Orð og tunga - 01.06.2015, Page 23

Veturliði G. Óskarsson: Loanwords with the prefix be-
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wards a productive, indigenous word formation with be-/bí- as a true
prefix. Apart from the aforementioned words, the loanwords bískitinn
'very dirty' 18th C. (cf. Dan. beskidt; Middle Low Germ. beschiten) and
bínefna 'call names' 20th C., bínafn, bínefni 'nickname' (cf. Dan. binavn,
Germ. Beiname) 18th/20th C. have clear degrading/negative meanings
and may have supported this trend.
With this in mind, I would finally like to draw attention to the ad-
jective bísperrtur 'self-assured' which in Asgeir Blöndal Magnússon's
(1989) etymological dictionary is held to be a probable loanword from
Danish bespærret 'bent back' ("spenntur aftur"). The Danish Historical
Dictionary (Ordbog over det Danske Sprog), however, renders the Dan-
ish word as 'closed' ("lukket") and the Middle Low German source,
besperen, also means 'close' ("aflukke"), which does not correspond to
the meaning of the Icelandic word at all. In Icelandic, there is the verb
sperra 'stretch', sperra sig 'puff oneself up; stick one's nose in the air; be
haughty' and the corresponding adjective/past part. sperrtur 'snotty;
self-assured', and I find it much more probable that bisperrtur (and,
consequently, also the verb bísperrast 'boast') is a native Icelandic coin-
age where bí- is used in the aforementioned strengthening function.
2.3 be-/bí-words and language policy
Loanwords with the prefix be-/bí- have, probably without exception,9
made their way into Icelandic through Danish, and they have some-
times been portrayed as the ultimate examples of "corrupting Danish
influence" on the Icelandic language (see Sigurður Nordal 1926, Guð-
mundur Finnbogason 1932 and Vilmundur Jónson 1955, cited below).
Opposition to words of this type has by no means only been an
Icelandic matter of interest, and to some extent we have clearer infor-
mation and knowledge about the struggle against them in neighbour-
ing languages. Norwegian language purists' war on words with the
German/Danish affixes an-, be-, -heit and -else (sometimes referred to
with the acronym "anbeheitelse"-words) is well known; such words
have been associated with Norwegian bokmal (Titerary language')
and Danish (Akselberg 1999; cf. Haugen 1968:123; Brunstad 2002:13;
Brunstad 2003:11). Ever since the nineteenth century, there has also
been considerable resistance to be-words in Faroese; no fewer than
9 Cf., though, the discussion above on some possible native Icelandic innovations or
neologisms.