Að bera sér orð í munn: Hvenær verður orðið íslenskt?

Í minningu Jakobs Benediktssonar, Reykholti 1. desember 2007

Abstract

This article investigates the adaptation of foreign words (mostly from English) in modern Icelandic speech and poses the question, at which stage they should be taken as parts of the lexis. In scholarship, language planning and popular ideas distinctions are made between adapted loanwords and less adapted foreign words and phrases. A special term, which has been used in both popular and learned discussion in Iceland to characterise the less adapted cases is sletta, etymologically `stain, blemish'. The negative connotation of this term reflects the puristic atmosphere in language cultivation. The article shows that, even in the most `impure' cases, there is some degree of interference, phonological, morphosyntactic and semantic, so that recent `slettur' soon adapt to the new surroundings. It is concluded that the typical use of English words and phrases in Icelandic speech should not be analysed as code switching. Every time an English word occurs in an Icelandic text, there is some adaptation and by the very incorporation into the spoken text any foreign word becomes `Icelandic' in some sense and a part of the lexis. It is emphasised that it is another matter when such forms should be adopted into normative dictionaries.