Letter from Iceland #52
The Little Book of Icelandic—Hatching new words!
Halló halló!
We’ve had a bunch of new subscribers since the last time, all due to the swimming pool post that wound up performing, er … swimmingly. (Badumtish!)
Welcome to all new subscribers, and big thanks to those of you who shared. Apart from it benefitting me personally since it brought in new subscribers, it benefitted our nation (she said with solemn emphasis) as well as our guests because a) hopefully we will have fewer people in the pools that have not washed thoroughly and b) fewer visitors will have to suffer the embarrassment of being told in front of everyone to strip down and shower properly!
Today’s post is about the five different ways we Icelanders make new words when something enters our language for which there is not yet a proper term. Over here we subscribe to a policy of linguistic purism (sounds more prudish than it is, honest) designed to protect the Icelandic (micro-) language. This means we don’t just adopt the English word for things like, say, “computer”, but make up our own words using (mainly) one of five true-and-tested methods.
More on that below … for paid subscribers only, I’m afraid. But if you want to check out my Little Book of Icelandic and read about these things, you can do so by clicking here. Or change to paid!
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