Talk:Linguistic purism in Icelandic

Neutrality
If the neutrality of this article is in dispute, where is the discussion about it. You don't just slap a tag like that on an article without saying a word about it. Dispute means - well, precisely that. There is no dispute here. Cheers Io 03:27, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
 * That's true. The problem with the article is that it is written as an advocacy of linguistic purism than a description of the phenomenon. In fact, the heading of the article was Preservation of Icelandic, i.e. the official language ideology and terminology about language purism. The article was moved to the present heading, but nothing else changed. The word "preservation" or phrases as "maintain the language’s purity" are used time and again. Just to take it literally, making new words in Icelandic for things inexistent in Old Norse to replace loanwords is not preservation by any means. In fact, the article is repeating the arguments of the official pamphlet of the Icelandic government Icelandic - at once ancient and modern. --Michkalas 11:13, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
 * As this is an emotionally laden subject, I don't think "preservation" and words like that should be thought of as weasel-words in this context. The concept of "preservation" (definitions may vary) is subjective. Having said that, I agree that the article could do with some polishing. Also, I was not aware of that Icelandic has ever been made an official language of Iceland. It is de facto, but de jure the country doesn't have one. The need for an official language has never arisen. Cheers Io 12:09, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
 * For the official language thing check, Talk:Iceland#Icelandic only de facto ?. Anyway, this emphasis to explain everywhere and all the time that it is not in the constitution is just because of the English-only movement in the US, which wants to ban education and services for immigrants in any other language than English. Otherwise, the whole thing is a legal detail. --Michkalas 12:31, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I did not have the USA in mind, when I wrote the reply. It was meant as a reminder that some countries, France being a prime example, have codified an official language or languages in their constitutions or laws (often to the detriment of their respective minorities, see France again for an example), but Iceland and many others have not. The thing is legal detail, I'll admit that, since the practise of law also admits the power of precedent. Anyway, this is really nothing to split hairs about, and if there are legal hairs to be split after all, I'd rather leave that to the lawyers, although I suspect you'll get a variety of opininions from them as well. Cheers Io 14:03, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
 * PS: I had already read the discussion you referred me to and I disagree with the conclusion. Cheers Io 14:10, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
 * PPS: If you take two attested Old Icelandic stems and combine them into a new word, what is that other than preservation? In my opinion at least, it doesn't matter in that respect, whether the ancients were familiar with the new concept. Cheers Io 14:14, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately, the least I can say, creating new words this way is not considered a "preservation". This phenomenon is known in sociolinguistics and language policy as linguistic purism and it is not of course present only in Icelandic. For the speakers, the government and the schools is of course "preservation". The whole thing is about looking like archaic and old, but this does not mean that it really is archaic and old. Anyway, I will try to make some changes in the article and we can discuss any possible problems. --Michkalas 14:43, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
 * In that case there is considerable overlap between linguistic purism and preservation. To refer to the all to often cited word sími (originally síma), that word had totally fallen out of use, but was resurrected. The same can be said about teiti, which noone had used for a very long time except in poetry until it turned up again in the late 20. century, probably originally as a conscious archaism among high school students. The defininitions of sociolinguistics are neither the beginning nor end of all. In fact, most subjects starting with socio- (my prejudice) have their definitions muddled to some degree. If you coin a new word out of two archaic and old parts, the meaning is probably new, but its constituent parts are archaic and old and that makes the whole construction archaic if not old. That may also mean preservation of either or both stems, if one or the other has ceased to be used. And, as I said earlier, beauty is in this case in the eye of the beholder, so the opinion of those who understand the subject matter is what counts - not some general definition of sociolinguists, who may have a general grasp of their subject, but don't necessarily understand the languages they are dealing with. What I mean by that is, that you mostly see the same examples from taken from Icelandic, when the subject matter is e.g. language purism, often with the same errors repeated - one author copying another's mistakes. We have, then, resurrection, pure preservation, calques and neologisms, all of which may labelled preservation to varying degrees, if all parts are old. But I think we are straying from the original subject. Cheers Io 18:41, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Norwegian instead of Danish
I knew about the Norwegian option (a former class-mate did just that), just forgot to mention it, but now that it has been mentioned, doesn't this apply to Swedish as well? Cheers Io 17:31, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

German article
I have requested translation of the German article to provide us with more information, if anyone can help it would be appreciated. Max Naylor 10:16, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Internal contradiction
In the section "20th century onwards", one can read:

It should be noted, however, that neither the Constitution nor any single act of the Althing establishes Icelandic as the official language of the country.

