Saturday, November 12, 2011

kylfuferill, ausuferill (J-curve)

If you type J-curve in the Google Image Search bar, you will see that the term also exists as the trade name of a "hockey stick". A j-curve looks like what Icelanders call 'kylfa'. As for me, it looks more like an 'ausa' (ladle).

Friday, November 11, 2011

Andland (Australia)

The region around Australia, the island-continent, is often refered to as 'the land down under (hinum megin á hnettinu, hence the term hinumeginland) or the 'antipodal region' (andfælingssvæði). The term antipode derives from anti- "opposed" and pous "foot" of any place on Earth is the point on the Earth's surface which is diametrically opposite to it. Two points that are antipodal to one another are connected by a straight line running through the centre of the Earth.
Why not using the simple construction 'Andland'. The word refers to the "antipodal regions", the regions 'down under' and it is only different from 'Indland' in having another initial vowel, which is appropriate since the west coast of Australia lies at the Indian Ocean and the East Indies (Indonesia lies just north of Australia, so the similarity between the names 'Indland' and 'Andland' is a convenient coincidence.
Australia means 'the southern land', but it is actually, the land at the other end, and andland applies to this description.

Derivations:

Andlendingur: Australian
andlenskur: Australian
frumandlendingur: Aboriginal (or 'andfætlingssvertingi')
frumandlensk tungumál: aboriginal languages

New toponyms for Europe, Atlantic, Eurasia and Australia

The ritmálssafn orðabókar háskólans makes mention of two genuine Icelandic names for Europe:
1) Kvöldlönd (based upon the German 'Abendland', which, in the Old World's view, before the Columbian period of discoveries, was antonymous to 'the lands of the rising sun, the morning lands' (Asia)) and
2) Norðurálfa (Northern continent). Derivations like 'kvöldlendingur' or 'kvöldlenskur' are possible, but there happens to be a better option.

The SnorraEdda mentions a second name for the European mainland: Enea, derived from the name Aeneas, the Troyan hero, who fled to Carthago and later to Italy, where he was thought to be an ancester of Romulus, founder of the city of Rome. Unfortunately, this name is troublesome to construct derivations with: Enneskur??, Ennverji, Enjungur. Not possible.

It's regrettable that I or anybody else have apparently never tried an adjectival derivation of 'aftann' with the suffixes -anskur or -neskur, often observed in toponymic derivations like rússneskur, lettneskur, tyrkneskur. Aftneskur or aftanskur (Dat. of aftann is 'aftni') is just a derivation of "aftann" while at the same time it LUCKILY sounds as being derived from a place-name, which is interesting. It miraculously leans itself to an appropriate Icelandic equivalent for 'European'. It is the ideal word to refer to Europeans, less akward as 'kvöldlenskur'. This is very interesting and opens up new possibilities.

Let's observe the following construction:

Aftanálfa (evening continent): Europe (Some argue that 'evening land' should be interpreted in a narrower sense, applying only to 'Western Europe'. This problem is solved by making use of 'álfa' instead of 'land'.)
aftneskur, aftanskur: European
Eftningur, aftneskur (aftanskur probably resembles 'afganskur' too much) maður, Aftani (maybe too much like Afgani): European (inhabitant)
Eftningahreyfingin: European movement (Evrópuhreyfingin)
Aftneska húsið í Strætisborg (í Stransborg, Steinvegarborg): Palais de l' Europe. (The original name of Strassbourg is the old texts is Stransborg, which was later replaced by Strætisborg (Old Latin name Stratisburgum, fortress at the (stone or Roman) road. Still, it is possible to form an even more genuine Icelandic name for the city: 'stræti' refers to a "Roman road", which were the first roads in Europe made of 'stone'. The original meaning of the word is explained in the Íslensk orðsifjabók as 'Steinlagður vegur'. Let's use 'steinvegur' as the pure equivalent of the latinism 'stræti'. The name for Strassbourg then becomes the ultra-pure Steinvegarborg)
aftneska þingið: European parliament
Aftneska bandalagið: European communion
Aftnesk-Indversk tungumál: Indo-European languages
Aftneska Efnahagsbandalagið
: European Economic community
afti
: Euro (currency unit, yes, the 'n', a part of the stem is lost, but so is the last syllable of the name Europa in 'Euro'., So why not using Afta- as the equivalent of constructions with Euro-)
aftneskur eyrir: Eurocent
aftneskur dalur: Eurodollar
að aftneska: to europeanize
aftneskun
: europeanization
Aftasýn, Eftningasýn
: Eurovision
Aftnesk söngvakeppni: Eurovision song contest

Aftanshafið: Atlantic Ocean (From Old German 'Abendmeer' (Evening sea, Google "abendmeer atlantische". I should have conceived this long before. Indeed, in the traditional, Old world view, the far east of asia is regarded as the "Land of Dawn", hence the Pacific could be described as the 'Sea of dawn' and the Atlantic ocean is the 'sea of the evening land', the atlantic ocean. Although there's no real term for the atlantic ocean in the Old Icelandic writs, the denotation 'aftanshaf' is so obvious (and more so because the German 'Abendmeer' existed in this meaning) that no reference to an old Icelandic word is needed.)
Aftanshafssambandið: NATO
Aftanshafsfylki: Atlantic states (USA)
Aftanshafshryggur (Jörmungandshryggur)
: Mid-Atlantic Ridge

Reginland: Eurasia (The prefix 'Regin-' denotes something 'huge' and is used here to designate a huge 'Meginland'. The Eurasian continent is the largest landmass on the planet.
Reginlenskur: Eurasian
Aftnesk-Austurlenskur: Eurasian

NB: But kvelskur (kveld-skur, 'd' is lost like in 'land - lenskur'), kvelskur maður is also possible

Thursday, November 10, 2011

Bjóðveig eða hvatn (whiskey)

1) hvatn
Whiskey means 'water of life' in Gaelic uisge beatha and is here expressed by a fusion between the adjective hvatur (quick, lively, brisk) and vatn (water).

