I guess) who live right in the middle. How much more Atlantic can one get? The term 'Frónhaf' is shorter than Atlantshaf and it's transparent too! After all, there is only one sea known to encompass iceland, isn't it! YEEES, BINGO!

examples:
Atlatintic states: Frónhafsríkin
Mid-Atlantic Ridge: Frónhafshryggur, Jörmungandshryggur
NATO: Frónhafsbandalagið

Abbot - abbess

2008-06-18T05:13:00.000-07:00

1) Yfirmóðir/ yfirfaðir:
The only existing Icelandic equivalents for ‘abbot” and ‘abbess’ are the latinisms ‘ábóti’ and ‘abbadís’, which entered the Icelandic vocabulary at the time of christianization. The first possible native equivalent that crossed my mind was ‘yfirmóðir’, a literal translation of English ‘mother superior', a synonym of ‘abbess’. On the analogy of this one could derive ‘yfirfaðir’ (father-superior) for ‘abbot’.

2) Aðalbróðir/ Aðalsystir
Albeit a logical choice, I wasn’t fully satisfied with the earlier mentioned solution. In my endeavour to replace loan-words by native conctructions, I always try to strive for sound-similarity. If one wants his neologism to stand a chance against an age-old rooted xenologism, which is a fair dose of wishful thinking, but hey, there’s nothing wrong with trying, isn’t it, you have to come up with a word that sounds similar to the foreignism you want to see replaced. This technique often applied by Icelandic neologists (e.g. ratsjá -radar). For that reason I prefer the compounds ‘aðalbróðir’/ ‘aðalsystir’, which sounds more similar to ‘ábóti’/ ‘abbadís’ than ‘yfirfaðir’ and ‘yfirmóðir’.
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3) Identical short forms for both 'ábóti'/ 'aðalbróðir' and 'abbadís'/ 'Aðalsystir'
Word-length is a crucial factor in the acceptabilty of a new word. A robust, uncompounded word is more than often prefered above a long, troublesome neologism. But even in case a rooted foreignism is longer and less compact than a proposed native construction, it takes more than a fair share of luck to get it accepted. The old foreignism has the advantage of ‘habit’. It is extremely difficult to break a speech habit. A typical example is ‘súrefni’ (acid-matter) for oxygen, a loan-translation of the German ‘sauerstoff’, based on the wrong assumption that oxygen is the element responsible for the acidic nature of acids. Nevertheless, the brilliant neologism ‘ildi’, derived from ‘eldur’ (fire), which is terminologically infinitely more accurate than "súrefni", has a lot of trouble getting the upper hand. Many people keep on using the troublesome loan-translation from German.
We can safely conclude that ‘aðalbróðir’ and ‘aðalsystir’, albeit reasonably constructed and by no means grotesquely large (ref. sjálfrennireið) they are by no means a match for the two deeply rooted latinisms. I have to add here that the English term ‘mother superior’ (6 syllables) is frequently used along with ‘abess’ (two syllables).
The most obvious solution here is the creation of short forms. I was lucky to find out that identical abbreviated forms are derivable from both the latinsms and the High Icelandic equivalents, an almost surreal coincidence:

Ábóti: The obvious short form or pet-form of this word is Abbi, which is very similar to the French ‘abbé’. The ‘íslensk orðsifjabók’ mentions ‘abbi’ as a possible pet-form of ‘afi’ (grand-father), which is very close in meaning the Syrian abba (father), the etymological root of ‘ábóti’.
Aðalbróðir: In the same way as the pet-form ‘Abba’ is derived from the personal name ‘Aðalbjörg’ (see Nöfn íslendinga), we can reduce ‘aðalbróðir’ to the same abbreviated form Abbi, by combining the initial vowel with the first consonant of the second part of the compound.

Abbadís/ aðalsystir: The only common pet-form for both words is ‘Adda’, which is also employed as a pet-form of feminine personal names beginning with ‘aðal-‘ (e.g. ‘Aðalheiður)’.

Many Icelandic youngsters definitely need a close encounter with NORDOPHILE E.T.'s!

2008-06-17T10:27:00.000-07:00

Many Icelandic youngsters definitely need a close encounter with NORDOPHILE E.T.'s!
Translation: Icelandic, the most popular terratongue (earthling-speak) in the universe! VIÐ ERUM EKKI EINIR!!!On our homeworld, the number of anglophone humans exceeds the amount of speakers of Icelandic by a factor of 2000. But in the wide old universe, this precious, scarcely spoken linguistic fossil is the most popular of all terratongues. The number of extraterrestrial students of Icelandic are counted in decillions. All of them are charmed by the ‘LAST-OF-THE-MOHICAN’ situation of this language, the way this small group of Northern insular earthlings manages to defend itself against the major predator-tongue on their planet. They are mesmerized by the flood of neologistic excesses, the unseen organisation of word-commissions, the struggle to retain an archaic grammatical complexity,.... No language in the observable cosmos is known to exhibit this property so strikingly. The intergalactically renowned institute of exolinguistics on the planet Zarkon published these figures two weeks ago and yesterday I got the news through an extra far-distance telepathic mail. I am one of those lucky guys who don't have to risk their lives by rummaging in secret Pentagon archives in search of the truth. There WERE E.T.'s in Roswell, my brothers and sisters!!! But forget about the picture of aggressive, bloodthirsty invaders, painted by the film industry. Those Roswell aliens were nothing more than a bunch of exolinguists who got off course on their way to do some field work in Iceland. The universe TEEEEEMS with life and obsession for the pearl of the nordic tongues. Along with the language, the popularity of Icelandic gadgets upabroad is ufonautically skyrocketing. Nanoconstructors throughout the universe are assembling skautbúningar, nýyrðaskáldshúfur and icelandic flags.And that's not all, folks! Neutron stars are bombarded by king-sized graviton canons to make them pulse on the rhythm of Eddaic poetry and strange creatures in ballrooms light-aeons away go WHIKI-WHACKÓ on typically Icelandic folk dances. Ain't that ass-kickingly cool, my fellow-earthlings!!
Knowing all this, isn’t it depressing that so many young Icelandic earthlings prefer to indulge in boozing LANDI on their weekly RÚNTUR above training themselves to avoid foreign words or trying to reactivate their sleeping skaldic genes? Believe me, Sir Alcohol is the worst enemy of a skáld. Only super-talented Crymogaians who were extremely strong in the SKALDIC FORCE, like Jónas Hallgrímsson, were able to write mind-boggling poetry while their brain was soaked with booze. But this doesn't apply to most Icelanders. It's better to stay away from the stuff as far as you can, coz it's the worst of drugs and make the blood of young Icelanders KVASISNEIKVÆTT (Kvasir-negative or very unskaldic). This modern low-life mentality is endangering the very core of Icelandic culture. Every one of these irresponsible youngsters should be abducted by the above-depicted E.T. enthusiasts. Maybe a nice few months stay in an alien environment could open their eyes to the uniqueness of their linguistic identity and throw oil on the almost extinguished MÁLVERNDARLOGI (flame of language protection)!!Translation: Iceland universally famous! ...AND RIGHTLY SO!!

The four major prenominal social titles.

2008-06-17T10:08:00.000-07:00

1) English
Misses
Mister
Miss
Mister

2) íslenska
frú
herra
ungfrú
ungherra

3) háfrónska
kvenþegn
verþegn, karlþegn
meyþegn
sveinþegn

A few examples:

1) Mr Bill Clinton:
instead of "Herra Bill Clinton"
Vilhjálmur verþegn Klintún (Klintýningur)

2) Mrs Magdalene Albright
instead of "Frú Magdalena Albright"
Magðalín kvenþegn Albjartsættar (Albjarts)

Remarks:
1) The noun 'herra' has no naturally Icelandic declension and is unmitigated 'SLETTA'. Not to mention the fact that the prepositioning of titles is VEEEERYYYY unicelandic!
2) The High Icelandic equivalent of Icelandic 'herra' in the meaning of 'Sir' or 'man of rank' is "drottinn" or "húsbóndi" or maybe the adjective háttvirtur
3) In addition to 'meyþegn', 'ungfreyja' is also used.

A nice and purely Icelandic replacement of the abomination 'BENSÍN'!

2008-06-17T04:03:00.000-07:00

I never liked 'bensín'. So I cut off the 'vaff' from 'vökvi, which resulted into a neologism sounding both like "ÖKU"- in ÖKUTÆKI and "vökvi". I hope many people will use this ASS-KICKER and forget about the abomination 'bensín'. That would be cool!!

Compounds with 'ökvi':

ökvi: gasoline

ökva: fill with gasoline

ökvadæla: petrol pump

ökvageymir: petrol tank

ökvagjöf: accelerator pedal, throttle

ökvahlaup: napalm, gasoline jelly

ökvahreyfill: petrol engine

ökvakerfi: petrol system

ökvamælir: petrol gauge

ökvasprengja, múspellsmilska: molotov cocktail

ökvastöð: gasoline station

The High Icelandic calendar (háfrónska tímatalið)

2008-06-16T09:51:00.000-07:00

The first year of the High Icelandic calendar is 874, when Ingólfur Arnarson set foot on Icelandic soil. Like the Old Icelandic calendar it is based on the solstices and equinoxes as these were, and are, very important in these northern regions of the world. Iceland has very short days in the winter and the coming of the Winter Solstice marks the rebirth of the year and the promise of the long days and light nights of the summer. Because of this, the year begins around the Winter Solstice.The year consists of 12 months of 30 days, with an extra four days in the middle of summer, called Sumarauki. This produces a year of 364 days, i.e. exactly 52 weeks. To account for leap years an extra seven days, i.e. a full week, are added to Sumarauki after five or six Gregorian years. This ensures that each date in the calendar falls on the same day of the week each year. The last time that Sumarauki had 11 days was in 2001, and it will happen again in 2007 and 2012.The old names of the months are: mörsugur, þorri, góa, einmánuður, harpa, skerpla, sólmánuður, sumarauki, heyannir, tvímánuðr, haustmánuður, gormánuður, ýlir.Examples:Jónas Hallgrímsson fæddist á 24ða gormánaðardegi árið 933 E.L. (eftir Landnám).

The months of the Julian calendar are translated as follows:

January: hliðmánuður (The gate-month. January derives from Janus, the two-faced god of gates and doors Although new year didn’t start at the first of january, the idea of door or gateway to a new year applies in our calendar. )

February: stuttmánuður (the short month)

March: hermánuður, Vortýsmánuður (Named after the war-god Mars (Vortýr, the wargod of spring). The military campaigns of the romans started this month.)

April: ástmánuður (Whether the name april is derived from Aphrodite or from ‘aperire’ (to open) is not completely certain. In any case, the month was sacred to Venus, the godess of love.)

May: vordísarmánuður (After Maia, godess of spring)

June:
1) bjartmánuður (The month with the longest days)
2) algyðjumánuður (Named after Juno, the wife of Jupiter)
3) jófunnarmánuður (Jófunn (Jófur (Jove, Jupiter) + unn, love, she who loves Jupiter))

July: jófleifsmánuður (Julius = Jófleifur (descendant of Jove, Jupiter)

Augustus: alvaldsmánuður (Alvaldur means ‘emperor’ in High Icelandic’ and "August" as a personal name.)

September: haustmánuður (Because it is named in ‘autumn-month’ in many languages: höstmånad (Old Swedish name), herfstmaand (old Dutch name)

October: slátrunarmánuður (Old Icelandic name for October)

November: minningarmánuður (The month of remembrence in christian tradition)

December: 1) sáðguðsmánuður (The yule month of Saturn, god of seed and agriculture (Saturn, god of agriculture is equivalent of Bor in Roman mythology. The word ‘seed’ is related to the name Saturn. After the Saturnalia (sáðguðsjól, sáðguðshátíð), the equivalent of the Germanic Yule)2) 2) dimmumánuður (The month with the shortest days)

Brynfjöreggsverðlaun, the prize for the best loan-word avoiding Icelandic writer!

2008-06-16T09:14:00.000-07:00

Brynfjöreggsverðlaun, the prize for the most LOAN-WORD AVOIDING icelandic writer. Can there be anything more cooler and rewarding for a true Icelandic skáld??

Neologistic poets (Nýyrðaskáld) of the High Icelandic language movement (Háfrónska málhreyfingin) envisage a prize for the most loan-word avoiding Icelandic writer: BRYNFJÖREGGSVERÐLAUN, the prize of the armoured egg of life. It consists of two viking helmets soldered together around a suggested egg. Along with the 'nýyrðaskáldshúfa' (cap of the neologistic poets), it is one of the key symbols of High Icelandic language defence.
Every decent language extremist knows that loan-words are the ultimate menace to Icelandic culture. They weren’t, aren’t and won’t ever be an acceptable source of lexical enrichment. The fact that so many of them were adapted and adopted in our precious mother-tongue is just a sign of how much the naturally-born-skáld attitude has been eaten away by the forces of internationalization. Is Icelandic so poor that linguists are obliged to resort to an abominable method like ‘ATLÖGUN’ (Adaptation of loan-words). Adapted loan-words are the worst ‘slettur’imaginable: they have been made unrecognizable. It’s like feeling chocolate on your tongue while in fact it is nothing more than diarrhoea in disguise. As a consequence of this policy, no one has a clear idea how severely contaminated Icelandic really is. And all this could be avoided if only professional word-smiths would be willing to take their efforts a few dimensions further.A imaginary presentation of the Brynfjöreggsverðlaun by Pétur Þorsteinsson, president of the High Icelandic language movement to an Icelandic writer or poet, who has excelled in avoiding loan-words in his writs. LINGUISTIC PURISM COULD BE SO MUCH MORE REWARDING!!!
Many Icelanders compare their language to Naglfar, adrift in the wild sea of fast cultural and linguistic globalisation. They don’t see the use of fighting forces which are, according to them, invincible. But that is just something one has to look through. If you give up “en masse”, the langugae is doomed, of course. Everyone must take responsibility if they want to safequard their precious lingotope. If all of you think someone else will do the job, eventually nothing happens. Take the initiative yourself. Tungurökkur, the twilight that falls on the Icelandic language can be avoided if only a minority of Icelanders would adopt the einherji-spirit in defence of their language. The term “einherji” can be interpreted in two ways: “unique, excellent warriar” or “he who fights alone”. They were the kind of warriors who excelled in bravery. These men dared to fight a whole army by themselves knowing their doom would be swiftly sealed. I’m totally against war and I’m only use this example to show how you need to row against the stream and decide for yourselves to remove the loan-words from your speech, even when the rest of your compatriots would laugh at you.
Why am I so livid about this? The most unique feature of Icelandic is NOT old literature or the fact that it has changed so little in the last millenium. There are some, not much, but yet some examples of other languages with which Icelandic shares this property: Greek, Hebrew, Tamil, Arabic.
It is the linguistic purism of the last 250 years that has transformed Icelandic into a unique linguistic phenomenon. As for technical vocabulary, Icelandic has by far the least internationalisms of all languages. Believe me, I have checked this thoroughly. YOU ARE THE CHAMPIONS! This means that extreme purism is the most striking feature of the language and the most important one that has to be defended. The more puristic, the more Icelandic!

LOAN-WORDS IN HIGH ICELANDIC, the world's thinnest dictionary, No entry!The Brynfjöreggsverðlaun (the prize of the armoured egg of life) is one of the initiatives of the Háfrónska málhreyfingin that must reactivate the dormant scaldic genes in so many Icelanders. The “kvasisjákvætt blóð” must boil again in their veins and arteries and set their minds ablaze with passion. Only this force will pilot you safely through the gloomy shadows of Tungurökkur.

Kolbjört, the Icelandic diamond princess!

2008-06-16T09:08:00.000-07:00

I happened to bump into a neologistic peculiarity when I was struggling to find genuine Crymogaian equivalents for Arabic personal names. The feminine name 'Almas' (diamond) was a though one and initially defied any translation. None of the High Icelandic translations 'alsverfir' (all-abraser), 'kóngssteinn' (king-stone) or 'glerkol' (glass-carbon) could serve as a personal name. After a serious while of wind-mill fighting an unexpected beauty suddenly revealed herself to me: Her name was "Kolbjört", which sounds as Icelandic as can be (Kolbjörg, Kolbrún, kolbrá, Kolbjörn,...). No confusion possible with ‘gljákol’ (anthracite). Diamonds are the brightest allotopic form of carbon and no one, I think, would call his child ‘Anthracite’. Yes, boys, I hear you coming, you want to tear my word to pieces, but it's not going to work this time, coz this baby kicks BUUUUTTT!!! And I'm sure it won't be long before a little newborn ice-lady will be baptised Kolbjört by an Icelandic priest. I'll bet my ass on that.
All joking apart, the name refers to 'shining beauty' like the American 'Jewel' or the Icelandic 'Hnoss' or 'Menglöð', but could as well be interpreted as 'unbreakable', 'reliable' or even 'royal' and 'powerful'. Some might find the apparent contradiction between 'kol' and 'björt' disturbing, but this doesn't have to be the case. The compound appropriately refers to the weird contrast between the different allotropic forms of carbon. It was only as recent as 1772 that the true nature of diamond was unveiled. Who could have known that the element present in the darkest of all substances (lamp black) would turn out to be the very same as the one in the brightest of all gems? Mother nature definitely IZZZ a weirdo!

Bjarni Jónsson frá Vogi, a true pioneer of ultrapurism!

