The Economist: The strange reinvention of Icelandic. “A language both ancient and modern.”

“In perhaps their most famous example of purist creativity, when a word for computer was needed in the 1960s, the planners coined tölva, combining tala (“number“ ) and völva, an old word for prophetess. When doctors started talking about AIDS using the English acronym rather than its long, literal Icelandic translation, heilkenni áunnins ónæmisbrests [spoken], the committee coined two shorter alternatives: alnæmi [spoken], something like “all-susceptibility“ , and eyðni, which sounds like the English term, but comes from the Icelandic eyða, meaning “to destroy“ . When Icelanders started saying “podcast“ , the council quickly responded with hlaðvarp [spoken], from roots meaning “charge“ (squint and you can see hlaða as a distant cousin to “load“ ) and “throw“ .”