Icelandic vocabulary
The vocabulary of the Icelandic language is heavily derived from and built upon Old Norse and contains relatively few loanwords; where these do exist their spelling is often heavily adapted to that of other Icelandic words.
History
Iceland was first settled in the 9th century by
The introduction of
Numerous other languages have had their influence on Icelandic, French for example brought many words related to the court and knightship; words in the semantic field of trade and commerce have been borrowed from Low German because of trade connections.[1] Many words were also brought in from Danish and German during the language reformation[1] as the Bible was translated into Icelandic.
Nowadays, it is common practice to
Modern neologisms
It is often the case in
However, many neologisms are coined using only the stems of existing words complying with ancient practice. Two examples are þyrla (
However, there are some notable exceptions to this rule. Kaffi, for example, is an Icelandicised version of the French café or Italian caffè, both meaning ‘coffee’; that is to say that it has been adapted to the rules of Icelandic orthography. There are numerous other examples, including banani (in that case there was a proposed alternative, bjúgaldin, literally curved fruit, but that did not gain popularity). In situations like this, it may be awkward or impossible to create words for things that simply do not exist in Iceland by nature; therefore some form of a loanword may have to be used.
See also
- High Icelandic
- Icelandic names
- Linguistic purism in Icelandic
References
- ^ a b c d e f "How did the Icelandic language start?". Retrieved 2007-05-06.
- ^ "Icelandic: At Once Ancient and Modern" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2007-07-05. Retrieved 2007-05-06.