Orð og tunga - 01.06.2015, Page 28

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Orð og tunga
eth century, professor from 1918. They are taken from an article, very
characteristic of the period and often cited — and reprinted at least
four times (cf. Baldur Jónsson (ed.) 2006:264) —, about the Icelandic
language, its superiority and uniqueness. The word begrafelsi means
'funeral', bevís means 'proof' and begera is 'request', the same as the
corresponding Danish words begravelse, bevis and begære.
Six years later, another professor at the University of Iceland,
psychology professor Guðmundur Finnbogason (1873-1944), said
substantially the same in a polemical article that was a riposte to an
article by another, younger and more liberal scholar, Sigurður Skúla-
son (1903-1987), a teacher at the Technical College in Reykjavík, who
had criticized the Icelandic neologism policy or nýyrðastefna that
was gaining firm ground in the country at the time. The latter lists in
his article the word bestik n. 'chart room' (Dan. bestik < Dutch bestek,
Germ. Besteck) beside a handful of other loanwords which he consid-
ers to have gained full acceptance in Icelandic, bíll 'car', bitter 'bitter
(brandy)', kítti 'putty', kakao 'cocoa', súkkulaði 'chocolate', saft 'juice'
and yíanó 'piano', and prefers bestik to the (admittedly awkward)
neologism teiknigerðar (f.pl.) 'graphic utensils' (Sigurður Skúlason
1932:2). Professor Guðmundur Finnbogason responds to this article
in the same newspaper two days later, dwelling on the word bestik in
particular and concluding:
Icelandic has always, except in the time of its worst humiliation,
spitted out each word that starts with the prefix be-, and now no
such word is alive in the language except for besefi, which has
remained alive for special reasons. Those who smack their lips
over such words are certainly not fussy about their food.16 (Guð-
mundur Finnbogason 1932:2; my translation.)
The only word Guðmundur Finnbogason takes up in his criticism,
besefi, has however nothing at all to do with words with the prefix
be-. It is an Icelandification of Danish besyv (< bos syv) from Germ. die
böse Sieben 'the bad seven', used in the card game styrvolt (the game is
mentioned in Eggert Ólafsson and Bjarni Pálsson's (1772) description
of their travels through Iceland in the middle of the eighteenth cen-
"[...] íslenskan hefir alla tíð nema á versta niðurlægingartíma sínum skirpt út úr
sér hverju orði sem byrjar á forskeytinu be- og nú er ekkert þeirra lifandi í málinu,
nema besefi, sem mun hafa haldist af sérstökum ástæðum. Þeir, sem smjalsa á
slíkum orðum, eru vissulega ekki matvandir."
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