Running head: THE CONSERVATIVENESS OF ICELANDICThe Origin and the Purpose of the Conservativeness of Icelandic

Chihiro Taguchi

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Abstract
Given the fact that Icelandic is a language regarded as a prime example of a conservative
language (Friðriksson, 2008), Icelandic is chosen as the object for the examination of thestudy of language policies and sociolinguistics in this essay. Generally, conservativeness or
stability in a language is determined by the country’s language policy. However, the language
policy of Iceland particularly has some different orientations from those general language
policies such as those of Turkey and Norway; one is that the government’s interference in
Icelandic language policy is apparently little, and one is that the neologisms in Icelandic are
considerably thorough as shown in the fact that even the terms of information technology arecoined from the Icelandic’s own root (Ministry of Education, 2001). Also, even having
already passed 70 years since Iceland’s independence from Denmark, the language policy,
mainly coining neologisms, is still very active on Iceland (Kaisaki, 1996). This essay aims toclarify what the cause of the conservativeness of Icelandic language policies is, and what the
purpose of the conservative language policy is.

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3The Origin of Conservativeness of Icelandic
Norse people, mostly Norwegians, started to settle in Iceland in the ninth century, andthey brought one dialect of Old Norse language, which was the common language among
Vikings, to Iceland. It is known that modern Icelandic has not changed very much since thattime, shown by the fact that modern Icelanders have no problem in reading andunderstanding ancient texts in Icelandic (Ministry of Education, 2001). Illustrating why it waspossible for Icelandic to maintain the grammar over a long period is one purpose of this essay,
approaching from the two dichotomous elements: external conditions and internal conditions.
In addition, the vocabulary of Icelandic is also focused on in this essay. In modern
times, as the technology rapidly develops, it is inevitable for official languages to have a newword for the technological terms. Nevertheless, Icelandic has a strong tendency of linguistic
purism; that is, Icelandic tends to avoid using loanwords. Rather, they make new words fromthe words in Icelandic itself. This essay aims to illustrate how the features of Icelandic havelong been preserved and in what purpose modern Icelandic has been “purified.”
Primary Factors of Preservation of Icelandic
External ConditionsFirstly, external conditions are that Iceland has not had a significant influence fromother languages. As stated above, Iceland had been an uninhabited island until the Norse
people began settling in the ninth century. On such an isolated island, interaction with

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outlanders was scarce. If a language doesn’t have much interaction with other obviously
different languages, in a sociolinguistic term suggested by Kloss (1967), “Abstand languages,”
it is generally said that the language has a tendency to keep its old linguistic features over along time, as shown in the example of language island. This is a natural phenomenon,
because languages contact affects both languages and they often share particular grammaticalcharacteristics. Such a phenomenon is called language union. One representative example is alanguage union of Balkan, in which Albanian, Greek, South Slavic, and Romanian. They
share characteristics such as that the genitive case and dative case are merged, and use of
conjunctive mood is used instead of infinitive form which is lost (Joseph, 1999). Such agrammatical characteristics mutual with other languages cannot be seen in Icelandic; rather,
the grammar maintains the old form, and this shows that Icelandic has not had significant
contact with other languages.
On the contrary, a language that has much interaction with or influence from otherlanguages, English, for example, had historically constantly been influenced by French, andthus English has lost most of the traditional grammatical inflections and conjugations of Old
English; that is, the grammar has got much simpler. Also, English has borrowed
approximately 75 percent of the whole vocabulary from French (French Centre for
Humanities, 2014). As some scholars have proposed with the Middle English creole
hypothesis, English is a language sometimes interpreted as a creolized language with Old

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English and French as a result of Norman Conquest; that is, modern English is a mixture ofthose languages as a result of language contact. Against English that was simplified in thecourse of history, Icelandic has not become grammatically simpler; therefore, this fact also
shows Icelandic has not had any influential language contact.
Nevertheless, Iceland has a long history of being ruled by Denmark. During that
period, Danish language was a language for the communication with Danes of course. Not
only the less language contact, but also the effort of ancient Icelanders to preserve theirlanguage is noteworthy.
Internal Conditions
The internal conditions that composes the current conservativeness of Icelandic is its
language homogeneity within the territory of Iceland. Considering the fact that the language
can never be separated from society, all languages have language variants, which are often
categorized as dialects, and these language variants are sometimes connected to nationalism,shown with the example of the Catalan language in Valencia, Spain. However, according to
Karlsson (2004), even though Iceland is not so small an island, there are hardly language
variants. Icelandic has developed without any derivation of dialects. The reason why
Icelandic language has been unified for about 900 years is not clear, but one reason might beurbanization.
The population of Iceland is about 320,000, and about 175,000 of it live in theTHE CONSERVATIVENESS OF ICELANDIC

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Capital Region, and the area of entire Iceland is about 100,000, which is the 108th in theworld (Statistics Iceland, 2011).
Also, the geographical conditions are the reason of the unity of Icelandic language.
Because such geographical features as active volcanoes and glaciers are difficult for humans
to live with, the habitable area is limited. These geographical facts are often elements of ageneration of language varieties. This type of language formation is called a language island,
which is a simile of an isolated situation of a language variety because of geographicalfeatures; in fact, in Nara Prefecture, Japan, Japanese is generally spoken in Keihan accent, but
in one particular area called Okuyoshino, Japanese is spoken in Tokyo accent exceptionally(Nitta, 2008).
From these assumptions, the cause that has preserved the grammatical features of
Icelandic is isolation of Iceland, urbanization, and the geographical features of Iceland.
Preservation and Cultivation of Icelandic
Language and National Identity
Sociolinguistic studies provide a view that language and society are in a indivisible
relationship, and therefore use of a language simultaneously includes such social contexts asstatus, interpersonal relationship, and identity (Hauksdóttir, 2013). In the context of modern
Icelandic, the language particularly highlights the national identity, and the language policy
according to this national identity is implemented in Iceland.