2008-06-16T09:02:00.000-07:00

Bjarni Jónsson frá Vogi, a man who wasn't in the least ashamed to go to extremes in his purism and language archaization. May his admirable excesses serve as a model to all Icelandic purists.

The roots of High Icelandic lies in the neologictic excesses of 19th and 20th century writers. The Fjölnismen are still the true pioneers of ultrapurism when they translated foreign place-names like 'Sigurborg' for Cairo, 'Góðviðra' for Buenos Aires and personal names like 'Jón Hrísill' for 'John Russel'. These were the best times for the Icelandic language. Every single word of name was a target for puristic intervention. Language purification of this level died with the Fjölnismen. Still there's one exception: Bjarni Jónsson frá Vogi (1863 - 1926). He was one of the skáld with that good old kvasir-positive blood running through his veins. Kjartan G. Ottósson mentions him in his book 'Íslensk málhreinsun'. He was abnormal in his language purism and archaization, especially in his translation of Goethe's Faust. He refrained from using lousy latinisms like e.g. 'náttúra', which he replaced by 'eðli' or 'eðlisheimur'. In High Icelandic the words 'lífheimur', 'eðli', 'eðlisfar' are used. He also used old words like 'hjarni', 'infjálgur', 'munnskálp', .... He was criticized by professor Jón Helgason because of his exaggerations????? He was a great man, a great purist, a true language hero, he know what's right for the health of his mother-tongue. Unfortunately he was the last true red hot purist of the last two centuries. Nowadays people think that adaptations of foreign words like 'jeppi' or 'banani' are any better than vulgar 'sletta', while it is nothing more than making diarrhoea taste like chocolate. This ignorance has caused severe damage to Icelandic. Adapting unwords like 'þema' or 'skema' looks like a sick joke, but NO, it is a gruesome reality. Bjarni's example has inspired us nýyrðaskáld of the High Icelandic language movement. We have taken up the tread where the fjölnismenn and Bjarni stopped and will struggle hard against the contamination of our precious linguistic inheritence. Tortímum tökuorðunum með kvasisjákvæðum skáldakrafti!!! (Let's terminate the loan-words with kvasir-positive poetry-power!)

When will Icelandic firms finally take the initiative to start mass-producing the extraterrestrially grooviieee High Icelandic NÝYRÐASKÁLDSHÚFA!!

2008-06-13T09:42:00.000-07:00

It is completely surreal to me why Icelandic firms are so slow in taking the initiative to start mass-producing the coolest of the nordic caps, the High Icelandic nýyrðaskáldshúfa. Two years ago, an Icelandic friend of mine came up with the idea to create a cap on which the colours of the Icelandic flag are patterned like a helmet. Round metal spikes were added to the basic design in order to emphazise the helmet-design, which symbolizes the strong will to protect the Icelandic language. Icelanders who choose to wear it can't be anything else than red-hot Icelandic purists of the kind that walked the Icelandic soil in the century between 1830 and 1930. Bjarni Jónsson frá Vogi, for instance, who replaced the rooted latinism 'náttúra' by 'eðlisheimur' in his translation of Goethe's Faust. Those were the days when fjallkona's smile was at its broadest. Those were the days that Icelanders vigourously cared for their language. The nýyrðaskáldshúfa is one of those new strong High Icelandic symbols that could set this smouldering torch ablaze again.The difference between a "nýyrðasmiðir" neologist and a "nýyrðaskáld' (neologistic poet) lies in the intensity of devotion. For a nýyrðaskáld, finding high quality Icelandic neologisms that could save their beloved language from loan-words is a holy quest. They don't work from 9 to 5, they are constantly at it. They go into the wild nature of Icelandic wearing their characteristic cap and try refind the connection with Icelandic nature and the Mountain lady, a connection that many have lost through the modern way of life. In this way they reactivate their sleeping poetic genes. They believe all Icelanders are poets by nature, possessing the so-called 'kvasisjákvætt blóð' (kvasir-positive blood). The Icelandic skáld were the most renowned poets of Europe during the middle ages and many kings in Europe longed to have one at their courts. The nýyrðaskáld' mission is to restore this situation and help Iceland regain its reputation as THÉ poetic superpower. His life is a quest for words and at the same time a struggle to protect his most precious possession: their language. He may loose his job, his family, everything he owns, but his language, the voice of his symbolic queen will keep on giving him strenght. His language is his religion (TUNGUTRÚ).So come on, guys, throw that supercool cap in the street-image of Icelandic cities. It will do your culture GOOOOOD!!!

A Vísir article translated into High Icelandic.

2008-06-13T09:35:00.000-07:00

íslenska: "Tug þúsund íraskir öryggissveitarmenn tóku í morgun þátt í aðgerðum í höfuðborginni, Bagdad, sem miða að því að koma í veg fyrir frekari árásir og hryðjuverk þar. Aðgerðirnar hófust snemma í morgun að skipan Nouri al-Maliki, forsætisráðherra. Öryggissveitarmenn gera nú leit í mörgum húsum í höfuðborginni, Bagdad, og eftirlitsstöðvum hefur verið fjölgað þar. Aðgerðirnar eru sagðar þær umfangsmestu síðan í júní 2004. Forsætisráðherran tilkynnti að hann ætlaði að framlengja útgöngu- og vopnabann. Hann segist ekki ætla að sýna hryðjuverkamönnum neina miskunn.

háfrónska: "Hundrund öryggissveitarmenn í Tvífljótalandi tóku í morgun þátt í aðgerðum í höfuðborginni, Baldgarði, sem miða að því að koma í veg fyrir frekari árásir og hryðjuverk þar. Aðgerðirnar hófust snemma í morgun að skipan Mánabjarts Konungsins (Nouri al-Maliki), forsætisráðdrottins. Öryggissveitarmenn gera nú leit í mörgum húsum í höfuðborginni, Baldgarði, og eftirlitsstöðvum hefur verið fjölgað þar. Aðgerðirnar eru sagðar þær umfangsmestu síðan í Jófunnarmánuði / algyðjumánuði 2004. Forsætisráðdrottinninn tilkynnti að hann ætlaði að framlengja útgöngu- og vopnabann. Hann segist ekki ætla að sýna hryðjuverkamönnum neina miskunn."

1) hundrund (myriad) Normally the morphologically correct construction would be 'hundund', but 'hundrund' sounded better and more transparent in the ears of the Icelanders I tested. In 'hundund', the connection with 'hundrað (hund-ræði) is lost. You can compare this example to the addition of 'r' to the suffix '-ænn'. In old Icelandic '-ænn' was found in adjectives denoting the quarters of heaven: aust-rænn, vestrænn, nor-rænn, suð-rænn and 'aldr-ænn'. In all these words the '-r' seemed as belonging to the root. Modern words like 'útrænn, hafrænn' were formed by analogy.
2) Baldgarður (Bagdad)After the medieval name Baldac, a corruption of the name Bagdad that was used throughout Europe. Compare Icelandic loan-words "baldikin, baldskin, baldursskinn". The most logical Old Norse adaptation of the name Bagdad would have been Bald- and -garður (somewhat retaining the last ‘k’ in Baldak or 'g' in Bagdad and used for great cities like Mikligarður. This word is an example of a TOPONYMIC NEOARCHAISM. Another example is "Jórgarður" (Jericho) after "Jórsalir" (Jeruzalem). The 'g' in '-garður' replaces the 'ch' in Jericho.
3) Tvífljótaland A translation of the Dutch "tweestromenland" (country of two rivers) . This word could denote Iraq as well.
4) forsætisráðdrottinn I replaced the unicelandic 'herra' by 'drottinn' or 'húsbóndi' when denoting a person of high rank or social position, like English 'Sir'. The equivalent of 'Mister' is karlþegn (frú = kvenþegn). The Icelandic 'herra' is a germanism that never got a normal Icelandic declension.
5) algyðjumánuður, Jófunnarmánuður The godess 'Juno' was the Roman queen of the gods and the equivalent of the Greek Hera and Nordic Frigg. The name "Jupiter" is also known as "Jove" and can be adapted to Icelandic 'Jófur'. The origin of the name Juno is uncertain and is phonologically adapted by adding '-unn' to 'Jófur' (She who loves Jove).
6) Mánabjartur kóngurinn
a) Tunglbjartur (Nouri): In arabic "Zia" and "Noor" both mean “light”. But according to the Arabic Language, there are various differences between "Zia" and "Noor", which are significant according to the context these words are used. One of the differences between "Zia" and "Noor" is that "Zia" is a light that subsists by itself, while "Noor" is a light that subsists by some other thing. Sun’s light is its own. That is why the word "Zia" is used for the sunlight. Moon’s light is not its own; it is because that of the Sun, hence the word "Noor" for the moonlight.
b) Kóngurinn (al-meliki): a typical Arabic cognomen meaning 'the king', comparable with Dutch 'De Coninck'. In opposite to Arabic, the translated name is capitalized in order to avoid confusions with a title.

Tjorri

2008-06-13T09:31:00.000-07:00

Tjorri is the artificial Icelandic equivalent of French Thierry and English Terry, which are both derived from Theodoric (Icelandic: Þjóðrekur). A famous bearer was Terry Fox (Tjorri Foxungur, 1958-1981), a young man with an artificial leg who attempted to run across Canada to raise money for cancer research. He died part way across the country, but his effort inspired the annual Terry Fox Run fundraiser. (Tjorrahlaup). The family name fox is NOT borrowed from Old English and can be used. The Old Scandinavian place-names ‘Fyxin’ and ‘Foxufell’ contradict an Anglo-saxon origin. The family name Fox translates as 'Fyxingur'.The name Terry can also be a pet-form of Terence, the etymology of which is unknown and therefore adapted to Þrándur.

Fjörgynjaráætlunin, the project to icelandicize all the worlds's place-names!

2008-06-13T09:21:00.000-07:00

Some while ago, I asked an Icelandic journalist if he could convince his colleagues to cut down on the use of some foreign place-names in the original spelling, when a beautiful archaic Icelandic equivalent exists: e.g. Lundúnir (London), Nýja-Jórvík (New York), Jórsalir (Jeruzalem). He replied that I needed swift medical care, that neologistic extremism had at last become part of Iceland's history and that a fresh flood of loan-words would do his hopelessly archaic language EXTRATERRESTRIALLY good!!!! At least he had the decency to start his reply with Dear 'MISTER' lunatic. most people just address me just with 'DEAR LUNATIC'. But with regard to the rest he wrote: What an ignorance!! Of course the old place-names have to be preserved and used whenever the occasion presents itself. And that's not all!! The Íslensk Málnefnd should take the initiative to start a gigantic project to translate all the 5 million place-names on earth. No time but now!! But we all know that they would see it as one big joke. And the reason of this is the national ignorance. Icelanders don't see that they are the speakers of THEEEEE language on which linguistic purism has had its greatest impact. Extreme purification has made Icelandic the precious language it is at present, a beautiful, archaic and very much alive an kicking fossil. Iceladers are the linguistic equivalent of the last resisting Gaulish tribe in Asterix comics. They are the last of the Mohicans and all this due to the language preservation forces that been so strong during the last three centuries. We should pursue ULTRAPURISM and even go a few dimensions further in it. The translation of all the world's place-names would be a good start. The High Icelandic language movement has started the FJÖRGYNJARÁÆTLUN, the FJÖRGYN-project, named after a Nordic godess of earth. At first we thought of calling it after Heimskringla, but people would confuse it with another study of Old Norse literature. The project implies the translation of all the world's place-names into Icelandic. At first the European will be translated, starting with the British and the Danish. The Oxford's Dictionary of the English place-names and the Danish Stednavneordbog by Bent Jørgensen will be used as a reference. When this will be finished, France and Spain will be targeted. Because many place-names in the Americas are of British, French and Spanish origin, they will be translated swifly. With the advent of smart computing systems and increasingly more information about place-name etymology on the internet, the job could be finished well before the middle of this century. Ultrapurism or icelandicizing all lexical artefacts produced by our non-icelandic fellow-earthlings is our ultimate destiny. It is no black-hole that will crush and destroy the language, it is like a stargate to paradise we have to pass trough. The Nýyrðaskáld way of thought is the best guide on that path. Let's prepare for an exiting journey to the outer dimensions of neologistic art!

English – High Icelandic names of the presidents of the Younighted Staytssss!!

2008-06-12T02:36:00.000-07:00

George Washington (1789-1797): Yrkir/ Gyrgir Vessingatún
1) George: German has 'Jörg', Icelandic has 'jörn', but that's derived from a mainland scandinavian name. The orðsifjabók mentions 'Gyrgir', an old norse equivalent. The name comes from the Greek name Georgios which was derived from the Greek word ‘Georgos’ meaning 'farmer, earthworker', itself derived from the elements ge 'earth' and ergon 'work'. the latter 'ergo' is related to Icelandic 'verk', yrkja, Why translating ‘geo’ when yrkja already means “farming, tilling”? The pure Icelandic equivalent of ‘George’ is ‘Yrkir’.
2) Washington: The family name ‘Washington’ is toponymic and derives from the British place-name Washington, which means ‘Estate of the family or followers of a man called Wassa’. (Icelandic “Vessingatún”)

John Adams (1797-1801): Jón Áason
1) Adam: Adam = Ái, Eve = Edda in High Icelandic.
Thomas Jefferson (1801-1809): Tumi Guðfreðingur

1) Thomas translates as 'Tumi' or Efa-Helgi
2) Jefferson derives from an Old French form of a Germanic name. The second element is Germanic frid "peace", but the first element may be either gawia "territory", walah "stranger", gisil "hostage" or god "god". It is possible that two or more names merged into a single form. We will use the form ‘Guðfreður’.

James Madison (1809-1817): Háhaldur/ Jakob Móaldarson
1) James: This name derives from Jacob, which means 'holder of the heel' in Hebrew.
2) Madison comes from a surname which means "son of Maud". The Icelandic equivalent of ‘Maud’ is ‘Magnhildur’ or Móöld)

James Monroe (1817-1825): Háhaldur/ Jakob Mundrá
1) James: This name derives from Jacob, which means 'holder of the heel' in Hebrew.
2) Monroe: According to tradition, the name Monroe is a rare example of a Gaelic surname of topographic origin, the first element of which is probably Gaelic mun, a mutated form of bun ‘foot’, or British minit ‘hill’ (compare Icelanic Mundía- in Mundíafjöll (Alps)). In Ireland this name has sometimes been used as an equivalent of O’Mellan.

John Quincy Adams (1825-1829): Jón Fimmti Áason
1) Adam = Ái in High Icelandic. Using ‘Askur’ for ‘Adam’ would be inappropriate because Adam is a biblical name that has nothing to do with an Ash-tree.)
2) Quincy is derived from a surname which was derived from the first name Quintus, which is a Roman praenomen, or given name, meaning "fifth" in Latin. It was traditionally given to the fifth child.)

Andrew Jackson (1829-1837): Andri Jakobsson

Martin Van Buren (1837-1841): Marteinn frá Býrum
1) Martin derives from the Roman name Martinus, which was derived from Martis, the genitive case of the name of the Roman god Mars, who was both a war- and a spring-god, hence the High Icelandic name 'Vortýr'.
2) Van Buren means ‘from Buren’, a Dutch place-name which means ‘farm, homestead’. The Dutch name is related to Icelandic ‘bú, býli’

William Henry Harrison (1841): Vilhjálmur Hinrik Heimreksonar
1) Henry: The Icelandic ‘Hinrik’ is a corruption. It has an historical value, but in High Icelandic, we use the original forms.

John Tyler (1841-1845): Jón Tiglir
1) Tyler: The name Tyler is an occupational name for a maker or layer of tiles, from an agent derivative of Middle English tile ‘tile’ (Icelandic ‘Tigl’, High Icelandic “þekill”). In the Middle Ages tiles were widely used in floors and pavements, and to a lesser extent in roofing, where they did not really come into their own until the 16th century.)

James Knox Polk (1845-1849): Jakob Hnokkur Polki
1) Polk: In this case, the name Polk is of Scottish origin and derived from Pollock, a habitational name from a place in Glasgow, apparently so named from a diminutive of a British cognate of Gaelic poll ‘pool’, ‘pit’. The surname is also common in northeastern Ulster.
2) 'Knox' derives from a Scottish surname which was derived from Old English cnocc "round hill", here adapted to 'hnokkur'.

Zachary Taylor (1849-1850): Sakkar Tiglir

Millard Fillmore (1850-1853): Myllarður Fjölmar
1) Millard: The name ‘Millard’ means ‘Guardian of the mill’. This name is adapted.
2) Fillmore derives from a Norman personal name, Filimor, composed of the Germanic elements filu ‘very’ + māri, mēri ‘famous’.

Franklin Pierce (1853-1857): Frekklingur Péturs
1) Pierce derives from the personal name Piers, the usual Norman vernacular form of Peter.
2) Franklin derives from a surname which was derived from Middle English frankeleyn "freeman". The Icelandic equivalent is ‘Frekklingur' (Frakki + lingur)’.)

