Words replace words

On the verb 'fokka' and the noun 'fokk'

Abstract

The article discusses the words fokka (verb) and fokk (noun) in Icelandic. These words have a dual origin in the language. On the one hand, the verb was probably first borrowed from older Danish or Low German already in the 17th century, and the noun later derived from it. On the other hand, the much more recent loanword, E. fuck (verb, noun, exclamation), took the same form in the language, both in writing and pronunciation. This happened even though Icelandic phonotactics and phonology require the short vowel in English words such as butter, hut, luck, etc. to be represented by the Icel. phoneme /ö/, surfacing as [œ], when such words enter the language as loanwords or are pronounced with an Icelandic accent. However, the words fuck and fucking, which started appearing in Icelandic newspapers and magazines around 1970, are almost always pronounced and spelt differently than expected, i.e., with the vowel [ɔ] and spelt fokk, fokking, not with [œ] or spelt *fökk, *fökking. The reason probably is that the older words to a certain extent, both in terms of semantics, use and partly in pronunciation, already occupied the position that the new loanwords were expected to take in the language. However, the older words, fairly low valued, belonging to a low linguistic register and relatively rare, judging from the texts that have been examined, gave in to the new words. The new words were accompanied by pressure from popular culture, the language of young people and supported by high international use and social media. This article discusses the older words fokka and fokk, their history over the past centuries, their meaning, usage
and semantic development, and compares them with the newer words derived from E. fuck who took their place, with examples taken to show what happened when the new loanwords met the old ones.