ekta púrismi

I find real linguistic purism (afsakið, ég á auðvitað við málsótthreinsun) tiresome in the extreme. There are many reasons for this.

But the hardcore hreintunguherjar do get to have what must be a lot of fun coming up with clever coinages to replace loan words both old and new. The so-called Language Laundry linked to above has put together a list of aggressively Icelandified placenames for numerous locations not in Iceland, a must-visit for any etymologically-inclined geography buff. Many of the other words found on their other lists are also entertaining, though probably of limited use in downtown Ísafjörður either because the coinage (despite enormous cleverness, etymological rigor, and phonetic ease) is utterly unknown to all inhabitants of Ísafjörður or because the item glossed is nothing one would find oneself needing to speak of in downtown Ísafjörður.

But I am not one to be over-daunted by issues of practicality. Some of these neologisms are pure poetry and an enjoyable genre unto themselves. Personally, I'm happy to make up such things or enjoy the inventions of others without the purist agenda that would demand wiping out the pre-existing loanwords. In some cases, to do so would produce linguistic effects both weird and not necessary desirable.

By way of example: the crocodile.




The hreintunguherjar propose replacing the term krókódíll with words constructed of native timber, as it were, such as brynmerill (roughly "armored floating one") or bakkadreki ("riverbank-dragon"). These are great words. Brynmerill contains both the bryn- of Brynhildr and byrnies and (to my ear, at least) an intimation of glittering by analogy with the verb merla. Lovely word. And bakkadreki is fully servicable, descriptive, and þjálft. I think I've seen one or the other of these, fleetingly, in television subtitles.

However, it would be a shame to lose krókódíll. It's an old borrowing from Latin, into which it was borrowed from Greek. In fact the medieval Icelandic translation of the Lives of the Desert Fathers [Vitæ Patrum] includes an even more Greek version of the term: korkódríllus (though it is declined like a Latin word there, oddly enough). Which is all just to say that loanwords can be quite venerable and well-bred.

Furthermore, I think one loses something by eliminating the foreign-soundingness of the word krókódíll in Icelandic. Crocodiles are, after all, not very Icelandic creatures. This fact was driven home to all in 2001, when Mayor Reinhard Reynisson proposed importing some of them (or more properly some of their cousins, the alligators) to Húsavík as a tourist attraction. At the time, part of the pleasure of talking about the affair while it was tied up in the Ministry of Agriculture was exactly to do with the word krókódíll in an Icelandic sentence.

And why shouldn't we get to hear on the level of the sign the inherent strangeness of this plan? Why shouldn't a loanword appear in a sentence that was after all about importation? Krókódílar í Húsavík? How bizarre. How much more bizarre than brynmerlar í Húsavík would have been. Such a nativist word rather fails to contain the implications of having large, scaley, cold-blooded crocodilians lashing their tails through the pearly geothermal waters of northern Iceland.

Unfortunately for those of us who would also have liked to have been able to experience the pleasure of travelling to Húsavík to see the krókódílar in their new, northern home, the Minister of Agriculture, Guðni Ágústsson, denied Reinhard Reynisson an import license. Fortunately for those of us who enjoy occasional verse, Guðni was duly lampooned for his own biological purism:

Húsvíkingar sitja nú í sárum,
sviftir eru góðri tekjuvon.
Grætur köldum krókódílatárum,
kvikindið hann Guðni Ágústsson.

The folk of Húsavík are in arrears,
robbed of a good source of income.
He cries cold crocodile tears,
that bastard, Guðni Ágústsson.

The minister himself cited this anonymous verse in a speech on salmon importation. Translation is mine.

I find this verse eases some of the disappointment I feel in how the matter of the crocodiles has turned out. It is another excuse to talk about krókódílar in Icelandic - in verse, no less. But it also raises another question related to the topic of language purity:

If we replaced the krókódíll with something more nativist, like brynmerill, what would become of crocodile tears?