Great Icelandic words

I have not updated my list of funny Icelandic ways of spelling English words, because I think in fact some Icelanders are just making these up on the fly. More concrete are those official words created for the oh-so-prevalent latinates. Every tourguide in Iceland likes to mention these, things like simi and tölvu, Iceland literally being one of the only countries in the world to NOT use some derivative of telephone for the telephone.

Stjórnukíki is another one of these. It means telescope, but in another sense it does not, since telescope is latin for ´seeing things far away´ (just as telephone is ´hearing things from far away´). Instead of doing a direct translation of the latin roots (perhaps because television also means this), Icelanders came up with a MUCH better word for this invention--"Star looker". I especially like that the verb kikja is used for looking, that being probably one of the nicest sounding verbs in Icelandic "Kikja við" meaning "stop by" but in a more active sense. I guess the best English translation would be "Star peaker" since kikja is that sort of quick looking. Anyhow, It just occurred to me this morning what a terribly cute word stjórnukíki is. Makes me want to go star gazing.

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