I've pointed out in several previous posts that Icelandic is generally resistant to foreign loanwords. That's definitely true-- there's a strong linguistic purism movement in Iceland, which means that whenever a new word is needed, it is typically constructed from pre-existing Icelandic roots. The Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies and several other organizations involved in regulating the language are very supportive of this, which is how we get a word like
sporðdreki ("tail dragon") instead of something boring like "skorpió." Sometimes, these sorts of things are even crowd-sourced, with competitions being held in schools or via milk cartons. The carton to the left, for instance, asks consumers to come up with a word for reality television shows. The word that the carton puts forth is
raunveruleikaþáttur (which does literally mean "reality program"), but people with better ideas are encouraged to submit them on the company's website. You can find
six pages of word contests there, and vote for your favorite suggestions if you're so inclined!
Of course, a few loanwords occasionally slip through the cracks and enter the language anyway. Some are very old borrowings from Danish, vestiges of a bygone time when Iceland was under Denemark's dominion. But some are very new, having snuck in through the back door that is slang. Today's word is one of those recent neologisms--
að gúgla. It means "to google."
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