Wikibooks: High Icelandic

• Format: Book
• Language: English
• Subjects: Lied; Iceland
• Online Access: https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/High_Icelandic

POV split In 1992 the Belgian Herman Jozef Braekmans became interested in Icelandic terminological work. During the 90’s the emphasis in his work lied mainly on the search for native names for the chemical elements and a completely native terminology for chemical compounds. At the end of 1999 he released a small booklet titled “ Icelandic Alternatives for the Names of the Chemical Elements ”. In 2000 he made contact with the Dutch linguist Fabian Valkenburg the man behind the Bond tegen Leenwoorden (Union against loan words) who helped Braekmans construct the website Nýyrðasmiðja Málþvottahús (Neologistic factory a language laundry). Braekmans tried to find cooperators on the is.islenska newsgroup but most of the people there firmly rejected the idea of purism. In 2003 he decided to present his words as an ultrapurist superset language called Háfrónska (November 2003). Before that he somtimes referred to the language as ofuríslenska or Hypericelandic. In 2005 he asked the Icelandic reverend Pétur Þorsteinsson to take the lead. During the last months of that year Breakmans created an additional web page about High Icelandic symbolism (see below) The project received some minor media attention in Iceland but only a few fanatics continue Braekmans work. The Icelandic television channel Stöð 2 had a small item on the project in November 2005. Although many people see the language as a joke and a mockery of Icelandic language protectionism Braekmans is dead serious about it. An equivalent concept can be seen in the High French (Haut français) project. =Ultrapurism= The emphasis in High Icelandic mainly lies on málgjörhreinsun (ultra purism) the most extreme form of linguistic purism. Again this is a personal term of the creator signifying that everything that can be expressed by human speech is to be considered a target for puristic intervention even proper names geographical names and names of chemicals. According to Braekmans the first signs of ultrapurism go back to the neologistic excesses ...