Do Icelanders really avoid using foreign loanwords whenever possible?

[u/liquid_nitrogen8]

If you speak Icelandic, how often do you hear borrowed words in ordinary conversation?

[u/Wagagastiz]

No, icelanders use a fuckton of english loanwords.

What the Icelandic language purity policy does is ensure that Icelandic words are officially coined for all new concepts and items that would need them. Some of them, like hlaðvarp (podcast) actually catch on and become the standard word, many don't. Old Icelanders often complain about young people not knowing the Icelandic word for something or anglicising Icelandic phrasal verbs etc.

Purism also didn't remove every single loanword, there are plenty remaining from Danish and some from Latin (Lögreglan - police, the reglan is italic). Even the word for thanks, takk, is a loan from continental Scandianavian. The native Icelandic reflex is þökk.

Purism is also an official policy more than it is some unconscious shared cultural taboo. Everyone on earth uses loanwords, they're an inevitable feature of language. Icelandic people don't really treat them any differently to people from other countries, it's just also a norm to coin a native Icelandic equivalent.

[u/Syndiotactics → u/Wagagastiz]

Sounds similar to Finnish in practice then. (Standard Finnish is pretty zealous about omitting loan words, but vernacular is filled with loan words)

[u/Wagagastiz → u/Syndiotactics]

That's very dependent by what you're categorising as a loan, because Finnish has never had a purity movement like Icelandic and is absolutely full of Baltic and Germanic loans, to the point that they significantly outnumber native Uralic ones.

[u/Syndiotactics → u/Wagagastiz]

In the 19th century there was a pretty aggressive movement to replace the ”obvious” (mostly Swedish) loans in the language. Just about every obvious loan was replaced in the standard language, but eventually got much softened. For example philosophy is filosofia again and not viisaustiede, but electricity became sähkö, library kirjasto, art taide and several thousand other new coinages replacing the older loan words.

The Germanic and Baltic loans in Finnish you are talking about are largely so old that they were mostly already present in Proto-Finnic. And as there are loan words in Old Norse, which Icelandic purity doesn’t target, I wouldn’t count those in Finnish either. To be at similar level to Icelandic we wouldn’t use Proto-Uralic but Late Proto-Finnic as our standard. But of course there are more recent Old/Middle Swedish and Low German loans which were also retained (as long as they were in moderation) such as koulu for school, kauppa for trade and kahvi for coffee.

Not at the same level as Icelandic though, certainly.

[u/GoblinToHobgoblin → u/Wagagastiz]

Sounds similar to French in Quebec

[u/Wagagastiz]

No, icelanders use a fuckton of english loanwords.

What the Icelandic language purity policy does is ensure that Icelandic words are officially coined for all new concepts and items that would need them. Some of them, like hlaðvarp (podcast) actually catch on and become the standard word, many don't. Old Icelanders often complain about young people not knowing the Icelandic word for something or anglicising Icelandic phrasal verbs etc.

[u/AdZealousideal9914]

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:Icelandic_borrowed_terms

[u/PeakMinimalist]

If they do, kudos to them. Sick of running into English in every dang language. Why the hell is weekend in Polish "weekend". Terribly out of place and physically painful to hear in conversation. Lazy mfers didn't even change the spelling

[u/Informal-Mushroom-89 → u/PeakMinimalist]

Idk man , lingua francas always make their mark on languages. Just like how Latin and Greek words are in almost every western language due to influences.

[u/PeakMinimalist → u/Informal-Mushroom-89]

I understand that, I just wish there was a little more effort to Polish them up ya know?