Eyjafjallajökull

[lethargic_man]

mmseason's suggestion on papersky's blog to listen to the sound clips on the Language Log post about the pronunciation of "Eyjafjallajökull" was all well and good except that it left my brain going "Eyjafjallajökull... Eyjafjallajökull... Eyjafjallajökull..." I had to put on some music to get rid of it.

I wonder how unusual I am that I first encountered jökull as a child, reading A Journey to the Centre of the Earth:

‘See this island of volcanoes’, said the professor, ‘and notice that they all bear the name “jökull”. This means “glacier” in Icelandic and, at that northerly latitude, most of the eruptions reach the light of day through the layers of ice. Hence this name “jökull” applied to all the fire-producing peaks of the island.’

Given the geekiness of my f-list, or friends-of-friends at any rate, not very, I would imagine.

Comments

[curious-reader.livejournal.com]

I don't know anything about Islandic. What language group does it belong to?
I watched some youtube clips about the film "Confessions of a Shopaholic". Besides beeing mad about shopping she supposed to come from Iceland. Somebody was introduced to her from Iceland. He said something. I am not sure if it was Gibberish or real Islandic. She slapt him in his face and said: "That is why I left Iceland." I don't know anything about their mentality and attitude either. If you want you can look it up or I find it again. I think it was just a trailer of the film. They don't show the actual film just short scenes and interviews.

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

Icelandic is, as I understand it, the closest of the descendants of Old Norse, the language of the Vikings (and as such is slightly more distantly related to German).

[curious-reader.livejournal.com]

Your strange word looks Norwegian to me. I thought you might say it is related to that. The Vikings settled in Scandinavia as well.