> nowadays it's mostly because of the work of the Icelandic Language Institute, which religiously updates the language to add new words for concepts that didn't previously exist
An Icelandic colleague told me that the Icelandic word for computer is "Tölva", stemming from tala and Völva, respectively "number" and the name for a kind of female prophets from Nordic mythology. I could get behind this, much more than the (failed) Danish attempt to call it a "datamat" (from data and automat).
An Icelandic colleague told me that the Icelandic word for computer is "Tölva", stemming from tala and Völva, respectively "number" and the name for a kind of female prophets from Nordic mythology. I could get behind this, much more than the (failed) Danish attempt to call it a "datamat" (from data and automat).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%B6lva