James Buchanan (1857-1861): Jakob Búkanan
Buchanan is a habitational name from Buchanan, a place near Loch Lomond, perhaps named with Gaelic buth chanain ‘house of the canon’ (canon = ???, not ‘kórbróðir’)

Abraham Lincoln (1861-1865): Abbi Lagarnýstaður/ Abbi Lindkolni
1) Abraham: This name means 'father of many' and is translated as 'Áki', which means 'forefather' or Abbi, a pet-form of afi (grandfather).
2) Lincoln: Lagarnýstaður: Lincoln is derived from a British place-name habitational name from the city of Lincoln, so named from an original British name Lindo- ‘lake’ + Latin 'colonia' ‘settlement’, ‘colony’. Alternatively the last part can be adapted as Kolni, the Old Icelandic name of Cologne, which is derived from the Latin 'colonia'.

Andrew Johnson (1865-1869): Andri Jónssonar
1) Andrew derives from Greek ‘Andros’, which means ‘man’ in the sense of ‘male man’. In Icelandic, ‘Andri’ (ski) is sometimes used as a better adaptation of ‘Andrés’. The correct Icelandic equivalent is ‘Karl’.)

Ulysses Simpson Grant (1869-1877): Oddseifur Simpson Grand

Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1877-1881): Hruðurvöðungur Borgharður Heys
1) Rutherford is a Scottish and northern English habitational name from a place in the Scottish Borders near Roxburgh, probably named with an early British river name of unknown etymology + Old English ford ‘ford’. There is another place of the same name in North Yorkshire, named with hryðer ‘cattle’ + Old English ford ‘ford’, but this does not seem to have contributed to the surname. Due to this uncertainty we will have to adapt the first member in the name: Hruðurfurða (like in ‘Frakkafurða’) + ‘ungur’.
2) Birchard derives from an Old English personal name, Burgheard, composed of the elements burh, burg ‘fort’ + heard ‘hardy’, ‘brave’, ‘strong’.
3) Hayes: Etymology of this name is uncertain. The name ‘Hayes’ is adapted to ‘Heyjungur’.)

James Garfield (1881): Hælhadur/ Jakob Geirvöllur
Garfield: The family name derives from Old English gāra ‘triangular piece of land’ (a derivative of gār ‘spear’, with reference to the triangular shape of a spearhead)

Arthur Chester (1881-1885): Artús Kastur
1) Arthus: The Scandinavian phonetical equivalent of Arthus is "Arnþór"
2) Chester is a habitational name from Chester, the county seat of Cheshire, or from any of various smaller places named with this word (as for example Little Chester in Derbyshire or Chester le Street in County Durham), which is from Old English ceaster ‘Roman fort or walled city’ (Latin castra ‘legionary camp’).

Grover Cleveland (1885-1889): Grófar Klifslönd/ Klifslendingur
1) Grover is derived from ‘grove’ in the sense of ‘grove of trees’. It is adapted with the ICelandic etymological equivalent gróf + -ar.
2) Cleveland means ‘district of cliffs’ and has an Old Norse equivalent: Klifslönd (see Cleasby's, Vígfússon's and Craigie's Icelandic-English dictioanry)

Benjamin Harrison (1889-1893): ????????? Heimreksson
1) Benjamin: from the Hebrew male personal name Binyamin ‘Son of the South’. In the Book of Genesis, it is treated as meaning ‘Son of the Right Hand’. The two senses are connected, since in Hebrew the south is thought of as the right-hand side of a person who is facing east.

Grover Cleveland (1893-1897): Grófar Klifslönd (See ‘Grover Cleveland)

William McKinley (1897-1901): Vilhjálmur Mög(ur) Finnleiks
1) McKinley: The name McKinley derives from the Gaelic personal name Fionnlagh (Old Irish Findlaech), composed of the elements fionn ‘white’, ‘fair’ (see Finn) + laoch ‘warrior’, ‘hero’, which seems to have been reinforced by an Old Norse personal name composed of the elements finn ‘Finn’ + leikr ‘fight’, ‘battle’, ‘hero’.)

Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909): Þjóðar Rósavöllur
1) Theodore: From the Greek name Theodoros, which meant "gift of god" from Greek θεος (theos) "god" and doron "gift". The name is adapted with Þjóðar, which has a different etymology.
2) Roosevelt is a topographic name for someone living by an area of uncultivated land overgrown with roses, from Dutch roose + velt ‘open country’.

William Howard Taft (1909-1913): Vilhjálmur Hávarður Tóft
1) Howard: the equivalent of ON Hávarðr.
2) Taft: The name Taft is a topographic name or habitational name from a dialect variant of Old and Middle English toft ‘curtilage’, ‘site’, ‘homestead’.

Woodrow Wilson (1913-1921): Víðró Villasonar

Warren Harding (1921-1923): Vörnir Hörðungur
1) Warren: The name Warren was derived from a surname which meant either "enclosure" from Germanic or "from La Varenne" from French. It is adapted by the name “Vörnir”.
2) Harðing smainly southern England and South Wales) and Irish: from the Old English personal name Hearding, originally a patronymic from Hard (Harður, Hörður)

Calvin Coolidge (1923-1929): Skalli Kolhryggur
1) Calvin: The name “Calvin” is derived from the French surname Chauvin, which was derived from chauve "bald". It is the Equivalent of ON Skalli, which is found both as a personal name and as a by-name in Old Swedish as and in OW.Norse as Skalli. Occurs in Old Danish as the by-name Scalli. From OW.Norse skalli "skull, hairless head."
2) Coolidge: The name Coolidge was first used by England's ancient Anglo-Saxon culture. It comes from when the family lived in Coldridge, in Devonshire. The place-name means ‘ridge where charcoal is made’.

Herbert Hoover (1929-1933): Herbjartur Hofar
The name Hoover is adaptedfrom Middle Dutch huve, a measure of land area + -er, suffix of agent nouns; a status name for a landowner or a prosperous small farmer. The name has to be adapted.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1933-1945): Frekklingur frá Ölrustað Rósavöllur
Delano comes from French de La Noye, a city near Lille named after alder trees. The name Franklin derives from ME Frankeleyn, M.E. Frankeleyn, from Anglo-Fr. fraunclein "a land-owner of free but not noble birth," from O.Fr. franc with a suffix also found in chamberlain (equivalent of Icel. -lingur, hence Frekklingur)

Harry Truman (1945-1953): Hinrik/ Heimrekur Trúmann
1) Harry: A pet-form of Henry (Icelandic ‘Heimrekur’)
2) Truman: The name ‘Truman was a nickname for a trustworthy man, from Middle English trewe, trow ‘faithful’ + man ‘man’.

Dwight Eisenhower (1953-1961): Teitur Járnhöggvari
1) Dwight: Icelandic “Teitur” is realated to Greek 'Dios' and Dwight comes from a surname derived from Denis or Dion, both derivations of Greek Dios. The Icelandic 'Teitur' is the best possible adaptation of 'Dwight'.
2) Eisenhower: The name Eisenhower means ‘ironworker’ (járnsmiður), but we will use ‘járnhögguður’, which sounds more similar.

John F. Kennedy (1961-1963): Jón Geirveldingur Kjannaður
1) Fitzgerald: Anglo-Norman French patronymic from the personal name Gerald (Icelandic: Geirvaldur). The name was formed by the addition of the Anglo-Norman French prefix fi(t)z ‘son of’ (Latin filius) to the personal name.
2) Kennedy: Anglicized form of Gaelic Ó Ceannéidigh ‘descendant of Ceannéidigh’, a personal name derived from ceann ‘head’ + éidigh ‘ugly’. It is adapted like Irish names in Old Icelandic. See Íslensk Orðsifjabók under 'kjanni'

Lyndon Johnson (1963-1969): Lindún Jónssonar
The name “Lyndon’ comes from a surname which meant "lime tree hill" in Old English.

Richard Nixon (1969-1974): Ríkharður Nixon
1) Nixon: Nixon means ‘son of Nicholas’. The latter name is derived from the Greek name Nikolaos which meant "victory of the people" from Greek nike "victory" and (laos) "people". (Icelandic: Ljóðsigur)

Gerald Ford (1974-1977): Geirvaldur Furða
1) Gerald: The name “Gerald” derives from a Germanic name meaning "rule of the spear", from the element ger "spear" combined with wald "rule".
2) Ford: The name ‘Ford’ is a topographic name for someone who lived near a ford, Middle English, Old English ford, or a habitational name from one of the many places named with this word, such as Ford in Northumberland, Shropshire, and West Sussex, or Forde in Dorset.

Jimmy Carter (1977-1981): Jakob Kartari
1) Carter: occupational name for a transporter of goods, Middle English cartere, from an agent derivative of Middle English cart(e) or from Anglo-Norman French car(e)tier, a derivative of Old French caret. The Old French word coalesced with the earlier Middle English word cart(e) ‘cart’, which is from either Old Norse kartr or Old English cræt, both of which, like the Late Latin word, were probably originally derived from Celtic.

Ronald Reagan (1981-1989): Rögnvaldur Reginn
1) Ronald: Ronald is the equivalent of Icelandic ‘Rögnvaldur’.
2) Reagan: The name Reagan is a reduced form of O’Regan, an Anglicized form of Gaelic Ó Ríagáin ‘descendant of Riagán’, a personal name of uncertain origin, perhaps akin to ríodhgach ‘impulsive’, ‘furious’. We will adapt the name to the personal name ‘Reginn’.

George Herbert Walker Bush (1989-1993): Gyrgir/ Yrkir Herbjartur Þæfir Búskur
1) George: German has 'Jörg', Icelandic has 'jörn', but that's derived from a mainland scandinavian name. The orðsifjabók mentions 'Gyrgir', an old norse equivalent. The name comes from the Greek name Georgios which was derived from the Greek word ‘Georgos’ meaning 'farmer, earthworker', itself derived from the elements ge 'earth' and ergon 'work'. the latter 'ergo' is related to Icelandic 'verk', yrkja, Why translating ‘geo’ when yrkja already means “farming, tilling”? The pure Icelandic equivalent of ‘George’ is ‘Yrkir’.
2) Walker: “Walker” derives from an occupational surname which meant "a fuller of cloth" in Old English. The Icelandic ‘þófari’ is replaced by High Icelandic ‘Þæfir’.
3) Bush: “Bush” is a topographic name for someone who lived by a bushy area or thicket, from Middle English bush(e) ‘bush’ (probably from Old Norse buskr, or an unrecorded Old English busc); alternatively, it may derive from Old Norse Buski used as a personal name.

Bill Clinton (1993-2001): Vilhjálmur Klintúni
The family name Clinton is of doubtful origin. The name is adapted

George Walker Bush (2005-): Yrkir/ Gyrgir Þæfir Búskur

King of animals

2008-06-11T05:59:00.000-07:00

Lions are recurring symbols in the coat of arms of royalty and chivalry, particularly in the UK, where the lion is also a national symbol of the British people, and in Ethiopia, where it is a symbol of the Monarchy. Lions appear in the art of China, even though they have never occured in China. No animal has been given more attention in art and literature. In this article we will explore the possibilities to construct native Icelandic words that could be used designate this precious predator.
Klójöfur, Klóvaldur: The "clawed king" (The second option 'klóvaldur' can be used as a proper name, like the below-mentioned Gramfaxi.)
kóngsdýr: The "king-animal".
gramfaxi: The "maned tyrant". The noun "Gramur" is an old synonym of 'king' in old poetry. It was without doubt derived from the adjective 'gramur' and designated a ferocious, fierce person, a warrior-king. No wonder that the T-Rex, the 'Cretaceous king' was baptized 'grameðla' (eðla = lizard) in Icelandic. It would also be appropriate to replace 'harðstjóri' by the more robust and flexible 'gramur'. The second member 'faxi' (maned) is normally used in names of horses, e.g. 'Skinfaxi, Glófaxi, Freyfaxi'. The 'Íslensk Orðabók' mentions for 'fax': Long hair on an animal's neck, e.g. on HORSES AND LIONS. This means that 'faxi' can be used to denote lions as long as the first member clearly refers to the nature of this animal. I think that a compound with 'gramur' is transparent enough.)
lof¬ðungur, lofði: This was a suggestion of my friend Þorvar Grímólfsson. Lofðungur is a old poetic synonym for king derived from the verb 'lofa' (to praise) and sounds somewhat like the German 'Löwe' and the Slavic 'Lev'.
klódróttning: The "clawed queen" (a lioness)
gramlæða: The "female feline tyrant" (a lioness)

Neologistic skalds, language vikings of the nanoage.

2008-06-11T05:54:00.000-07:00

Ultrapurism will undoubtedly become mainstream somewhere in the second half of the 21th century. Wishful thinking? Consider the following: The rapid technological evolution In the next decades will produce the enabling technologies that will facilitate the swift completion of High Icelandic neologistic projects, endeavours that some Icelanders still regard as an absurdity. Only two decades from now, mind-boggling paradigm shifts like molecular manufacturing will put a brutal end to the industrial age. This revolutionary bottom-up approach will dwarf the production costs of consumer goods and will undoubtedly bring unprecedented wealth to every member of the human race quickly after its introduction. This means that in the present-day developing countries, the struggle for life will come to an end and people will have enough spare-time to indulge in all kinds of new activities, like creating a dictionary of their countries' place-names for instance. Good news for the High Icelandic ultrapurists. By the 2040s the etymology of every place-name and family name on earth will be searchable in databases on the net. At the same time, the final results of the so-called ‘reverse engineering of the human brain’ will have been transformed into software and neuroprosthetics. Another ten years later Icelanders will have the strong AI software needed to icelandicize every geographical and personal name in the world AT LOW COST and WITHIN A SHORT SPACE OF TIME (no more than a few hours). Neuroprostethics will increase our memories a billionfold and no Icelanders will have any trouble memorizing the Icelandic equivalents of e.g. the place-names of the world. Many scientists are becoming aware what exponential progress of technology stands for. We are now in the bent of the knee of this exponetial curve. By 2030, It will go up steeply and an avalanche of science-fiction-like stuff will rush into our lives. Stay tuned or you will experience what 'future shock' means. As the Icelandic language is concerned , this coming evolutionary singularity can either thrust us into heaven at warp 10 or push us into a bottomless abyss at the same speed.
You see, folks, We High Icelandic nýyrðaskáld are by no means hopelessly old-fashioned. We are struggling hard to open up a new and XXXXtreme dimension in lexical enrichment. Our great grandchildren will remember us as the pioneers of late 21th century neologistic art. Join the club, my friends, become ultrapurists and let's lay the foundations for an impressive future of word-building.

High Icelandic names of search engines.

2008-06-11T05:49:00.000-07:00

Archie: Frumleitir (The oldest search engine)
Ask Jeeves: Vefbryti (= Net Butler. The service was named after P.G. Wodehouse's butler character "Jeeves".)
altavista: Vefútsýni, Vefsýni (Means 'high view')
Excite: Æsileit
Fast: Skjótleit
Google: Ginnund (The Internet search engine Google was named after a number called 'Googol'. he term was coined in 1938 by nine-year-old Milton Sirotta, nephew of American mathematician Edward Kasner. The meaning of Googol is ’ten to the hundreth power’. I took the old mythological prefix ‘ginn’ (wide, immense) in 'ginnunga-' and added the ‘–und’ (hundred, because the only and most well-known number that is a hundredth power of a natural number is the googol): GINNUND. The choice of the prefix influenced by the word 'ginnungavé', (the universe). The amount of particles in the known universe is in exponential respect closer to a googol than any other number with a popular name.)
Hotbot: Heitleit
Iktomi: Köngurvættur (Named after a spider-trickster spirit in the mythology of the Lakota people. )
Infoseek: Upplýsir
Lycos: Kóngulólfur, köngurúlfur (The name "Lycos" is short for the Lycosidae, the wolf spiders, which actively hunt for their prey.)
Nothern light: Norðurljós
Teoma: Þekkir (means "expert" in Gaelic)
Web crawler: köngurvél
Yahoo: Jaki (The well-known "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle" is a backronym for this name, but Filo and Yang insist they selected the name because they liked the word's general definition, as in Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift: "rude, unsophisticated, uncouth." It was the name of man-like, brute creatures in Gulliver's Travels.)

High Icelandic names of large numbers.

2008-06-11T05:46:00.000-07:00

High Icelandic names of large numbers.
The international names of magnitudes of thousand have been coined fairly late in history. In premedieval Europa the largest number that had any practical use was 'myriad' (10,000, Icelandic HUNDRUND or HUNDUND. The term 'million' dates from medieval Italian. It was formed by adding the augmentative suffix ‘-one’ to ‘mille’ (thousand). The resulting term ‘million’ actually meaning ‘large thousand’. Most languages in the world have borrowed this word, save for the following exeptions:

Aymara: huaranqanhuaranqapa (= “thousand thousands”)
Greek: ekatomyrio (ekato = hundred, myrio = myriad, 10,000)
Gujarati: dasalakha (probably the same construction as in Greek for ‘lakh’ means 10,000)
Japanese: hyaku-man (hyaku = 100, man = prefix denoting 10,000)

Some languages have native names based on to the constructions “1000 x 1000” and other “100 x 1000”. The conservative Latin writers of the 16th century were very slow in adopting the word. As for them, it sufficed to say "thousand thousand" as had been done for many generations. The German writers were equally slow in abandoning "tausend tausend". The Dutch were even more conservative, continuing this old form later than writers in neighbouring countries. Indeed, for the ordinary needs of business in the 16th century, the word "million" was a luxury rather than a necessity. Icelandic purists have never tried to coin native names for these magnitudes of thousand. The 'Íslensk Orðabók' mentions 'þúsund þúsund', but this would be too inpractical for present-day use.

