English Influence on the Icelandic Lexicon

T h e study of loanwords has until now not played an important role in Icelandic linguistic research, and only a few articles have been written on foreign influence on modern Icelandic. In the last decades English influence on the language, especially on the vocabulary, has grown considerably, and as a result there has been an increasing interest in loanword studies, and in the roles loanwords have to fulfil to be adapted to the language. In 2 0 0 1 , A Dictionary of European Anglicisms was published as a result of the study of English influence on sixteen European languages, Icelandic being one of them, and this study has become the inspiration for further studies within this field. A year later the volume English in Europe came out, with a collection o f papers on English influence on the same European languages, among those a paper on Icelandic (Kvaran and Svavarsdottir 2002) . A detailed study o f loanwords and foreign words in modern Icelandic has not yet been carried out, but a large project under the auspices of the Nordic Language Council is now under way, investigating the attitude towards loanwords in all the Nordic countries, and the adaptation o f loanwords including hybrids and caiques.