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Linguistic Purism
The significant feature of the language policy of Icelandic is linguistic purism.
Linguistic purism is a worldwide phenomenon that frequently appears in nation-states that
attempt to achieve symbolical independence on a viewpoint of language. In the case of
Icelandic, however, it is peculiar that the linguistic purism is still implemented even though acouple of decades have passed since it achieved independent sovereignty (Kaisaki, 1996).
The following four points are suggested as the principles of purism of Icelandic:
to follow the patterns of speech used by ordinary people, especially those from rural
areas or those who have moved into urban areas; to follow the style used in classical Old
Icelandic literature; to follow the style used by the best writers much read by the ordinary
people; to avoid loans, unless they can be easily adopted into the linguistic system. (The
Vocabulary of, 2004)
Also, Kaisaki (1996) mentions that the committees for coining neologisms are not createdunder a command of the government, but are spontaneously created among the experts ofevery area (p. 3).
To show further explanations of Icelandic neologisms, here are the methods to coin
neologisms in Icelandic, morphologically categorized in five: (a) revival of Old Norse words
that are almost obsolete, for example sími meaning cellphone which is a revived word thatoriginally meant thread in Old Norse; (b) adding a new meaning to existing words, forTHE CONSERVATIVENESS OF ICELANDIC

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example hjól meaning wheel to which a meaning bicycle was later added; (c) Compounding
existing morphemes, for example flugvél meaning airplane which is a word compoundedflug meaning fly and vél meaning machine; (d) Use of suffix, for example sjúkleiki meaningillness which is a word composed of sjúk meaning ill and the suffix -leiki that creates a noun;(e) Use of prefix, for example, jafnlangur is an adjective that means “of the same length”, andit consists of the prefix jafn- meaning equal and langur (long) (Smith, 2011). This type wasalso derivative in Latin and Ancient Greek. Using these methods, Icelandic avoids using
loanwords and makes neologisms instead.
The different features of the language purism of Icelandic from other precedent cases
is that the doer of the language purism is not government but the “people”; also, it is more
appropriate to coin a new word in the manner showed above than to have loanwords, because
the Icelandic grammatical structure is highly inflectional.
Purpose of the Policy
Considering the differences stated above, the language policy is supported by
Icelanders themselves, and is implemented with their own will. Typical linguistic purism
appears when one nation attempts to achieve independence, and apparently the purism of
Iceland is one of those typical cases. However, in fact, 70 years have passed from Iceland’s
achievement of independence.
Also, taking account of the fact that Iceland has a history the language has barely

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9changed since 1000 years ago, the linguistic identity for the tradition that has long beenpreserved by their ancestors even under the rule of Denmark also exists in Icelanders. The
language purism is therefore inevitable for protecting the tradition that composes theiridentity.
Extreme Example: High Icelandic
It is also the fact that some Icelanders think that this purist language policy issometimes unnecessary from the practical point of view (Kristinsson, 2007).
An extreme result of the linguistic purism of Icelandic is “Háfrónska” (HighIcelandic). Háfrónska is a variation of Icelandic that has ultra-purist attitude. Thisultra-purism movement is just a small one started by Jozef Braekmans who lives in Belgium,
aiming to remove all foreign loanwords from Icelandic. In Háfrónska, even proper nouns aretranslated into pure Icelandic; for example, Japan is Morguneyjar, “Morning islands” in
Háfrónska (Orðaskrár, n.d.). This language has no official status in Iceland, and not populareven among Icelanders either, but the emergence of this ultra-purist Icelandic is a symbol that
implies the extreme orientation of the language policy of modern standard Icelandic.
Conclusion
This essay has examined the conservativeness of Icelandic in two aspects: the cause
and the purpose. The current conservativeness of Icelandic has a different orientation fromtypical language purist policies, because the linguistic purism of Icelandic has a purpose notTHE CONSERVATIVENESS OF ICELANDIC

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only for nation-state building, but also for protecting the identity and tradition that theirancestors have preserved. In other words, there is a thick pipe between the origin of
conservativeness and the purpose of the language policy.
Kaisaki (1996) showed the basic idea of the language policy in Iceland which was
proposed in the official committee of Icelandic in 1984, and it described the policy as“language preservation” and “language cultivation” (p. 7). According to this essay, these canbe translated as the followings: language preservation is the deed of protecting the tradition of
the language; and language cultivation is the deed of making Icelandic appropriate in themodern society where technology is developing in an unpredictable speed.
Language policy is often seen as an unnatural deed that gives artificial influences onnatural languages. However, in this essay the language policy of Icelandic showed theinseparable relationship between the society and the language, and it clarified that artificial
influences on languages are essential.

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