For the High Icelandic numerals I adopted a different system. I based the names for the first two names of magnitudes of thousand, million and billion, on the SI prefixes ‘mega’ and ‘giga’.
The Greek ‘megas’ means ‘great’ and has the same origin as Icelandic ‘mikill’. In English, ‘million’ is used as a metaphor for a very large number, as in “Never in a million years” and “your one in a million”, or a hyperbole, as in “I’ve walked a million miles”. I didn't find any source that proves a possible connection between the metaphoriacal use of million in English and the choice of ‘mega’ as the SI-prefix for ‘million’. Still, it is a striking coincidence.

In a way, the suffixe ‘-und’ (þús-hund-rað) in the High Icelandic names refer to Greek-Indian-Far East "100 x 10000 constructions". I added the suffix ‘-und’ from ‘þúsund’ to ‘mikill’, the Icelandic equivalent of Greek ‘megas’, which results into ‘MIKLUND’, which is somewhat similar in sound with million, but with that difference that the etymology is totally different, somewhat comparable with 'radar/ ratsjá'. The equivalent for ‘billion’ was baptized ‘ÞURSUND’. Icelandic has many words for giant: risi, tröll, þurs, jötunn, but a construction with ‘þurs’ creates a word that sounds very similarly to ‘þúsund’ (thousand).

For numbers up to quintillion, the following constuctions are used:

million: miklund
billion: þursund
trillion: þúsþursund or stórþursund
quadrillion: þursmiklund (þurs- used in the meaning of ‘a billion units’ x miklund (million)
quintillion: þursþursund

The coinage of names of larger magnitudes another system was adopted: The ‘Íslensk orðsifjabók’ mentions the explanation ‘fimmmælt milljón’ for ‘kvinkvilljón’. We can use the construction n-mælt þúsund for numbers higher than quintillion.

sextillion: sjömælt þúsund
septillion: áttmælt þúsund
octillion: nímælt þúsund
nonillion: tímælt þúsund
decillion: elleftmælt þúsund
undecillion: tólfmælt þúsund
duodecillion: þrettánmælt þúsund
tredecillion: fjórtánmælt þúsund
quattuordecillion: fimmtánmælt þúsund
quinquadecillion: sextánmælt þúsund
sexdecillion: sautjánmælt þúsund

centillion: hundraðmælt þúsund

The Icelandic and English names for googol (10 to the 100th) are:

English: hundred quinto-quadragintillion (10 syllables, 30 characters)
High Icelandic: tíu þrjátíu og þrímælt þúsund (10 syllables, 25 characters, less than the English word!!)

A friend of mine didn’t like this construction for esthetical reasons. But then I ask myself: Is “billion” esthetical? They simply cut of the ‘m’ form ‘mille’. It would be like saying ‘fimmúsund, sexúsund’.
The High Icelandic names constructed with the formula “n-mælt þúsund” unambiguously denote the magnitude of the number, something that can’t be said about the international names. The use of two different systems (British and American) has lead to confusions on international conferences. A trillion in the British system is equal to 10 to the 18th, while in the American system it is as less as 1012. In High Icelandic the names transparently designate the exact magnitude of thousand: sexmælt þúsund = 1 and 3 x 6 zeros, there can’t be no mistake. Most scientists don’t waste their time learning the names of large numbers. On conferences they usually use the formula “10 to the n-th”, which is by no means an estethical or short construction, but it is comprehensible by everyone. Somtimes flexibility has to be sacrificed in favour of transparency.

Icelandic word for ‘googol’ (1 followed by 100 zeros).
The term was coined in 1938 by nine-year-old Milton Sirotta, nephew of American mathematician Edward Kasner. The meaning of Googol is ’ten to the hundreth power’. I took the old mythological prefix ‘ginn’ (wide, immense) in 'ginnunga-' and added the ‘–und’ (refers to "hundred", because the only and most well-known number that is a hundredth power of a natural number is the googol): GINNUND. The choice of the prefix influenced by the word 'ginnungavé', (the universe). The amount of particles in the known universe is in exponential respect closer to a googol than any other number with a popular name.

Googolplex
A googolplex is 1 followed by a googol of zeroes, or ten raised to the power of a googol. It is the largest number that is used to some extent in mathematics. In order to ge tan idea about the magnitude of this number: If you could change every atom in the known universe, approximately 10 to the 80th atoms into zeros, you would have 100 quintillion (10 to the 20th) times too little zeros to write out this number. The High Icelandic word is OFURGINNUND (hyper-googol)

The Kvasir-positive sacrificial blood of the neologistic poets!

2008-06-11T05:43:00.000-07:00

A few months ago, a certain Thor replied as follows to one of my comments on a blog, I prefer not to mention: “You are completely and totally bonkers!!! I cannot in a million (MIKLUND) years understand your psychotic agenda! What the fuck is your point... WHY! Is it really that boring to live in Belgium! I´ll tell you if this was my hobby I would have committed a suicide long time ago! I probably wouldn't have had to kill myself since I would probably have died from boredom.”. This reaction of J. Þ. leaves me with the following question: “Is incessant word-building as one’s sole spare-time activity that nerve-cracking?”. In my experience I would answer: “OF COURSE! OF COURSE IT IS MENTALLY DEVASTATING!!”. Do you think I have never found myself at the edge of a nervous breakdown after icelandicizing thousands of British place-names during five weeks, 15 hours a day without a single break??? The only reason I’m willing to keep on going through this hell has all to do with committment and honourable self-sacrifice.
Translation of the text in the picture: The purity of High Icelandic is the Kvasir-positive sacrificial blood of the neologistic poets.In High Icelandic TUNGUTRÚ, all nýyrðaskáld swear an oath of loyalty to the lady of the mountains. This oath implies the committment to consecrate one’s life to the neverending war on the xenologistic forces that contaminate Iceland’s linguistic treasure. This battle has consequences: Sitting behind your computer-screen from dawn til dusk, searching for ways to find purely Icelandic equivalents for the toughest and almost untranslatable foreignisms can surely generate extreme boredom. But that’s what it has to take if you are determined to help defending your mother-tongue. This makes me think of the words the Jedi knight Qui-gon-jin spoke to Anakin skywalker in the StarWars movie ‘The phantom menace’: “Anakin, being a jedi is a life of committment. It’s not an easy life, it’s a HAARD life”. But the Jedi’s cope with it through meditaion, which increases them mental stability and force powers. Only an effective kind of meditation can give Icelanders the mental powers to be up to this grand endeavour. And that’s what an High Icelandic MÁLGOÐI/ FAÐIR NÝYRÐASKÁLD should teach their MÁLSKJALDSVEINAR (language squire). They should not only let their squires learn lists of words and teach them poetry and word-building. They should also visit the Óbyggðir frequently and let their apprentices take pieces of rock in their hands, make them feel connected with their cradle, make them get in contact with the Mountain lady. Only if you take the effort to get aware of her omnipresence in Icelandic nature she will speak to you and you will gradually feel yourself being filled with her skaldic forces. It is this kind of force that has helped me cope with this sometimes very dull, neologistic equivalent of assembly-line labour. Now you know, my dear MÁLBRÆÐUR OG MÁLSYSTUR, how I deal with the stress of being a language warrior. I unfortunately had no FAÐIR NÝYRÐASKÁLD (father neologistic poet), who could show me the right way. I had to find it myself. I had to figure it out by experience, the painstaking way. It’s maybe a little bit arrogant to talk about myself in this way but I’ll do it anyway: TAKE ME, TAKE ME AS AN EXAMPLE, ESTABLSH TUNGUTRÚ IN ICELANDIC, BUILT MÁLHOF (language temples) AND END UP WITH A HYPERPURE LANGUAGE AT THE END OF THIS CENTURY!!

Two pessimistic poets

2008-06-11T05:38:00.000-07:00

The picture shows two of the fjölnismenn as cherubs in heaven, discussing the lamentable situation of 21st century Icelandic: Tómas Sæmundsson (1807 - 1841) and Jónas Hallgrímsson (1807 -1845), BRAGI MIÐGARÐS (YES, I HAVE TO ADD THIS!! HE IS THE GREATEST HERO IN THE HISTORY OF THE ICELANDIC LANGUAGE.
The text in the picture goes as follows:
Tómas: “Tell me, Jónas, would all the red ink in the world be sufficient to correct all the impuities in the Icelandic books and magazines?”
Jónas: But, my dear Tommy, even if the sea was full of the stuff, the very thought about the work ahead would even depress Sæmundur Fróði (known as a literary workaholic).

My first contact with the Lady of the Mountains.

2008-06-11T05:34:00.001-07:00

My first contact with the Lady of the Mountains.
I still have rich green memories of a strange experience I had at Thingvellir in 1993. For a few moments I got seperated from the group of people I was on a bustrip with. A strange windlessness had isolated me from the storm though still I felt a warming gentle breeze whirling through my body. For the mockers: no, this had nothing to do with either volcanism or sexual hormones. Then suddenly I felt a presence. It was as if my soul itself was touched by a gentle hand. At the same moment the clouds went apart and a broad strip of sunlight smiled at me. I felt at home like never before on a place approximately 3000 km from where I live. A few moments later, the internal breeze turned into a sweet female voice: Haltu áfram, Haltu áfram, Gerðu það fyrir mig! (continue, continue, do it for me! For the jokers: no, I wasn't standing at the edge of Almannagjá). I couldn't believe it! Until that very moment I had been going through life as a fanatical rationalist. Terms like paranormal perception had never made it as an entry in my dictionary and here I stood, struck dumb, gazing in utter disbelief. It was Iceland herself, the lady of the mountains, who was calling upon me. I was embraced by Mother Crymogaia, the Thulean equivalent of the Greek earth-godess. No copulating way this could be a halucination! I had been suffering from depression, but never from a psychosis that could have evoked this kind of experience. From that moment onwards I have been living the life of a die-hard believer. She wanted me to be one of her nýyrðaskáld, she wanted me to help her protecting her most precious possession, her language, the Fjöregg which she had stolen from trolls more than a thousand years ago, when she was still a Mountain girl (Fjallstúlka). Now you know why I'm so determined to keep on following the path I'm following. Many times I have been asking myself: "why a foreigner", "why me?". She must have felt that I cared for her language and that I had already started terminating loan-words? That must have stolen her heart. As for her, I couldn't do anything wrong ever again til eternity, AMEN!
Modern technology has estranged the majority of Icelanders from their old culture and has turned them into what some call 'concrete vikings'. Bits and bites, not beauty rule the world. The era when icelanders were at one with their nature, the era when their minds were tuned on the right frequency to hear the voice of their Mountain Lady is slowly passing away. Still there must be a lot of them, unspoiled by the modern forces of deculturalization, who share this experience with me. We have the moral duty to find each other, we are luminant beings in this dark age of linguistic and cultural ignorance. We can bring back that old spirit to our ignorant brothers and forever cure the sadness that has currently veiled our queen.

I'd rather wash my mouth with diarrhoea than engage in a conversation in an Anglo-Icelandic pidgin!

2008-06-11T05:30:00.000-07:00

IF YOU LIKED THE TITLE, YOU'RE GONNA LOOOOVE THE TEXT:

Það er löng og interessant leið frá sílisíum til elektrónískra tækja, svo sem sónara, datamata og radíóa. Þótt sílisíum sé algengasta element jarðar er það þó eitt hið dýrasta þegar það hefur verið púrifikerað eftir ströngum spesifikationum pródúceranda. Við pródúseringu transistora og integreraða rása er þó ekki notað púrt silísíum, heldur er það eftir púrifikeringu dópað með elementum úr 3. eða 5. grúppu períódíska sýstemsins. Dópantinn gjörbreytir kondúksjón sílisíums en intrinska leiðnin er mjög lítil. Integreraðar rásir eru í raun lítil chips sem eru um 5 millimetra á hvern kant þar sem rásin er etsuð með litografískum metóðum í þunnt lag á surfésa kristalsins...

IF THIS WILL BE MID-21st CENTURY ICELANDIC I'LL DROWN MYSELF IN THE SEWER!

The "loan-word terminator", a possible 21th century type of Icelander! Let's hope so!

2008-06-11T05:19:00.000-07:00

It is sad that so many Icelanders still regard the mix of viking-elements (nýyrðaskáldshúfa) and modern apocalyptic science fiction elements like the terminator as ridiculous. For those who still think I'm a joker, let this be clear: With regard to the Icelandic language, I don't possess any single neutrino of humor. And that's a very small particle, just ask a physicist. This maybe an at first akwardly looking cocktail of medieval and 21st century elements but it is more than appropriate. The terminator should inspire Icelanders to deal with their loan-words the way it should have to been done a long time ago: COLD, MACHINE-LIKE and MERCILESS!!
Let's break the cultural bonds with AMERICA and EUROPE and become at last culturally independent hyperboreans with a NORDIC, not a WESTERN culture!! Nordophile escapism is extraterrestrially groovieeee!!

Neanderthal man = Nýmanndælir

2008-06-11T05:07:00.000-07:00

Good news, folks!! A name for the neanderthal man, completely built from Icelandic lexemes, is possible. The valley this hominide is named after was in its turn named after "Neander", the pseudonym of Joachim Neumann, a German hymn writer: (Greek 'nea' (new) + andros (man). If it is reasonable to create a loan-translation of a family name into Greek, what would be wrong in producing an Icelandic equivalent: "Nýmann", which means that the High Icelandic name of the valley should be "Nýmannsdalur" and the name of the there found hominide species "nýmanndælir", equivalent to German 'Neanderthaler'. The extended form 'nýmannsdalsmaður' isn't necessary. "Nýmanndælir" is shorter than neanderdalsmaður!!! So, Icelandic youth, if your teacher uses the word 'neanderdalsmaður, correct him! Nýmanndælir it is!! Pure! Pure! Pure!

Hreintunguþing (forum of Icelandic purists) soon on-line!

2008-06-11T04:57:00.000-07:00

Alright!! The 'HREINTUNGÞING', the forum of the Icelandic language purists will enrich the internet soon. It will unite all neologistic forces (professional and non-professional) in Iceland and unleash the greatest battle against language impurities in Iceland's history. This will be to the utmost regret of those who welcome anglicisms with the greatest hospitality, those who wish their language an overdose of foreign lexical smut and care JAKOB SKÍT for the admirable preservation efforts done by so many compatriots in the last centuries.
Thankfully, most Icelanders are still supporting the policy of language defence, the policy that has turned Icelandic into the purest of the world's tongues in the last centuries. But this superlative doesn't mean that we're out of danger. We live in a fast-evolving time where the terrible condition our language was in at the 18th century could come back swiftly. The anglification of Icelandic will soon take significant proportions if action isn't taken right away. We must act quickly, put an end to the influx of anglicisms at once and clean up the xenologistic rubbish that has been accumulating in our language during the last centuries. We will have to linguisticly reprogram ourself in order to speak a purer language. It won't be easy. But with Icelandic determination I'm sure this can be accomplished. Let's start the battle, my brothers!
I will soon wish you welcome on the Hreintunguþing. May the scaldic forces of the Mountain Woman be with us!

Tips for beginning nýyrðaskáld (neologistic poets)

2008-06-08T14:53:00.000-07:00

First of all, see to it that you have the following dictionaries at your disposal:

Íslensk orðabók
Íslensk orðsifjabók
Íslensk samheitaorðabók
Ensk-føroysk orðabók
Ensk-íslensk orðabók með alfræðilegu ívafi
Rímorðabók
Oxford’s dictionary of English Etymology

You will need the following URL

http://www.ismal.hi.is/ob/ Orðabanki íslenskrar málstöðvar
http://www.m-w.com/ Merriam-Webster’s English dictionary
http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/ (Webster’s multilingual dictionary)
http://www.hugtakasafn.utn.stjr.is/ (Hugtakasafn Þýðingamiðstöðvar utanríkisráðuneytis)
http://www.ordabok.is (English-Icelandic/ Icelandic-English dictionary, containing 139,000 entries)

When you hit upon a particular English word you want to translate into Icelandic, you will have to make sure first that the Icelandic equivalent is inexistent. Only if the word is missing in the above meantioned dictionaries and databases, you can proceed.

Before brainstorming you need to know what you’re dealing with. Search the English wikipedia for information about the subject and try to get a good grip on the subject. If it has an article on the Icelandic wikipedia, read it through carefully. Maybe a word in the text may give you a clue. Also check out the external links below.
The on-line Merriam-Webster’s English dictionary (see above) often mentions the etymology of the word, in case you failed to find this information in the Oxford’s dictionary of English Etymology.

If the information in the wikipedia article is missing or doesn’t get you anywhere, you will have to resort to the Google search bar. In most cases, the English words you need to translate aren’t very common, because most of them already have an Icelandic equivalent. The advantage of this is that you won’t have an overload of Google hits. The disadvantage is that in many cases the necessary information can’t be found.

When using your search-bar, be sure that you are on the level about advanced search techniques. Specifically for neologists, there are a few extra tricks like:
Enter the word in enclosed word-groups like: “X means”, “the word X”, “X is a”, “X is the” (often followed by a superlative, possibly revealing a unique property). Also use expressions like +“also called”.

For proper names, you need the following URL’s:
http://www.mannanofn.com/ (Icelandic personal names)
http://www.behindthename.com/ (Database about personal names)
http://www.vikinganswerlady.com/ONNames.shtml (Old Norse and Icelandic names)

Also look up the word in other languages at:
http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/
If some language has an equivalent that differs completely from other languages, it is probably a native contruction. In this case you can try to decipher the word character per character at: http://www.yourdictionary.com/languages.html
This webpage doesn’t contain a full list of all dictionaries available on the net. In order to be absolutely certain, search the wikipedia article about the particular language and check out the links.