2) bjóðvatn
The part -bjóður in Magbjóður means 'life' and derives This word from Scottish Gaelic beatha, which means 'life'. Coincidentially, it is the second element in the term uisge beatha, meaning 'water of life, a word that has been corrupted quite heavily in the course of time until it took shape as the modern whiskey. This means that the prefix bjóð- can be used to form the Gaelic-Icelandic hybrid neologism bjóðveig, which is more appropriate than fjörveig, because quite some other alcoholic beverages in the world are coincidentially designated as 'water of life', the Scandinavian aquavit being a prominent example. The prefix bjóð- is a hyponym ('dog' is a hyponym of 'animal')of fjör restricted to the Celtic regions. Hermann Pálsson mentions in his book 'Keltar á Íslandi' a second form: bjó-, occuring in the the masculine personal name Bjólan, which is a constructed of the elements beó (lively) and lán (full).

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Njúka, kleyfsa or sveppa (to nuke)

1) kleyfsa:
If there wasn't any possible way to make a short verb equivalent to English verb 'nuke', I would use 'að kleyfsa', the verbal form of the name Kleyfsi, the name of an 18th century Latin grammar-school handbook.
Kleyfsi k. (18. öld) nafn á latn. -ísl. orðabók frá 1738. Nucleus latinitatis. Líklega einskonar gæluorðsmyndun skólapilta af fyrri lið latneska titilsins, nucleus (from which the verb 'to nuke' is derived) = kjarni. (Íslensk orðsifjabók)
The funny thing about this, is that the phonetical ravages of the Latin word nucleus by 18th century grammar-schoolboys resulted into a word (kleyfsi), of which the unsuffixed part sounds identically with the stem of the adjective 'kleyfur', which links the word 'nucleus' with the concept of 'nuclear fission'. In the 18th century, no one had any clue about the structure of the atom let alone about the fact that isotopes of heavy elements could be split resulting into an incredible burst of energy. As for atomic theory, science hadn't evolved any single bit further than what the Greek philosopher Democritos hypothesized more than two thousand years earlier: an unfissile, uncleavable unit of matter, which he called 'atomos' (undividable, unfissile). Without them or anybody else ever being aware of this, 18th century Icelandic grammar-schoolboys gave a hint to a key phenomenon in nuclear physics, a 20th centruy science. What a weird coincidence!
Yes, kleyfsi and its verbal derivation kleyfsa are latisisms, but they are so dramatically cannibalized, thanks to phonoadaptative endeavours of 18th century Icelandic schoolboys that it can almost be regarded as being "genuine". So if there was a need for an equivalent of the English 'to nuke' (until now the long and troublesome 'gera kjarnorkuárás á' is used) I would prefer kleyfsi above the Anglophile construction 'að njúka'.

2) njúka (nýk, njúkum, nauk, nukum, ég er nokinn)
If it is going to be 'að njúka' I would decline it like strong verbs on -úka, because they all (except for 'strjúka') display some semantical relevance with regard to the idea of a "nuclear attack":
ljúka, lúka: the idea of 'ending something'
fjúka: also means 'to snow', scatter by the wind (could refer to the fall-out aftermath)
rjúka: smoke steam, blow away, all relevant in connection to the idea of nuclear attack.

3) sveppa
And last but not least, we have 'að sveppa' (to mushroom), refering to the form of a nuclear explosion, but this applies also to explosions in general, if they are powerful enough.)

Douglas McArthur

Thanks to the wealth of old Icelandicized Irish personal names it is possible to construct hiberno-Icelandic forms Irish names born by contemporary people. The name "Douglas MacArthur", for instance, can be transformed into Dufglás MagArtús.
The first element 'Duf-' means 'dark' and occurs in 'Dufgus' and 'Dufgall' (Modern English Dougall), the second is adapted as -glás.
The pet-form of Douglas, Doug, would be 'Duggi'.
Constructions of surnames beginning with 'mac-' can be formed after the example 'Magbjóður', the Icelandic form of the name MacBeth, mentioned in the book "Keltar á Íslandi" by Hermann Pálsson. The first element 'mag-'could be regareded as being an adaptation of the Gaelic word but also as the stem of 'mögur' (an old word for 'son', which is indogermanicly related to the Scottish mac). The second element is a nominative form, where one would normally expect a genive (Magartúsar), but being literary traditionalists, we prefer to stick to the example 'Magbjóður', where the second element is in the nominative form,, so Magartús instead of Magartúsar it is.

Smyrjólfsbáfjáni (Anubis Baboon)

Smyfjólfur is an Icelandic descriptive neonym to denote the Egytian jackal-god (refsbróðir or gullúlfur, hence the ending -ólfur) who was the embalming god: smyrj- + ólfur (sounds like Brynjólfur). Báfjáni is a spoonerism of fábjáni, an age-old Icelandic word, and resulted to my surprise in an eccentric but yet colourful, somewhat playful further icelandification of 'bavíani'. I was somewhat frustrted with 'bavían(i). The South African have their Bobbejaan, the English have their Baboon, which are colourful adaptations of the original Latin word Papio (Papi? rhymes on "api").
http://extremeicelandic.blogspot.com/2010/12/baboon-bafjani.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoonerism