Been catching up on my linguistic blog reading and ran across this gem:
Well, the English are lazy when it comes to their own language. They treat it like a ten dollar hooker with no self-respect and a high tolerance for having the shit beaten out of her.
Seems that Baldur Bjarnason is one cranky Icelandic fish out of water. One wonders why he chose to study in England since the country and its people drive him apeshit. He's also upset with the late Professor Tolkien for rummaging through his folk's discarded mythology. This is just the sort of rhetoric one expects from a people long past their angry, colonizing phase.
His comparison of Icelandic reusing the word sími 'string, cord' for 'telephone', while denigrating the perfectly wonderful English neologism blog 'online journal', is just a tad bit twee. I am reminded of the old joke that has several Europeans arguing about which is the most beautiful language (French, Spanish, English, amongst others), using their respective words for butterfly, while a German sits in the corner getting angrier and angrier. Und vhat ist wrong mit Schmetterlingk? The beauty of a language is in the ear of the beholder. And as for his analysis of linguistic relativism: sarà vero ma non ci credo.