If think you have found a good Icelandic equivalent you should:
Check the Ritmálssafn Orðabókar Háskólans, Orðabank íslenskrar málstöðvar and the ‘Íslensk Orðabók’ to make sure the construction doesn’t exist.
Discuss the word with your compatriots. Maybe they see a mayor flaw or connotation you haven’t noticed.

GANGI ÞÉR VEL OG
MEGI SKÁLDKRAFTUR FJALLKONUNNAR VERA MEÐ YKKUR!!

World-famous linguist pukes forth verbal diarrhoea at a conference in Reykjavík!

2008-06-08T14:46:00.000-07:00

Maybe it is slightly postmature to react on an event that happened one year ago, but my blog didn't exist at the time, so I have to do it one year later. I can't resist the temptation to formulate some kind of opinion in this matter, for my liver is at the brink of bursting from a cholic overload and I desperately need to puke (read 'write') myself back in balance.
David Crystal is a renowned linguist and calls himself the 'defender of the small languages". An Ecolinguistic guru? Think again! On the other hand he argues that language purification is the worst that can happen to small languages. Woow, how we are lucky that 'time-travel' is impossible. Imagine such a man speading his vile theories in 18th century Iceland. Our beloved mother-tongue would have gone with the Danish flow at the beginning of the 20th century. Oh no, sorry, I'm wrong, Rasmus Rask would have kicked his ass.
On april 14, 2005, the man was keynote speaker at a conference in Reykjavík, where he shocked more than one Icelander by telling how detrimental language purism can be to a small language. How much verbal diarrhoea can a man puke forth? Of course his theories were professionally torn to pieces by a journalist of Morgunblaðið. It said, and I quote: "David Crystal has it all wrong! We Icelanders have a good experience with linguistic purism. This language policy has protected our language from the destructive waves of foreign influence. Small language communities need linguistic purism to defend themselves." And the article ends with "Megi hreintungustefnan lifa góðu lífi" (May language purism live a good life).
David Crystal is proud to be a speaker of the most succesful language on earth. He suggests that English, being the language of the most powerful state on Earth, has a rosy future. He is the defender of a something that has become successful by terrorizing other nations and causing the greatest wave of language death in history. HOWEVER CHRISTIAN HE IS, HE IS AN ADVOCATE OF THE DEVIL! The man desperately needs magic glasses that makes him look at Icelandic the way its speakers do.
In his vision a flexible 21th century language has a small core of native vocabulary buried in a sea of loan-words, somewhat like English. Well, My dear David, I know one country where this idea won't ever become popular. It is a volcanic island in the North Atlantic just below the polar circle. Shall I draw a map?

WE SHOULD STOP SWALLOWING ANGLOCRAP!

2008-06-08T14:43:00.000-07:00

I suppose many of you who watch this picture will be inclined to forever close the door for further contact with my person. What a pervert! DÓNASKAPUR!! HREINN DÓNASKAPUR!! My reaction: WRONG, DEAD WRONG!! This is by no means a perverse picture. It is even a mild representation of a FAAAAAR greater abomination. One that is threatening the very essence of Icelandic culture: THE ANGLIFICATION OF ICELANDIC!! Some of you might start making faces as if to say: 'This man has clearly lost it! What a nice, graphic piece of obsession'. NO, my friends, we're talking REALITY here, not SHIT! The moment you pronounce an anglicism, adapted or non-adapted (see 'adaptations are abominations'), icelandic is a linguistic vazal of English. The moment you are pronouncing an anglicism, you loose your cultural independance.
In his essay 'Icelands Egg of Life and the Modern Media', Gauti Kristmannsson write to what extent modern mass-media is posing an ever growing challenge to the Icelandic language community. Surprised? Tears ran down my face when he confirmed that Icelanders are oooh so hospitable to AMERICAN CULTURE. Do I start experiencing hearing problems? AMERICAN CULTURE??? ISN'T THAT WHAT IVORY-TOWER SWOLLEN-HEADED INTELLECTUALS CALL 'CONTRADICTIO IN TERMINIS'? Icelandic skáld were regarded as the most-skilled poets in medieval times. THE CRYMOGAIANS WERE THE MEEEEN!! WHY ARE THEY SO RELUCTANT TO REMAIN THE MEEEEN!! In the early twenty first century the situation is beginning to look hopeless. The efficiency of 20th century language defence systems against new disruptive media like weblogs and forums are like that of the ozone layer against a gamma-ray burst at a distance of a lightmonth: in one word: JAKOB SKÍT!
The one and only one way to create an efficient language defence that is capable of coping with whatever future media technology is TUNGUTRÚ, linguistic purism as a religion, THE HIGH ICELANDIC WORLD OF THOUGHT! A High Icelandic language society consists of people who are constantly trying to avoid foreign words, idioms and syntax, and this in an almost religious way. Every 100 háfrónskusinnar have a Málgoði (an almost religious kind of language advisor, who is very skilled in linguistics and Icelandic language. They lead the 'NÝYRÐASMIÐJUR', neologist clubs or associations specialized in word-coining, somewhat equivalent with present-day word-commissions, but much more numerous and varied. In such a society full of linguistic fanatics no complex language defence system is needed to keep the mother-tongue ULTRAPURE AND KICKING, because the preservation efforts come straight from the hearts of the people themselves. YOU CAN BE VIKINGS AGAIN! YOU CAN SHOW THE ANGLOPHONE WORLD THAT YOU BREAK FOR NOTHING OR NOONE! STOP BEHAVING LIKE PUPPETS IN THE PLAY OF GLOBAL LINGUISTIC CHANGE AND FINALLY START PULLING YOUR OWN STRINGS! NO MORE ANGLICISMS! LET'S STOP LYING IN TOILET POSITION UNDER THE CONSTANTLY EXCRETING ASS OF THE ANGLOSAXON LANGUAGE PREDATOR.

Eternal state of battle against words of foreign origin.

2008-06-08T14:39:00.000-07:00

This image is an adapted version of a propaganda picture from the movie 'Starship Troopers'. The text goes: TAKE PART, in the eternal battle against loan-words. Many people laugh at the High Icelandic idea of considering every non-icelandic word as a target for puristic intervention. Translating the millions of place-names, personal names, names of chemicals and minerals is seen as inaccomplishable, absurd and impractical. And indeed, at this stage in human history the completion of such a project would require millions of times more money than people would want to invest in it. Still, this vision remains a inextricable aspect of the High Icelandic world of thought. As stated in an earlier article, the maturization of linguistic expert system software later this century will enormously facilitate the completion of this gigantic work. But for now, we can't do anything else than sit, wait and content ourselves with the translation of the most important names. For now, the idea of ultrapurism should be seen as 'an eternal state of battle against words of foreign origin', the equivalent of Trotzki's 'permanent revolution' in language planning. In an High Icelandic text, words of foreign origin should be put within brackets to show that they are until they are translated, in a state of quarantine.

example:
In state of Quarentine:
[Aristóteles] var [forngrískur] heimspekingur. Hann var nemandi [Platons] og kennari [Alexanders] mikla.

The ultimately envisaged version:
Aðaltili var forneyhafskur heimspekingur. Hann var nemandi Breiðs of kennir Vermunds mikla.

Latinisms are the dirtiest blots of dung on the dress of Fjallkona!

2008-06-08T14:35:00.000-07:00

Speakers of Romance languages have always been looking down upon Germanic languages as barbarian tongues ever since the battle of Noreia in 112 BC. This was still visible in early 20th century Belgium. The Flemish bourgeoisie spoke French while the exploited and uneducated lower-class people kept on speaking their Germanic Flemish, which was regarded as the lesser and uncultivated language. This is all due to the Belgian monarchy, the House of Saxe-Coburg, who have always promoted French and who still can hardly speak Flemish at this time. Leopold II, the second Belgian king, is still known as the causer of one of the largest genocides in human history in Congo. Under his rule, we had to fight for our right to speak Flemish. My grand father had to sit with his knees on sharp stones with donkey-ears on his head in the classroom because he had spoken Flemish during the break. He was 16 at that time, can you imagine? Fortunately we revolted and we won! The Francophone expansion in Flanders came to an end. I won't ever forget this. My disfavour against romance influence on my mother-tongue runs deep. The time will come that we get rid of the Walloons, who are the defenders of the monarchy and establish the first Flemish Republic. Now you'll probably understand why I try to terminate all latinisms in my High Icelandic language model. Can you imagine the flash of endorphines I recently experienced when I found out that the name of the centre of Latin culture could be translated by a relatively short Icelandic name (Sjöhæðir (Seven-hills, Rómaborg), sjöhæskur (rómverskur). It felt like defeating 10 Roman legions. Latin words are polluting indiginous tongues all over the world. English, Spanish and French are the prime predator tongues. They will cause more and more language death. We can't stop this world-widely going on process, but we can nip it in the bud on Icelandic soil!
Icelanders should stop being emotionally attached to old latinisms like 'kirkja', 'persóna', 'prófessor'. These are abominations, adapted or non-adapted, ancient or recent. I have found out in my long struggle to create an Icelandic free of foreignisms, that every Latin loan-word can be replaced by short flexible words, even the christian terms. The 18th century Lærdómslistafélag was wrong to grant purification immunity to these words. They were right in that it would, to some extent, have alienated Icelanders from the language they were used to speak, but it would have been a prize that was worth paying. After a few generations, the new words would have become commonplace. Fortunately, we can still go back on their regrettable decision and start in this necessary clean-up. Like the Phoenix, Icelanders should go through the purging pains of burning in order to ressurect free of latinisms. Feel no sorry for loosing this lexical filth! These are the dirtiest blots of dung on Fjallkona's dress, even worse than danicisms or anglicisms. However old and rooted they are, let's turn our hearts to stone for them. Let's eliminate them once and for all.

The lady of the mountains, godess of the nýyrðaskáld!

2008-06-08T14:32:00.000-07:00

The lady of the mountains (Fjallkona) is the reason of the nýyrðaskáld's (neologistic poets) struggle. Not only does she represents Iceland, but also the beauty and the purity of the its language. Kvasir-positive blood runs through her veins and arteries, making her spontaneously produce the finest poetic art. She has always been in the hearts of those who care for her. Jónas Hallgrímsson must have written his 'ég bið að heilsa' with the mountain lady in mind. Bjarni Thorarensen had undoubtedly heard her whispering in a gentle breeze before he wrote 'Eldgamla Ísafold'. Every Icelandic poet and word-builder who has fought for the health and the beauty of his mother-tongue must have caught a glimpse her smile when watching sun-beams break through clouds of thunder. She is omnipresent in Iceland's nature: The dance of the northern lights behind snowy peaks is the waving veil on her 'skautfaldur', the waxing moon-crescent her 'spöng', the brightest stars the twinkle in her eyes and her dress of blue is the sea.
In 21st century High Icelandic symbolism she's a linguistic warrior queen, no more like the vulnerable woman depicted in the poem 'sótt og dauði íslenskunnar' of Eggert Ólafsson. In her struggle to retain her linguistic virginity she now outmaches every testosterone-powered warrior. She takes NOOOOO step back for nothing or noone. Even the mere health of Icelandic doesn't content her any longer: She wants her language to be the most genuine of all, the most powerful with regard to expressive power. She wants an Icelandic that beats English in vocabularian wealth, without loaning or adapting any single foreign word. And the Icelandic nýyrðaskáld are her loyal knights. Plume and ink are the weapons, paper the battlefield.
I, Timbur-Helgi am no Icelander, I'm a Fleming, so I can't be a nýyrðaskáld, but I love Fjallkona like the most devoted Icelander. She was my motivation to create the High Icelandic model. I brought her and Bergrisi together so that the linguistcly immaculate Fjallbarn could see the light of life. The 21th century will be a decisive age in the history of Icelandic. For the Icelandic neologistic poets it is clear. Pure Icelandic or NO Icelandic. The High Icelandic way or the highway!!

Fan mail from a certain Sigurður!

2008-06-08T14:30:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I received an e-mail from a certain Sigurður Gunnarsson. He told me that he read about the High Icelandic language project on wikipedia and couldn't wait to contact me. What he wrote looked so familiar, that it moved me into tears. This is what he wrote: 'I don't know who you are and in the beginning I felt some reservation, but some higher spiritual voice in me calmed me down and convinced me to send you this message. I have been reading the High Icelandic word-lists during the last week and I must say, I never saw so much extremity, energy and determination. You guys are not in a bit afraid of going to the outer limits of neologistic excess. I immediately recognized the perfect soul-mate. You are the most extreme and fanatical language purists of both hemispheres (= the world, for the smarties) and I have megatons of respect for you all."
Woaoaoaoaw!! I know a lot of Icelanders who like High Icelandic neologistic work, but as for the more extremer sides of the project, o.a. translation of all the 5 million place-names in the world, most of them pass. This man agreed on every single aspect. The way he symbolized matters are freaklily similar to ours: "Dark clouds of language ignorance are assembling over my country, matters are getting worse by the day." Unbelievable, that man saw my TUNGURÖKKUR, the twilight of the Icelandic language. He has experienced the very same visions as I have, he only expressed it differently. And he continued: "Many Icelanders are blind to the danger as if buried under thick layers of snow and ice". That reminds me of a text I wrote in a message on the is.islenska newsgroup a few years ago: "It is high time Iceland awoke from its cryosleep of linguistic unawareness, a statement which is exaggerated but still true to some extent.
Can you believe this? This man has my ideas, my way of thinking. I was shaking when I read his mail. So freakily similar to my thoughts. Maybe it is no coincidence that I started my word-building endeavours 14 years ago. Maybe the sorrow of the 'mountain lady' reached the mind of some people on this planet in the form of an undiscovered kind of wave and made them move into action. Maybe I and the other ultrapurists are controled by a higher spiritual force, without us knowing. A force that fills us with love for the Icelandic culture and that keeps us going to saveguard her. WHOAAALLRIIGHT YEAH!!

Obliteration of the old Latinisms in Icelandic is put first on the High Icelandic agenda!

2008-06-08T14:27:00.000-07:00

Many linguists in Iceland will regard the removal of all Icelandic latinisms as language mutilation. At the end of the 18th century, members of the Icelandic Lærdómslistafélagið argued that purism should be pursued, but not to the extent of removing foreign lexemes that were already present in the old language. In their opinion, words like 'prestur' and 'kirkja' were so enrooted and domesticated that uprooting them would be conceived as an extreme measure by the speech community and could alienate people from there mother-tongue.
Hundred percent correct! Of course it would be alienating and IT WILL BE PAINFUL IN THE BEGINNING, as is the case with any revolutionary shift. But nevertheless, we should turn our hearts into granite (harðberg) in this matter. The replacement of the old latinisms will turn Icelandic in an even more genuine and original language. This great reform should be seen as the Phoenix who burns himself every 5 to 10 centuries in order to resurrect from his ashes. Once the words are replaced, we will have to wait a few generations before these words will be commonplace. Then Icelanders wouldn't have trouble using 'klyngra' instead of 'rós' or 'hirðir', 'bergir' or 'goði' instead of 'prestur'. All the internationalisms of Latin origin spread around the world by English and the Roman languages would finally have gone extinct in Icelandic. WHOAALLLRIIGHTT YEAH!
Don't feel sorry for this lexical filth, that came into your language mostly through christianizing. They are the lexical remainders of the imperialist Roman empire. Latin evolved into the Roman languages and one of these, French inflated the Old English language with Latinisms. Later the filthy British imperialism inflated many languages in the world with latinisms, including Icelandic.
But we can still turn the tide if we counteract in a revolutionary way, in the High Icelandic way. Latinisms are imperialisms, they date from a time when people were ignorant or vulnerable with regard to language protecting. But if we all work together, WE CAN DO SURGERY INTO HISTORY, like Kemal Atatürk, who obliterated 800-year old arabisms from Turkish in the early 20th century. This would compare to the obliteration of words like 'prestur' or 'skóli'. He was a great man, an example to us all! The Turkish language reform prooves that it can be done. Let's wait no longer! The time is right! NO LATINISMS IN ICELANDIC! GOOD HUNTING, REAL PURISTS OF ICELAND!!

No place for "tungumálafasismi" in the High Icelandic language movement!

2008-06-08T14:22:00.001-07:00

When reading the title of this writ, many of you might think: A "tolerant ultrapurist language movement"? Please make sense! Believe me, I will! However extremist the High Icelandic terminology might be: language apocalyps (tungurökkur), no concession, war on loan-words, we are tolerant of other people's views on language policy. If I was a teacher of Icelandic, no hair on my head would think about deducting marks when a pupil would present me an essay full of unicelandic words like 'impressjónismi' and stuff. I would give marks on its content. Every human being is free to use the language he wants. When Icelanders would decide to adopt English as their mother-tongue for economical reasons, it is, however sad I would find it, their right and this must be respected. I'm a language ultrapurist but at the same time a humanist. If I knew that any of my words would cause harm to people, I would stop my activities right away and obliterate my word-lists on the net. We have seen enough oppression in human history, it is high time it stops! Yes, I preach the war on loan-words but not on people who use loan-words. Our extremism doesn't go any further than individual who decides to take part in the battle against the words of foreign origin, there is place for debate within the movement and anyone can quit without loss of sympathy whenever he likes. But the door swings both ways: Freedom of expression is a fundamental human right and Icelanders who decide to use the pure words (glóaldin, vindlingur, lokkakefli) must be respected.

