In class entertainment

Even though at this point I'm still having some rather magnificent struggles trying to pronounce Icelandic, at least it seems to make quite a lot of sense. I mean, really. I'm taking classes in Icelandic language for foreigners, and while a mind-numbingly vast percentage of the peoples attending seems to be Finnish, there are still a few others nationalities represented.

During the first class our lovely-in-that-elderly-way teacher spent time explaining how Icelandic doesn't really want to accept foreign words. Instead they often take an old word and give it a fresh connotation. When telephone arrived to Iceland sometime around 1960's (IIRC), they didn't adapt the oh so global word for the technology. Instead they named it after an old word for a thin thread, sími.

The same happened with television and CRT's. The word for a display or a TV in Icelandic is skjár, pronounced "skjaur". It used to mean "window" back those dark medieval times. The folks in here didn't have glass at their disposal, so the screens were made of dried cow stomachs. Hey, that's what they did in Finland as well.

To get back on the point issued in the opening paragraph, it took a Swede to make me realize that the pronounciation in Icelandic isn't all that scary as I first perceived. He noticed the similarity to the Swedish word skärm. He said "skärm" quite like "HHhhcärm" or to be more phonetically exact, "*sounds of a person choking*ärm". Really. The rikssvenska pronounciation just forces me to roll my eyes and think that Icelandic is actually a lot friendlier for an outsider. Even if it doesn't feel all that friendly when taking the first steps of trying to learn it.

The pronounciation can make for some good fun though. One of the local banks, Kaupþing, recently changed its name back to the original form from a little more internationally friendly KB Banki. John Cleese was doing some ads for them. I haven't got a very good grip of the language so far, yet I cracked up at an unsuspecting Reykjavik café crowd.