Orð og tunga - 2021, Page 78

Ásta Svavarsdóttir: Málnotkun í fjölskyldubréfum 67
Abstract
The article presents the results of a small investigation into the effects of external
factors and social changes on language use and language development in late 19th­
and early 20th­century Iceland. The main focus is on the effects of increasing social
and geographical mobility, including urbanisation and more widespread language
contact, especially Danish, among the population, as well as the impact of contempo­
rary efforts to standardise the written language. The standardisation (or „language
reform“ as it was referred to at the time) had clear undertones of purism, appearing
e.g. in preferring variants attested in medieval texts rather than younger – and in
some cases dominant – variants in the comtemporary language, and in its opposi­
tion to foreign language influence, e.g. lexical borrowings. The main source for the
investigation is a selection of family letters from 1878–1905, 69 a total, written by five
individuals of the same generation (born 1856–1865), two sisters and two brothers, as
well as one half­sister. There are similarities and contrasts within this group of writ­
ers: all were of approximately the same age, and most of them shared the same resi­
dence and social background, at least in their youth. On the other hand, there were
differences in gender and education (brothers vs sisters), in their upbringing in urban
vs rural surroundings, as well as in the southern vs northern part of the country (full
siblings vs half­sister), and in the degree of contact with other languages (brothers vs
sisters; full sisters vs half­sister). Two language features were investigated. First, the
distribution of variants regarding the present singular of the verb hafa ‘have’, where
some intellectuals promoted the use of older forms hefi (1st person) and hefir (2nd
and 3rd person) rather than the contemporary and more widespread hef and hefur,
even if this choice was not undisputed. Second, the relative frequency of lexical bor­
rowings in the letters was investigated, as well as the type of borrowings used by the
individual writers. In this case, there were clearly two opposite forces at play: on the
one hand, rejection of foreign language influence in the emerging standard, and on
the other hand, increasing foreign contacts, especially prominent in towns.
The results indicate that the language use of individuals may have been affected
by various external factors, and that an apparently similar outcome could even have
been the result of different factors. Surprisingly, the greatest variation in the present
forms of hafa was e.g. attested in the letters of the oldest brother and the half­sister,
writers that seemingly had nothing in common that was not also shared by their
siblings as well. A closer examination of the distribution of variants in their letters re­
vealed that the apparent variation in the brother’s letters seems to reflect a conscious
change of norm from the hefi/hefir­forms in his early letters, written while he was a
student, to hef/hefur shortly after his graduation from university. A comparison with
other private and published texts by him supports this interpretation. The half­sister,
on the other hand, was less likely to have been affected by the discourse on language
use and standardisation efforts due to her social status and lack of formal educa­
tion. Internal variation occurs in her letters in general, and as the main difference
between her and all the other siblings was geographical origin and location, the ques­
tion arose whether the distribution of variants could have been partly dialectal, i.e. if
the forms hefi and hefir were more frequent in northern Iceland than in the southwest.
Comparison of her letters with letters by another northern writer indicates that this
might have been the case, and further comparison with letters from a larger database
written by a number of people in the two areas shows that, even if some variation
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