Icelanders are the substance in the armour of their fjöregg!

2008-06-08T14:16:00.000-07:00

You probably have noticed that I'm working myself through a new dictionary. And this time it's a big one: Ensk-íslensk orðabók með alfræðilegu ívafi, Örn og Örleygur, 1984. When reading the lists on this blog many of you must have been astonished to find out that I have gone to even further extremes. For the ones who still have doubts about it: Yes, I mean all this seriously. All the millions of names of chemical compounds, toponyms, first names and family names should be traslated for the prestige of the Icelandic language. Every morning I wake up thinking: "How can I possibly make my High Icelandic language model a little bit more extreme.
What a wonderful Iceland it would be when its inhabitants wouldn't produce anything else than Icelandic phonemes each time they open their mouths to communicate. No one will ever be able to find a good argument that shatters this belief.
A good Advice to all you Icelanders: Please, DO LIKE ME!! Make ultrapurist word-building your major spare-time activity. Life is too short not to be a obsessed maniac when something precious like the virginity of your mother-tongue is at stake. Please go through dictionaires, assemble all the contaminations that have been accumulating in your language during the last millenium and shove them upp HISTORY'S ASS!!! You don't have to feel shy to disrupt the evolution of the Icelandic vocabulary. Only you can be the substance in the 2 vikinghelmets that form the armour around your fjöregg!

Even non-Icelanders have the right to help protecting the coolest germanic language!

2008-06-08T14:11:00.000-07:00

Icelandic is the coolest Germanic language! Linguists who have got a taste of the language either see this or need a visit to the oculist (or psychiatrist). More than half a million non-icelandic people (most of them Scandinavians) have learnt of have once tried to learn it in their life-times. And the amount of interested people is much higher. Do you think I'm pulling your leg? Believe me, I don't. These numbers are even a conservative estimate. And this success is fully understandable. Icelandic is a magnet. It can be compared to a very attractive and possessive woman: once she catches hold on you, she won't let go, ever! She's a linguistic "femme fatale". You will get mesmerized by her grammatical complexity that gives even Latin a run for its money. Also striking is the fact that only slightly more than a quarter of a million hosts are harbouring her on a remote island, which creates the romantic image of a last resort of something that would have gone extinct elsewhere. Add to this her purity: Icelandic has the highest rate of native technical terms of all languages. Only Maori, Tamil and Chinese come relatively close. I've spoken with many Non-icelandic students of Icelandic and their attitude towards linguistic purism is almost always positive. And rightly so! Everyone who loves the language knows that linguistic purity is an inextricable part of the language's nature and should be pursued vigourously.
A very renowned linguist who got hypnotised by the Mountain Lady's voice was the Dane Rasmusk Rask. He was the man who warned Icelanders about an unavoidable linguistic doom if no protective action would be undertaken. He was a man of vision, not a meddler as some Icelandic antipurists argue. By no means I want to compare myself with a mind of this magnitude, but we are spiritual brothers in that the passionate love for Icelandic creates a maternal instinct to protect it. Who could ever call this kind of interference unwanted? Any non-icelander who cherishes a deep love for Icelandic cares for its purity and should feel the moral obligation and urge to interfere in Icelandic linguistic affairs. No Icelandic purist will ever call such a person a meddler!

A thorough knowledge of English and Danish is necessary to keep Icelandic pure.

2008-06-08T14:10:00.000-07:00

Keeping your mother-tongue free from foreign influence means being able to distinguish between pure and impure. The foreign nature of slang words like 'beibí' or 'megakúl' is readily visible. Somewhat more difficult are adapted and unfortunately generally accepted loan-words like 'tefla', 'jeppi' or 'kista'. But these are only peanuts in comparison with foreign syntax and idiom. The only way to recognize and avoid them is to make sure you have a thorough knowledge of the major source-languages of these contaminations. In the case of Icelandic these are mostly English, Danish and German. But also Latin, Frnech and Greek to a certain extent. As for the influence from these languages, the Málgoðar (language priests) can inform the people of their söfnuður (parish) at the málhreinsunarfundir (language purification meetings).
The best way to acquire such a knowledge is to start learning languages at a much earlier age than in other countries. Another reason why this is necessary is because in an ultrapurist language community, people have to learn thrice as much vocabulary than non-icelandic humans. These floods of vocabulary should be swallowed when a man's memory is at its best: before the age of 7.
Many of my fellow-ultrapurists see great danger in this method, and yes, it is a double-edged sword, but it is necessary. The reason is twofold:
1) A good knowledge of English is necessary in this era. It will unfortunately become the global language, we must be realistic. We cannot isolate ourselves from the rest of the world. Yes, we must translate all the millions of place-names and personal names or whatever into Icelandic, but we need to be able to communicate perfectly with the non-icelandic members of the human race.
2) A good knowledge of English (also Danish and German) is the perfect tool to recognize foreign influence in Icelandic. If parents succeed in indoctrinating their children with the HOLY VALUE to keep their mother-tongue seperate from their second or third language, there's no danger in learning foreign languages at an early age.
So let's go on with it!

The Icelandic culture is INSULAR NORDIC, not WESTERN and doesn't belong to any continent

2008-06-08T14:03:00.000-07:00

This picture depicts Fjallkonan with an extra large háfrónskur skautfaldur, another representation of the extreme nature of The High Icelandic world of thought: The struggle to exceed every other language on the planet with regard to linguistic purity, the creation of a weird folk-tale involving the largest infant-giant (Fjallbarn) of all mythologies born from a woman of normal proportions and a three-miles high Rock-giant. It was only a question of time before I decided to adapt Fjallkona's skautfaldur to HIGH Icelandic proportions. Yes, I can hear your thinking: this is the same phallicist feeling that made Americans built their skyscrapers or carve their Mount Rushmore. AND IF YES, SO WHAT? What is wrong in wishing my dearest hyperborean brothers to have the purest, largest, thickest, coolest or whatever other superlatives?
The text on the picture translates as: "The mother and child of the mountains don't belong to any continent". And this is the truth! In geological respect, Iceland is the first large part of a future continent that will form itself on the Jörmungandshryggur (Mid Atlantic Ridge). I have always regarded this as an OMEN. Icelanders are the first NEO-ATLANTIDES. They don't need AMERICA or EUROPE! What is the purpose of their trying to ape the life-styles and cultural features of the continents they are situated in between. A very graphic example of this lack of originality is IDÓL, a program on the Icelandic television that has already been aped a hundred times. Not to mention the unicelandic name of the program and the identical logo! TO HELL WITH IT! Is this what is left of the brilliance and originality of the medieval Icelandic skáld. When will Icelanders become aware of the existance of that precious grey gold buried underneath their skulls! Please, try to be original in your thinking, my dear hyperborean brothers, every nanosecond of your life. You have the talent! Stop aping!! All you 280000 have the potential to be top scientists, the world's most brilliant writers or whatever. You are the best, you are the chosen ones, I have seen the omens! They are clear!

Icelanders can prevail completely over the global forces that threatens their language!

2008-06-08T13:57:00.000-07:00

Icelandic doesn't need an atom of foreign influence. Icelandic has enough old vocabulary and neologistic brilliance of its speakers to do without this junk. And this without loosing in flexibility, vocabularian wealth and diversity.
Many Icelanders think their nation can't withstand the so-called invincible powers of linguistic globalization (read anglification). If they keep on believing that kind of bullshit, if they fail to shove this pessimism upp their iceholes, linguistic ragnarökkur, the twilight that could fall on the Icelandic language, is already on their door-steps.
I am sure when I tell you that there's only one force that is strong enough to form an effective shield against these destructive forces and that is THE HIGH ICELANDIC WORLD OF THOUGH. High Icelandic isn't represented by its current vocabulary or model, because vocabulary can be improved and adjusted. No, High Icelandic is just a new name for an idea that came into existance the very day Rassmus Rask inspired Icelanders to push themselves off the path towards certain language death. The fate of the Irish nation could have been the fate of Icelanders too. Look at their culture. Only a shadow of what it once was remains. The often pronounced notion that the Irish identity and culture would still be standing without their language is my great grandma's purest poppycock. The filthy imperialism of the British empire and the so-called other great nations has set the course towards an ever increasing decrease of linguistic diversity throughout the world and Ireland was one of most tragic examples. And this process is still going on. But these examples must not make you feel lost, they should awake your aversion to every foreign influence in your language. They should set ablaze again the fires of that old 19th century linguistic fanatism that burnt in your ancestors' hearts when they struggled for independance from Danmark! This is the most precious NÝYRÐASKÁLDS- or MÁLGOÐATILFINNING that should be cherished.
The Icelandic language commission has already made too many concessions (e.g. adaptation of foreign words). Every loan-word, whether it is adopted or not is a stain of dung on the dress of the Mountain lady. Every loan-word is a defeat, make no mistake. We can still turn back the clock and turn Icelandic into what it should have been if we had had been stronger in the past: The purest of tongues, free of international words, a language unique to the human race, a stronghold of linguistic perseverance and determination. It will be a different Icelandic, that's true, butit will be a stronger Icelandic. Iceland could become the symbol of a small nation that prevailed completly against the threating influence of the great predator tongues. It is up to you to awake the nýyrðaskáld in you and realize this grand endeavour.

Winning money by creating neologisms

2008-06-08T13:53:00.000-07:00

A interesting initiative that could get many more Icelanders involved into neologistic work would be a weekly word-building contest for money organized by a newspaper or broadcasting service. The contest would be a kind of lottery. People who take part in it pay a certain amount of money, let's say, a 200 crowns. Every week the challenge is to find purely Icelandic equivalents for 10 loan-words that seem to defy translation. Once the lists are assembled, a national SMS voting decides on the most impressive list. The author of this list then takes the jack-pot. This way of financially motivating the whole of the Icelandic population to get started into word-building would be a major leap forward for Icelandic neologistic art and language defence.

200th anniversary of the birth of Jonas Hallgrímsson!

2008-06-08T08:33:00.001-07:00

On the 16th of november next year it will be two hundred years ago that Iceland's most beloved poet saw the light of life. It is obvious that we cannot expect an ordinary everyyear celebration, but until now I didn’t find any info about special arrangements for the occasion. Long have I been thinking about a possible initiative connected with poetry, something really big that would involve the whole nation. After a long time of pondering some weird but interesting idea happened to slip into my mind: What about a gigantic poetry volume, only one copy, a compilation of poetic tributes to Jónas especially witten for the occasion by all literate members of the nation? An endeavour like this would require an enormous organisation and the costs would be considerable but I’m sure many firms in Icelandic would be ready to sponsor this.
Imagine the following scenario: On new year's day 2007 every literate Icelander starts to compose a poem and tries to finish it within a time-frame of, let's say, 3 months. After that, the tens of thousands of poems are collected and assembled into one man-sized book, only one copy, christened 'ljóðasafn íslendinga 2007'. Before it will be transported to its final destination in the museum of Reykjavík, the Lady of the Mountains herself will stand next to it on a rock at thingvellir in front of the world press (see picture above). Also the people of the Guinness Book of Records will be present. You can bet your life on it that the entire world would notice this. Every human being would know that Iceland was, is, and to all eternity amen will remain THE ULTIMATE NATION OF POETRY. In the middle ages the word skáld was considered as a kind of superlative synonym of poet. And still it is believed that Icelanders are naturally born skáld. November 2007 is the right time to make the world forever realize this.
One may ask oneself: why such a gigantic book? Well, I would lie if I said this has nothing to do with national pride and prestige. But what is wrong with that? Does it always have to be the MACHO USA to brag with their large phallicist skyscrapers, titanic sculptures at Mount Rushmore, large filmmonsters like Godzilla and King Kong? Certainly not. It is time for other nations to play their trumps and make the stars on the yankee-cloth look a little bit paler. And Iceland is one of these kind of nations. She is a giantess in the disguise of a dwarf. How big are the odds that a country consisting of somewhat more than a quarter of a million souls wins the Miss World elections three times within a quarter on a century? No lunatic would bet his money on it and that includes me. For me it is clear. The signs are all there, but still too many Icelanders fail to see the potential of themselves and their nation. Take this good advice from your crazie ole uncle Timbur-Helgi: Throw that inferiority complex of yours into the garbage can where it belongs! You are all naturally born skáld, unique in the world, you are cool!!
A project like 'ljóðasafn íslendinga' (Poetry collection of the Icelanders) would more than ever put Iceland in the spotlight as THE POETIC SUPERPOWER. And riiiightly so!!

Obsession is one of the main virtues of a nýyrðaskáld!

2008-06-08T08:21:00.000-07:00

The approximately 100 active nýyrðaskáld are mostly students and they are capable of building excellent words, but these people miss the brilliance of the word-commissioners. This is sad, really sad. But this musn't bog us down. We can compensate by adopting an extreme life-style. If averagely intelligent nýyrðaskáld are willing to following the next few guidelines here below, they can equal or even outmatch any professional word-builder:

1) You have to be extremely obsessed with word-building: As I have mentioned it in an earlier article, obsession is the square of will-power, make no mistake! An moderately but insanely obsessed intelligent student can equal a genius. Icelandic word-commissioners are mostly mentally stable people. You can only equal their intellectual brilliance if you are a freak. Believe me, it does help. I know it from my own experience. Practice Icelandic word-building from the moment you wake up til you go to sleep.

2) Go on the low-calorie CRON diet recommended by Dr Roy Walford: Cut your calories to 60% of your recommended daily intake. This diet is the only known method to increase life-span significantly. You can live 40 years longer than those on an average diet and the longer you live, the better you get at doing your job. Imagine the experiience of someone who has been doing neologistic work in an obsessive way for 80 years.

3) Swallow cognitivity-enhancing supplements: visit this website: http://www.kronospharmacy.com/Control/Pharmacy/supplementation_cognitive.aspx

4) Practice yoga or tai-chi 20 minutes a day.
Stress is the killer of modern society. It doesn't kill in itself but it makes people turn to unhealthy life-styles like smoking, excessive consumption of alcohol, wrong nutritional habits. Yoga and Tai-chi can considerably lower your stress and make you think clearer, which is what you need if you want to built excellent icelandic words.

5) Buy all the available Icelandic dictionaries, and learn the words of the Íslensk Orðabók by heart. It will take years, but you will greatly benefit from it. Take my word for it!

High Icelandic toys and games for children!

2008-06-08T08:13:00.000-07:00

If you want to guide your children towards a life of linguistic responsability, you have to see to it that you provide them with adequate tools. High Icelandic toy firms for instance can play a major role in this by producing educative toys. What follows are two examples:A gigantic Fjallbarn-doll with language recognition software. Fjallbarn is the giant loan-word immaculate child of Fjallkona (= lady of the mountians, the female incarnation of Iceland) and Bergrisi (= Rock giant, the only anthropomorph protector of Iceland). Here's how the doll works: When your child uses an unicelandic word (like 'banani', banana) in the neighbourhood of the doll, it will pronounce the pure word (in this case 'bjúgaldin'). In this way, your children can learn to differentiate between impurely and purely Icelandic words from a very early age. The software for this doll could be designed by the company of Friðrik Skúlason.The High Icelandic computer game for children: SKJÓTTU SLETTUR! All kinds of words, pure or impure run over the screen in all directions. The cursor has the form of the sight of a gun. The way to score is to recognize the impure words and to shoot them. Again this is an excellent tool to turn your children into vigourous language defenders.

Names of gems (coined by the neologistic poet Þorvar Grímólfsson )

2008-06-06T17:10:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I got a mail from my friend, Þorvar Grímólfsson, a neologist poet. All his life he has been an amateur mineralogist and a fanatical collector of minerals and gems. Fortunately, that's not the only thing he's fanatical about. He is one of the still growing group of Icelanders who have embraced the High Icelandic set of thoughts and want to take up arms against the contamination of their language.
Here are the High Icelandic names of the 12 most popular gems. The numbers correspond to the gems in the picture. Some gems can have other colour varieties, so don't focus on the colour.