Later, in the section "Purpose", one can read:

Since Icelandic has been made the official language of Iceland [...]

So, is Icelandic an official language of Iceland or not? Please someone fix the article. --Antonielly (talk) 17:08, 16 August 2008 (UTC)


 * According to: http://www.iceland.is/history-and-culture/Language/ Icelandic is the national language. I'll remove the sentence in the section "20th century onwards", remove the contradiction tag, add the reference tag for the reason for the change, and pray that everyone's happy. ;)  Thanks so much for all your hard work! Kjnelan (talk) 01:32, 20 July 2009 (UTC)
 * After reviewing the article again, it appears as if someone else had taken care of the issue, but never removed the contradiction tag. Tag removed.  Kjnelan (talk) 01:40, 20 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Iceland didn't have an official language de jure until May 2011, when Icelandic and Icelandic Sign Language were made the two official languages og Iceland. 85.220.127.120 (talk) 01:10, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

Heavily inflected language
Yes, it is heavily reflected compared to English and French, but surely Swedish, Nowegian, Danish and German are the obvious points of reference? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.168.179.202 (talk) 07:38, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

"Linguistic purism in Icelandic is the sociolinguistic phenomenon of linguistic purism in the Icelandic language"
Not a good start to an article on language. I'm sure it should be possible to actually define the subject of the article without repeating it. AndyTheGrump (talk) 13:14, 17 March 2015 (UTC) ✅

Relevance of Ultrapurism
I've trimmed down the section on the Ultrapurism "movement" as is not really worth mentioning for more than 1 sentence here, only one Belgian guy (who does not speak Icelandic) ever advocated for it and it did not gain any traction. It's a fun curiosity, but the weight given to it here was really WP:UNDUE. I've pasted the section as it was here down below. – Thjarkur (talk) 16:34, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

"High Icelandic" or "Hyper-Icelandic" (Háíslenska or Háfrónska) is a minor movement of ultrapurism, since 2004 headed by Pétur Þorsteinsson. It was started by Jozef Braekmans of Lier, Belgium, alias "Timbur-Helgi Hermannsson" (Timbur-Helgi "carpenter-saint" being his loan-translation of Joseph), around 1992, aimed at removing loan words from the modern Icelandic language. The project has received some media attention in the early 2000s, but it has no official status in Iceland. The language was named after høgnorsk ("High Norwegian"), a traditional form of Nynorsk. The second element frónska is derived from frón, the poetic name of Iceland, which was one of the names of the Earth in the Prose Edda. Braekmans also created a lot of symbolism around the language, including the "Thor's country flag" (Þórfrónsvé, shown to the right).

The emphasis in High Icelandic mainly lies on málgjörhreinsun (ultrapurism), the most extreme form of linguistic purism. Braekmans cites as his inspiration the 19th-century Fjölnismenn. In contrast to the existing Icelandic language policy, the removal of Latinisms and Germanisms in the old language is considered a top priority.

Braekmans started his experiment in 1992, when he started creating native replacements for those adapted loanwords that are considered as integrated parts of the Icelandic language and for which no purely Icelandic word existed. By 1998 he started to make extensive use of Internet and Usenet to promote his work, and in the year 2000 he created the website Nýyrðasmiðja Málþvottahús ("Neologistic factory 'Language Laundry'"), from 2005 known as 'Miðstöð Háfrónska Tungumálsins' "High Icelandic language centre". Braekmans first made mention of the name Háfrónska on November 23, 2003 on the newsgroup is.islenska. Braekmans had made himself and his work very unpopular on  is.islenska, and eventually passed his project to a successor, Pétur Þorsteinsson as "chief neologistic skald" (allsherjarnýyrðaskáld)  and a few other nýyrðaskáld (neologistic poets), and he discontinued his involvement and took down his website in 2012.

Some Icelandic newspapers had an article about the language; the newspaper DV had a full-page interview with Braekmans concerning his language in 1999. Icelandic television channel Stöð 2 had a small item on the project in November 2005. Icelandic radio station Rás 1 has a weekly radio show, Orð skulu standa, which features uncommon Icelandic words, and has on occasion introduced High Icelandic words into the language by way of a game revolving around guessing the words' meaning.