1) turkoise: framaustursteinn (framaustur- is used for Turkey in High Icelandic: Framausturland (Turkey), Framausturmaður (Turk), framaustrænn (Turkish), framausturmál (Turkish language), framaustrænt tungumál (Turkish language).
2) garnet: eldauga (After the name of its most popular variety: pyrope (Greek for ‘fire eye’.). The pyrope variant is called fenrisauga. The Snorra Edda mentions about Fenris: ‘Eldar brenna úr augum hans og nösum’.
3) amethyst: vínguðssteinn (After the name ‘Bacchus-stone’. Bacchus (Dionysus?), the god of wine and conviviality, was angry because of some slight against him and swore revenge. He announced that the first mortal to come across his path would be eaten by tigers. Just at that moment along came the lovely unsuspecting maiden Amethyst, on her way to worship at the shrine of the goddess Diana. Diana turned Amethyst into a statue of pure crystalline quartz to protect her from the brutal claws. Bacchus wept tears of wine in remorse for his action at the sight of the beautiful statue. The god's tears stained the quartz purple, creating the gem we know today.)
4) aquamarine: ægissteinn ((blue variety of the emerals, here named after the Nordic sea-god. The name of the god is related to latin ‘aqua’ (water))
5) diamond:
a) kóngssteinn (the noblest of all noble stones, the 'king of stones')
b) alsverfir (a substance that abrases every other substance is the hardest stone)
c) þórsgler (strongest glass-like stone)
6) emerald: merlir (derived from 'merla' (twinkle, sparkle)
7) pearl: sækúla, sörvingur (derived from 'sörvi' (perlufesta)
8) peridot: eldskessutár (Native Hawaiians referred to peridot crystals as the tears of Pele, their goddess of fire.)
9) sapphire: jarlsteinn (The king of the stones is the diamond, the second hardest stone of nobility is corundum, the earl of the minerals. Because only the red to purple variant is called ruby, most of the varieties of corundum is called sapphire. The name ‘jarlsteinn’ can be used for corundum also)
10) opal: glossasteinn (see 'Íslensk Orðabók')
11) topaz: tindri (The name "topaz" is derived from the Greek topazos, "to seek," which was the name of an island in the Red Sea that was difficult to find and from which a yellow stone (now believed to be a yellowish olivine) was mined in ancient times. Another possibility is refering to its property of being the 'harðerst silicate mineral', in Icelandic 'kísl' is silica and 'kíslungur' would be silicate. Topaz would be 'harðkíslungur', not exactly an elegant word for such a beautiful gem. And 'kísill' is a danish loan-word and can't exist in High Icelandic. It is better to built a short and robust word like 'tindri' (sparkler, from the word 'tindra' (sparkle). The initial 't' of 'topaz' is retained.
12) ruby: roðasteinn (the existing word. 'rúbín' is a loan-word. The 'Íslensk Orðsifjabók' mentions 'ruðjar', but this is a word of doubtful origin.

High Icelandic version of the PÚKI spelling-checker.

2008-06-06T17:04:00.000-07:00

I know Friðrik Skúlason since the beginning of this century and we have had our differences with regard to language policy. A few moths ago, I decided to call him at his work in connection to his spelling checker PÚKI. He picked up the phone and I started: "Hello Mr Friðrik Skúlason, this is the neologistic poet JEF braekmans speaking". I accidently pronounced the vowel in my first name with a slightly comical and high-pitched tone. This seemed to rile him a little bit for I heard him sighing as if he was thinking: "Oh no, there you have that lunatic again". I immediately got to the point and asked him the following question: "Mister Friðrik, would you care for making a version of PÚKI for HÁÚÚfrónska too??". I always feel the urge to pronounce the Á in 'HÁfrónska' in a wolvish way because High Icelandic is like a wolf, It devours the foreign words. For some reason or other this pronounciation HÁÚÚÚÚFRÓNSKA strenghtens me in my beliefs. I can't help it, it is stronger than myself. I can't pronounce the word 'HÁFRÓNSKA' in a normal way. But Friðrik probably thought I was pulling his leg and he went completely BJÚÚÚGALDIN: "BUT IT IS IMPRACTICAL, PLEASE DON'T CALL ME AGAIN!!!". That was the end of it. And he threw down the phone. Conversazione terminata!! Not exactly a friendly and communicative chat but it was monday and probably he was just recovering from a rúntur with his friends.
Despite this funny incident, I still have a great admiration for Friðrekur. He's a great man with a great talent and vision. But I have a feeling he would rather go sewer-swimming than calling me a buddy. Strange, because I never deliberately insulted the man. Apparently, we have a slightly different kind of humour, I guess.
I hope one day he will realize that the nýyrðaskáld and málgoðar of the High Icelandic language movement are decent fanatics who are struggling hard for the purity of Icelandic. He is a man who loves his country, his culture and language and so do we. A few years from now when the extreme High Icelandic language model will have become more mainstream maybe he will find the creation of an additional PÚKI not such a bad idea after all.

Icelander - Language Purification Species

2008-06-06T17:01:00.000-07:00

This picture is an Nordic adaptation of the 'Vitruvian man', a drawing of Leonardo da Vinci. It makes many people erroneously think of neonazi propaganda. Erroneously, because the word 'hreintunguvera' (language purification species) clearly excludes any reference to ETHNIC cleansing. The reason it was designed is to confront Icelanders with their true nature and ultimate destiny. They have the longest history with regard to linguistic purism and neologistic excesses. We can safely argue that language cleansing is inextricably connected with Icelandic culture. Any weakening in its intensity will be devastating. ICELANDERS, RETAIN YOUR LINGUISTIC PURITY AND ARCHAISM, DO NOT GIVE IN TO THE TREND TOWARDS A MONOLINGUAL WORLD. English has become the most widely spoken language on the planet due the filthy colonial policy of their ancestors. Many American Indian languages have already gone extinct. English vocabulary is swiftly heaping up in the vocabularies of all European countries. Iceland tries to resist it, but the struggle is hard because many Icelanders don't cherish enough love for their precious linguistic inheritance. They fail to see that a resitance to borrowing is necessary.
THE ONLY SOLUTION IS TO ADOPT THE HIGH ICELANDIC WAY. LANGUAGE CONTAMINATION IS IMPOSSIBLE IN HIGH ICELANDIC DUE THE ULTRAPURIST NATURE OF THE LANGUAGE. HIGH ICELANDIC IS THE COMPLETELY EFFECTIVE SHIELD TO PROTECT ICELANDIC.
LET'S EMBRACE BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE!!!

How different is Icelandic from High Icelandic?

2008-06-06T16:59:00.000-07:00

Icelandic and High Icelandic merely differ in vocabulary. As for the rest, the two forms are completely alike. One could regard High Icelandic as a kind of 'superset language', comparable to Nadsat, a artficial form of English used by the characters in the book 'a clock-work orange' by Anthony Burgess. One could call High Icelandic 'a slang of extreme purists'.
Now how large is the amount of loan-words in Icelandic? In order to answer this question we first need to define what we mean by 'loan-word'. Some linguists argue that every word is borrowed from some source at a certain point in history. For that reason the notion of 'linguistic purity' would be irrelevant. In the eyes of the advocates of High Icelandic, this is correct to some extent but not entirely. One do can create varieties of a language that differ with regard to purity if one takes the ‘age of a word’ as a basis. The most genuine vocabulary in a language consists of words that have been commonplace since the earliest times. These lexical elmenents can't be traced back to a foreign source (In case of Icelandic to a non-scandinavian source), mostly due to a lack of records. We purists call this fixed vocabulary. The intensity of purism then depends on the minimal age a loan-word must have with regard to its removal. If the foreign nature of recent words can’t be established they are considered as genuine. The High Icelandic language movement uses the Íslensk Orðsifjabók (Icelandic etymological dictionary) as a basis to decide on the genuinity of an Icelandic word. This is by no means a flawless way of working, but it's the best we have. The words for which a clear non-Scandinavian or non-Germanic source is mentioned were assembled into a list that was baptised Háfrónski hreinleikarýnirinn (High Icelandic purity checker). The list looks fairly extensive but more than half of the entries are borrowings that were already removed from Icelandic by the beginning of the 20th century.
A second aspect in calculating the amount of loan-words is word-frequency. Every word has a certain 'frequency of use'. Structural words like the conjunction og is more frequently used than most nouns. In addition to this, the frequency can change as a language evolves: e.g. a word like sverð (sword) was used more frequently in 12th century Iceland.
I started out with a crude method. I took the Icelandic-English pocket dictionary of Sævar Hilbertsson as a basis for my calculation. If you take every word as a unit without taking word-frequency into account, the amount of tracable foreignisms is 16%. If you do take 'word frequency' into account this number will drop below 5% (written language), because the most frequently used words are structural words like prepositions, numerals and conjunctions. And these are genuine for the most part. This means that Icelanders have to replace only a small part of their vocabulary in order to speak High Icelandic. If they would be willing to integrate the High Icelandic replacements of only the 200 most frequently used loan-words, 99% of their language would be genuinely Icelandic. Only 200 words!! That's peanuts! The only question is: Will Icelanders be willing to do this?
Some changes are very radical: karlþegn – kvenþegn – meyþegn/ungfreyja (herra –frú –ungfrú), kyrgi (kaffi), klyngra (rós). Some will find them irrelevant. But there are known languages where this kind of regressive purism has been successful. Think of the many 800 year old borrowings from Arabic and Persian that were obliterated during the Turkish language reform. They were replaced by completely new native constructions.
There's no reason to call a shift from Icelandic to High Icelandic a catastrophe. After all, every language is a set of conventions, and most people everywhere neither know nor care about the origins of the words they use. They are not interested in whether a word has always been part of their language or was recently created by a Language Society or an Academy.
Also the argument that High Icelandic is an impoverishment is erroneous. We replace every word mostly with an equally flexible construction, there’s neither a considerable loss of vocabulary nor loss in flexiblilty. The High Icelandic vocabulary is for the most part fully operational. Some common words will be replace by genuine 'strangers' and that will be hard in the beginning. It is like English-speaking Irishmen who find Gaelic a weird language. We have to suffer a little bit to obtain total genuinity. The shift from Icelandic to High Icelandic compares to the Phoenix who burns himself and rises rejuvenated from his ashes.

Neologistic poetry is no funny business!

2008-06-06T16:56:00.000-07:00

Look at this picture:: An Icelandic family at thingvellir (parlement-fields) wearing nýyrðaskáldshúfur (cap of the neologist poets). See the red robotic light shining through their TERMINATOR-sunglasses, the rainbow in the sky contrasting with the slightly perverse Jack Nicholson smile on the face of the determined father. Read the text in terminator-fonts: High Icelandic, because linguistic purism is the best thing that happened to Icelandic. Some of you might interpret these exaggerations as a mockery or a provocation. If so, you have typed the wrong URL in the search bar. How can a humorless person create a humorist picture? Yes, people, I, Jozef Braekmans AKA Timbur-Helgi Hermannsson am born without sense of humor. And HAPPY-ME for that, because Icelandic language defence (which is my sole activity in life) has no need for jokers, whackos and bozoos. Nýyrðasmíð (Word-building) has been ridiculized enough in recent times. The exaggeration in this picture is just an extreme way to say: Terminate all loan-words in your daily talks and writs. Pure Icelandic or no Icelandic at all. I find it completely incredible that Icelanders keep on letting Danicisms like Akkúrat, edrú or koffort pollute their language. Have they forgotten the fate of their ancestors, who have been linguisticly ass-raped by Dannebrog-flagpoles?!? Do they want an additional one with an Union Jack or Stars and Stripes. What about the French ticolore? A quadruple backdoor treat, man that's gonna hurt. OK, I'll cup the crap! Now seriously: How will the Icelandic nation ever been able to make a stand against English, the greatest predator-tongue in history and prime causer of language extinction if they can't even get rid of their BAUNABABL (Danish babbl). If they just would become conscient of their unique identity as speakers of the most puristic tongue on the planet. Purism is the destiny of Icelandic. Creating native words where the rest of the human race content themselves with internationalisms is what Icelanders make unique. Taking this to even further extremes like e.g. Háfrónska is their ultimate destiny. I'm sorry, but that's the way it is!! So let's not waste time any further! Tortímum tökuorðunum. And I would like to end with a slogan on the back-side of the star-destroyer in the movie Spaceballs: WE BREAK FOR NO-ONE!!! Megi mátturinn vera með ykkur!!

Nýyrðaskáld (neologistic poet), an extreme way of life!

2008-06-06T16:48:00.000-07:00

Translation of the text in the piture: HREINN means 'pure' and the red text goes: Language obsession is always the right way!!!!!A nýyrðaskáld (neologistic poet) is a born speaker of Icelandic who considers the protection of his mother-tongue as a holy commitment. He never adopts and adapts foreign words as do average Icelandic neologists if they fail to find a decent, native equivalent after a short while. He will keep on squeezing out every braincell in order to find a solution, even if it takes him years. Every second of his spare-time is precious to him. He even pisses in a cola-bottle under his desk in order not to loose minutes by going to the toilet.Some of you will call this obsession and that's what it is. But obsession is the square of will-power. Obsession and nothing else than obsession is why I, Jef Braekmans have been able to find so many killer-neologisms during the last 12 years. I constantly put my teeth into the matter like a rabid pitbull. In my vision, a real nýyrðaskáld focuses his whole life on the maximalization of his intellectual abilities in order to be up to the most difficult neologistic chalenges. He will eat food-stuffs with a low glycemic index in order to avoid inconvenient fluctuations of insuline. He will eat low calorie diets to maximize his life expectancy which will result in more years as an active word-builder than average Icelandic neologists. He refrains from drinking one drop of alcohol, which is a great curse in Icelandic society. Think of the weekly 'rúntur': Icelanders sit in their car touring around Reykjavík from gas station to gas station at a walking speed, while they booze a self-made, impure kind of alcoholic beverage called 'landi'. If one wants to live the life of a nýyrðaskáld one shouldn't come near this poison! Alcohol lowers intellectual capacities. When you booze your neologisctic abilities take a deep dive!!!! If Jónas Hallgrímsson would have been abstinent and on a low calorie diet, he would have produced 10 times as many poems of a 10 times higher quality.Some Icelanders will without doubt consider the nýyrðaskáld's way of life as being the most boring one that is conceivable by the human mind. But not in the eyes of a nýyrðaskáld. For him a life word-building is a bliss. He feels like an angel resting on a marshmellow cloud when he's sitting behind his computer-screen, surrounded by mountains of dictionaries. He can't imagine a match for the feelings of love for Fjallkona when he eagerly tries save Icelandic from an adapted or unadapted foreignism. The viking-helmet-like nýyrðaskáldshúfa on his head always remembers him to remain focused on his holy commitment to defend the Icelandic language. Nýyrðaskáld are fierce linguistic warriors, the postmodern EINHERJAR. The equivalent of Ragnarökkr for them is Tungurökkr, the twilight that falls upon the Icelandic language, something that will surely happen if Iceland and its professional word-builders won't wake up from their neologistic lethargy and start replacing the hundreds of adapted loan-words in their terminology books.

English-Icelandic names of the US states

2008-06-06T16:36:00.000-07:00

Alabama: Gulhamarsríki (Yellow Hammer State)

Alaska: Axlarríki (the shoulder-state, state at one of the the shoulders of the world.) Andeldland (anti-Tierra del Fuego)

Arizona: Gljúfsríki (named after the Grand Canyon)

Arkansas: Alsverfisríki (The diamond (kóngsteinn, alsverfir) shapes in the center represent the diamond gemstone, because Arkansas is the only state in the USA where diamonds have been found.)

California: Gullríki (the Gold state)

Colorado: Gljúfárríki (the state named after the River that flows through the Grand Canyon)
Connecticut: Stjórnarskrárríki. Connecticut was designated the “Constitution State” by the General Assembly in 1959.

Delaware: ??

Florida: Blómaskagi (Florida was first seen by the Spanish explorer Ponce de Leon on Palm Sunday on April 2, 1513 - he then named the "Pascua de Florida," meaning "Feast of Flowers" and claimed it for Spain.)

Georgia: Yrkisríki, Gyrgisríki (named after king George. For ‘Yrkir’, see ‘Proper names’)

Hawai:Dyngjueyjar (Islands having the largest shield volcanos.)

Idaho: hnossríki (In 1863, Congress designated the Idaho Territory with the erroneous understanding that Idaho was a Shoshone word meaning Gem of the Mountains. In spite of the misunderstanding concerning the origin of the name the state continues to be known as the “Gem State” and the “Gem of the Mountains”.)

Illinois :???

Indiana : ???

Iowa: Hauksríki (The “Hawkeye State” was first suggested by James G. Edwars as a tribute to indian leader Chief Black Hawk.)

Kansas: Sólfifilsríki (The nickname “Sunflower State” calls to mind the wild flowers of the plains of Kansas and the officially recognized state flower.)

Kentucky: Sveifgrasríki (Blue grass state)

Louisiana: Hlöðvérsríki

Maine: Furaríki (The “Pine Tree State” recognizes the white pine tree, an officially designated state symbol. Maine possesses over 17 million acres of forests.)

Maryland: Maríuland, Guðmeyjarland (Mary is Guðmey in High Icelandic)

Massachusets:Víkaríki (Early settlers were responsible for nicknaming the “Bay State” because of its proximity to several large bays.)

Michigan: Jarfaríki (Some people believe that Ohioans gave Michigan the nickname “The Wolverine State” around 1835 during a dispute over the Toledo strip, a piece of land along the border between Ohio and Michigan. Rumors in Ohio at the time described Michiganians as being as vicious and bloodthirsty as wolverines. This dispute became known as the Toledo War.)

Minnesota:Vatnaríki (Minnesota is known on its license plates as the “Land of 10,000 Lakes,” but Minnesota actually has 12,000 lakes.)

Mississippi: Miðvesturfjótsríki (The river of the Mid-West is the Missisippi, situated just on the 90° meridian)

Missouri: ???

Montana: Fjallaríki

Nebraska: ???

Nevada: Silfurríki (Called the “Silver State" because of its large silver mine industries.)

New Hampshire; Nýja-Heimssýsla

New Jersey: Nýja Keisaraey (Named after the Island Jersey. The name Jersey is a corruption of Ceasarea, named after Julius Ceasar)

New Mexico: Nýja Hlautland: (Hlautland = Mexico, the land of sacrificial blood. Mexico has the world-record as for the amount of sacrificial blood spilled during its history)

New York: Nýja Jórvík

North Carolina; Norður-Karlsríki (The word Carolina is from the word Carolus, the Latin form of Charles. The state was named after King Charles I and II)

North Dakota: ??

Ohio: Aughnotarríki (After the nick-name, the buckeye-state. The name itself is of native origin. Because the markings on the nut (a chestnut species that hasn’t yet a word in Icelandic) resembled the eye of a buck, the Indians called it "hetuck" or "buckeye.")

Oklahoma: Rauðmannaríki (The name Oklahoma is from the Choctaw Indian words "okla" meaning people and "humma" meaning 'red'.

Pennsylvania: Lykilríki (The word "keystone" comes from architecture and refers to the central, wedge-shaped stone in an arch, which holds all the other stones in place. The application of the term “Keystone State” to Pennsylvania cannot be traced to any single source. It was commonly accepted soon after 1800. At a Jefferson Republican victory rally in October 1802, Pennsylvania was toasted as "the keystone in the federal union," and in the newspaper Aurora the following year the state was referred to as "the keystone in the democratic arch." The modern persistence of this designation is justified in view of the key position of Pennsylvania in the economic, social, and political development of the United States.

Oregon: Bjóraríki (The American Beaver (Castor canadensis) was named Oregon state animal by the 1969 Legislature. Prized for its fur, the beaver was overtrapped by early settlers and eliminated from much of its original range. Through proper management and partial protection, the beaver has been reestablished in watercourses throughout the state and remains an important economic asset. The beaver has been referred to as "nature's engineer," and its dam-building activities are important to natural water flow and erosion control. Oregon is known as the “Beaver State”.

Rhode Island: Róðey

South Carolina: Suður-Karlsríki (The word Carolina is from the word Carolus, the Latin form of Charles.)

South Dakota: ???

Tennessee: Tensárríki

Texas: ????

Utah: býríki (Beehive state), jútaríki

Vermont: Grænfjallaríki (“Green Mountain State” Verd Mont was a name given to the Green Mountains in October, 176l, by the Rev. Dr. Peters)

Virginia: Meykóngsríki (Named after Queen Elizabeth I of England, who was known as the 'Virgin Queen')

Washington: Hvessingatún (The name washington is derived from a man named ‘Wassa’ + ‘ing’ (the descendants of) + ‘ton’ (estate). The name ‘Wassa’ is derived from ‘Hvæs’, wich is, according to the orðsifjabók, equivalent with Icelandic ‘hvass’ (sharp). The name ‘Wassa’ would mean ‘the sharp one’ (Hvassi). His descendants would be called ‘Hvessingar’. The ending ‘-ton’ is mostly Icelandicized into ‘tún’ (Like in ‘Hamtún’, see Íslensk Orðabók )

West Virginia: Vestur-Meykongsríki

Wisconsin: grafgaltarríki (The badger state, grafgöltur = badger)

Wyoming: Slétturíki (The word of Indian origin means on the Great Plains)

'Afn' more robust than 'atóm' and 'frumeind'.

2008-06-06T16:32:00.000-07:00

One day in 1996 I was wondering about what meaning could be attached to 'afn' (derived from 'efni', matter). This derivation didn't exist yet and I thought might be useful as the Icelandic equivalent for the English term 'quark'. Later I thought it might suit as a suffix in names of chemical elements. After a long time of pondering I came to the conclusion that it would be the most suitable designation of an atom. The problem with the existing 'frumeind' is that it forms three syllables in compounds, where the more robust 'atóm' remains unchanged. Atóm will always be prefered in compounds. Only a short monosyllabic word like 'afn' can replace it.

The word scores on all fronts:

1) It is monosylabic and doesn't get any longer in compounds as is the case of 'frumeind'. A more robust word is unthinkable.
2) It sounds a bit like the stem of 'ögn' (AGN), which makes it sound like a particle name.
3) It is sound-similar to 'atom' when pronounced in English while it is a purely native construction. (compare: radar -ratsjá).
4) It is derived from 'efni' (matter). An atom is the smallest particle in chemical sense (chemistry = EFNAfræði, literally 'matter-craft').

compounds:
atomic age: afnöld
atomic bomb: afnsprengja
atomic clock: afnstundsjá
atomic force microscope: afnkraftsjá atomic mass: afnmagn
atomic physics: afneðlisfræði, afnfræði
atomic theory: afnkenning atomic weight: afnþungi nucleus: afnkjarn

Jónas was, is and will remain the greatest!

2008-06-06T13:33:00.000-07:00

The text in the picture goes: The spirit of Jónas (Hallgrímsson) will return as the 'LOAN-WORD TERMINATOR'. LEt's hope he does!!
Jónas Hallgrímsson is regarded as Iceland's most beloved poet. A statue was raised in his honour and his birthday, the 16th of november was baptised 'dagur íslenskrar tunga', the day of the Icelandic language. On this date, every nýyrðaskáld sees it as his duty to gather around his statue, take off their nýyrðaskáldshúfur and sing "Ó, guð, vors lands", the Icelandic national anthem.
Jónas was a god of poetry, a "BRAGI MIÐGARÐS", a man with Kvasir-positive blood running through his veins. Forever he will remain Iceland's greatest poet. Even if some skáld in the future, endowed with a bioengineered super-brain would be able to chat in perfect 'ferskeytlur' at a rate of 200 words a minute, even then, Jónas would remain the greatest. He was just the right man with the right poems at the right time in Iceland's history. This unique situation won't ever present itself again. November 16 will forever be 'the day of the Icelandic language'.
It's so sad that he had to leave so early. Perhaps God couldn't wait to have him as his court poet. How much more could have sprouted from his brilliant mind? We'll never know. But one thing is certain: He is alive and kicking in the nation's memory. Whether you are a christian or not: Jónas is immortal in the minds of Icelanders as long as they walk this planet.

Brynfjöreggið, the armoured egg of life

2008-06-06T13:17:00.000-07:00

The armoured egg of life (brynfjöreggið) symbolizes the most utterly strong determination to protect Icelandic. It is formed by two vikinghelmets in an egg-shape. According to the 21th century Fjallbarnssaga, Thor himself, assisted by the most skilful of the dwarfs, forged two helmets with his hammer from an alloy of the heart of a shield and the soul of an axe in the fire of Hekla. When the work was finished he took the helmets and rode to Thingvellir where the new happy family Fjallkona, Bergrisi and their child Fjallbarn were dwelling. He gave the helmets as a gift on behalf of all Æsir and asked Fjallkonan to put them around one of her most precious possessions, the egg of life called Icelandic Then Thor soldered the two helmets together with sparkles of lightening gushing from his hammer. From that moment onwards, the egg was known as Brynfjöregg (armoured egg of life). It In return, Fjallkonan weaved an additional Icelandic flag with Mjölnir replacing the Danish cross to honour the God of Thunder.

Jórgarður (Jericho) and Baldgarður (Bagdad)

2008-06-06T12:27:00.001-07:00

The Íslensk Orðsifjabók mentions the loan-word: baldikin, baldrikinn or baldurskinn (Baldaquin), which designated a kind of silk from bagdad. In the middle ages, the name Baldac was used for Bagdad in Europe. If we look at the three earlier mentioned loan-words we see that the first member in a theoretical archaic name for Bagdad would start with Bald-. The latter 'c' is generated by the affix 'garður' like in Mikligarður or Kænugarður. Baldgarður is a toponymic pseudo-archaism.
Another example is Jórgarður for Jericho. The name Jerusalem was nordicized to Jórsalir. The first three characters of Jericho are the same as in Jerusalem, so we can use the prefix jór- as the first member. Like in Baldac, we recuperate the 'ch' by using 'garður'. an alternative for Jericho is Lágborg. Lying 258 meters below sea level, Jericho is the lowest city on earth.
These are two beautiful examples of how Icelanders could generate purely Icelandic toponyms from old words.
Rose of Jericho: Jórgarðsblóm (The flower is red but it is no rose)

The adaptation of foreign words in Icelandic is like making diarrhoea taste like chocolate!

2008-06-06T12:24:00.000-07:00

When will the people of the word-commissions at last exclude the adaptation of foreign words as a source of lexical enrichment. Words like tafla, persóna, þema, skema, jeppi are like black inkblots on the dress of Fjallkona. This is no linguistic purism. Yesterday I read an shocking artcicle in Málfregnir, the paper of the Icelandic language commission in which a linguist assumed that the health of the Icelandic language has never been so well. I couldn't believe my eyes.
I do know that some people of the language commission would favour the run-away meltdown purism of the High Icelandic model if they just weren't surrounded with all these ignorant people who force them to take a more moderated position.
THIS HAS TO STOP. WE CAN HAVE A RICH ICELANDIC WITHOUT LOAN-WORDS IF NEOLOGISTIC EFFORTS ARE APPROPRIATELY INCREASED.
I call upon all young Icelanders for linguistic insubordination in the classroom when your teacher Icelandic acceptsadapted loan-words (read: ABOMINATION). The adaptation of foreign words in Icelandic is INDEEEED like MAKING DIARRHOEA TASTE LIKE CHOCOLATE!!!

Nylon (Nýgarn)

2008-06-06T12:15:00.000-07:00

Nýgarn (nylon)
Nylon did not derive from the popular, but misconceived, myth that it was a joining of the names of New York (NY) and London (LON), but as a result of many committee meetings within DuPont. Many commercial names were discussed, among them Artex, Dusilk, Novasilk , NoRun and Terikon. NoRun was initially chosen, but the fibre DID run, so more work was required. From NoRun came Niron to Nyron. Then, after much deliberation, Nylon was decided upon, only 2 weeks before the product's official public launch.
What is the best possible Icelandic word for nylon?
The etymology can't help us any further. But one thing is certain: Nylon was the first purely synthetic fiber of the Modern (Nýtískur) age . It was a paradigm shift in textile industry. For that reason, I call it nýgarn. The adjective 'nýr' is not only used to designate something brand new but also for radical changes in history. Think of the "New Deal" introduced by President Roosevelt or 'New wave music" in the early eighties, which is already old-fashioned. Nýgarn is also based on the word 'novasilk' (new silk), one of the earlier proposed names . This word was discarded because the company wanted its new synthetic fibre to conquer the market on account of all its high qualities and not just as a substitute for silk.
For that reason I think 'nýgarn' (new yarn, the new fibre) is the best possible word for nylon in Icelandic. It is a short, simple, robust and flexible word.

Advertising of neologisms desperately needed!

2008-06-06T12:14:00.001-07:00

Ten years ago, when I visited Iceland, I bought the 'Orðaskrá um eðlisfræði' (Word-list of terms in physics) and hit upon an interesting neologism: 'ljörvi' (laser). It is based on the full version of the acronym LASER: Light (Icelandic: ljós) Amplification by Stimulated (örva = stimulate)
Emission of Radiation. What a beauty! Much better than 'leysir' and 'ljósleysir'. I immediately wrote the word on a sheet of paper with a thick black marker and stared at it for several minutes. It had made my day. The existing 'leysir', a very clumsy imitation based on the Icelandic verb 'leysa' (loosen, untie, free, solve) was no match for this supersexy great-grandmotherfucker. I told an Icelandic friend that I rated it even higher than the legendary 'tölva'. He disagreed, and told me not to exaggerate. In 'tölva', the connection with 'völva' (sybil, female soothsayer) is retained while 'ljós' is invisible in 'ljörvi'. But this also applies to the L in laser. Maybe it can't stand the comparison with the killer-neologism 'tölva', but still. A sheer beauty!!
Now what happened with this neologism? Did it become a hit? Well, not exactly. We are 10 years later now and I'm under the suspicion that almost no Icelander other than some of them working in the terminology fiels seem to know about it. Recently, I have put 20 Icelanders, all employed in scientific research, to the test about their knowledge about neologisms. Not one of them knew about 'ljörvi'. Great! Just Great!!
This makes me come to the following conclusion: No significant efforts are made to get important neologisms known to the public. The only way the average Icelander will stumble upon a word like 'ljörvi' is him reading the higher mentioned terminology list.
It is time to take action and to construct an infrastructure to make important neologisms public. The lack of this is a serious downside in Icelandic language defence. Bills should be sticked at the corner of shopping malls, Newspapers should have it somewhere on the front page. The Icelandic broadcast-service should devote at least two minutes of the daily news to the mentioning of new important neologisms. Is that too much asked if you cares about your language? OF COURSE NOT!! SO MOVE YOUR BUTTS AND GET INTO ACTION!!

The translation of all 5.000.000 place-names and 6.000.000.000 personal names is necessary!

2008-06-06T12:10:00.000-07:00

An event that could have kick-started the project to translate all foreign place names (5 million) and personal names (now more than 6 billion) into pure Icelandic, happened 150 years ago when the Fjölnissmen mentioned names like Sigurborg (Cairo), Jón Hrísill (John Russell) in their magazine Skírnir. This was THE FIRST SIGN OF ULTRAPURISM IN HIGH ICELANDIC STYLE. If the Icelandic population would have been smart enough at that time (they weren’t, because they were kept stupid by the criminal Danish exploiters), the creation of these names could have evolved into a national spare-time activity, something comparable to genealogy. In a next stage, thousands of Icelanders would have spread over the world like missionaries in order to study personal names and place-names in every country. They would have created toponymic dictionaries for the local population in the poor countries, who haven't the opportunity to engage in such an activity because of the time-consuming struggle for life. And at the same time these Icelanders would have created the Icelandic equivalents of these million of place-names. If Icelanders had taken their responsibility in the time of the historical Skírnir-article, they would be the first nation in the world to be able to iclandicize everything that is pronouncable by human sound.
But all hope isn’t lost yet. Due to rapid evolution in the field, molecular nanotechnolgy will certainly hit the market in the 2020’s. This bottom-up approach in the production of consumer goods will undoubtedly bring unprecedented wealth to every member of the human race. This means that in the now poor countries like Somalia, the struggle for life will end and people will have enough time to indulge in all kinds of new activities, like creating a dictionary of the place-names of their country. By the 2040s the etymology of every place-name and family name on earth will be searchable on the net. Also by that time, the final results of the so-called ‘reverse engineering of the human brain’ will be translated into software. Ten years after that Icelanders will have the expert system software needed to icelandicize every geographical and personal name in the world AT LOW COST and WITHIN A SHORT SPACE OF TIME (no more than a few days). By 2060, such a project can be accomplished easily by a hobbyist. THEN IT WON’T BE AN ABSURD PROJECT ANYMORE.

No 'vanilla' in the pearl of the Nordic tongues

2008-06-06T12:05:00.000-07:00

A long time have I been searching for an Icelandic equivalent for 'vanilla'. The English word is derived from the Spanish 'vainilla', which means 'little sheath, or little pod'. Many Icelanders argue that we're dealing with an international word and that it would be inappropriate to replace it. But the international character of a word should just be the prime reason to reject it in Icelandic. If only the so-called protectors of Icelandic would only want to see that. Icelandic is the language of extreme linguistic purism, an anti-international language and words like 'vanilla' are needles to the coffin of Fjallkonan, the queen of our language hive.

What could be the most appropriate term for 'vanilla' in Icelandic? There are two questions that have to be answered:

1) Are there languages beside the native American languages that have their own word for 'vanilla' and what do these names mean?
2) Does vanilla have a unique property that can be translated into an appropriate term?
The answer to the first question is yes. Three languages outside the Americas have their own term:
a) Hebrew: SHENEPH: According to Ernest Klein 'Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language', sheneph comes from Arabic SINF, which means 'pod', 'hulk', which is also the original meaning of the Spanish 'vainilla'.
b) Chinese: The Chinese language has different words: Fan ni lan (the loan-word), Xiang jia lan, Hsiang ts'ao lan, Xiang zi lan. Interesting is the fact that all words end in 'lan', which means 'orchid' in this case. Indeed, the vanilla vine is an orchid species.
c) Malay: ANGGREK: This very interesting Malay word means both 'orchid' and 'vanille'.

The Malay word is also the answer to the second question: Does vanilla have a unique property that can be translated into an appropriate term?: Yes, the vanilla plant is the ONLY ORCHID SPECIES that has any commercial use as a food-stuff. A word for orchid in a compound with words denoting food always refers to vanilla.

The Icelandic word for ORCHID is brönugras. The first member 'brana' is the name of a troll woman and is used only in two compounds: brönugras (orchid) and brönugangur (vixenish behavior). The latter word is not used very often so we can safely use 'brana' as a reference to 'orchids' and to 'vanilla' in compounds designating food-products.

brönu (rjóma) ís: vanilla ice

brönubaun: vanilla bean

brönubaunaklifra: vanilla plant. The addition 'klifra' is a shortening of 'klifurjurt' and used in Icelandic names of vines.

brönumógæti: vanilla chocolate

brönustöng: vanilla stick

brönuhneita, brönuhrím: vanilline, the vanilla itself. The vanilline crystals are formed on and in the bean pods and can be compared to the 'hneitur' (sugar crystals) on dulse leaves (sölvablöð) and the 'hneita' (salt-crust) on stock-fish. The crystals are refered to as 'givre', which is the French equivalent of Icelandic 'hrím' (hoan-frost), because of its white hoar-frost, needle crystals. This can be compared to the expression 'snow' in the case of cocaine crystals.

brönusæta: vanilla sugar

Hlautlenskt brönuhrím: Mexican vanilla

My conclusion is that a reference to the orchid nature of the vanilla plant is the most appropriate solution. Let's all obliterate the abomination vanilla and start using 'brana' in compounds.