Live data from Hacker News

The Basque-Icelandic Pidgin

en.wikipedia.org

21–30 of 50 posts

Re: The Basque-Icelandic Pidgin

#21
post #6
post #4

I'm Basque, I'm a very long time HN regular, and I love linguistics related topics. So I'm keen to see this, but I still don't fully understand how this makes it to the front page :)

Do you have disconcertingly long earlobes?

Just quite long ones. Nobody got disconcerted so far, afaik :)

Re: The Basque-Icelandic Pidgin

#22

I am Icelander and I grew up in a fishing town near Reykjavik. When I was a small child, my greatgranddad was still alive and my mother would call him aitona. Later I learned that it was a basque word and that he came from a basque family. Small world indeed!

Cool story! How did your greatgranddad's son & daughter's last name look like? I understand they are formed adding -son and -dotir to the father's first name, would be interesting if it's a Basque name (Iñakison? Aitordotir?).

Re: The Basque-Icelandic Pidgin

#23
post #4

I'm Basque, I'm a very long time HN regular, and I love linguistics related topics. So I'm keen to see this, but I still don't fully understand how this makes it to the front page :)

General amusement, historical quirkiness, an interesting ad hoc linguistic interoperability framework (between two quite thoroughly-distinct languages) - lots of reasons :) Agur! (It's been too long since I visited your country - such a beautiful place!)

The article makes it clear this is not a mix of Icelandic and Basque but rather a Basque pidgin found in Iceland.

Re: The Basque-Icelandic Pidgin

#24
post #5

From the refs: Iceland revokes 400-year-old legal right in Westfjords district to kill Basques on sight https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/iceland-revo...

I wonder what would have happened if someone murdered a person before 2015 on Iceland who happened to be Basque (due to some other disagreement perhaps). Then in court, the accused would claim innocence due to the legal right that in fact was still in existence. Would he walk?

    leges posteriores priores contrarias abrogant
The Icelandic legal system operates on the well-established principle that later laws implicitly repeal earlier ones if they conflict[1].

So no, killing a Basque person would have been legally no different than killing anyone else.

There was also a law on the books until 1991 that you could legally kill Turks on sight, due to an incident that didn't even involve Turkish people to begin with[2] (Icelanders at the time apparently didn't differentiate them from Algerians).

It was repealed, but not due to any legal practicality. The Turkish national team refused to travel to Iceland unless the law was repealed, so it was struck from the books as a purely symbolic gesture.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implied_repeal

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_Abductions

Re: The Basque-Icelandic Pidgin

#25
post #22

I am Icelander and I grew up in a fishing town near Reykjavik. When I was a small child, my greatgranddad was still alive and my mother would call him aitona. Later I learned that it was a basque word and that he came from a basque family. Small world indeed!

Cool story! How did your greatgranddad's son & daughter's last name look like? I understand they are formed adding -son and -dotir to the father's first name, would be interesting if it's a Basque name (Iñakison? Aitordotir?).

> Iñakison? Aitordotir?

I'm glad I already finished my beer, otherwise I would have spilled it over my keyboard xD (I'm Spanish too, from Cáceres)

Re: The Basque-Icelandic Pidgin

#26
post #19

On a related note, there was also a Fench-Icelandic pidgin https://www.jbe-platform.com/content/journals/10.1075/jpcl.4...

Weird. The few lines on preview page look like Danish, except "runet" which looks like English "run" with a Danish past participle ending. I don't see anything that looks French. I would read the next to last line as: "you have run ashore?"

From later in the article:

>Virtually all words are of Germanic origin. There are some possible explanations for this fact. The French component may have disappeared by the time it was recorded, but the pidgin preserved its name. It is also possible that the Frenchmen who went there were actually Flemish-speaking fishermen from the area around Dunkerque, France.

Re: The Basque-Icelandic Pidgin

#27
post #22

I am Icelander and I grew up in a fishing town near Reykjavik. When I was a small child, my greatgranddad was still alive and my mother would call him aitona. Later I learned that it was a basque word and that he came from a basque family. Small world indeed!

Cool story! How did your greatgranddad's son & daughter's last name look like? I understand they are formed adding -son and -dotir to the father's first name, would be interesting if it's a Basque name (Iñakison? Aitordotir?).

Iceland has a governmental naming committee [0] that maintains a list of approved names. As I understand, obtaining exceptions has become easier, and in acknowledgement of non-binary people, there are no longer separate male and female name lists. But it's likely that in the time of OP's great-grandfather, he was given a very traditional Icelandic name (at least as his legal name).

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_Naming_Committee

Re: The Basque-Icelandic Pidgin

#28
post #4

I'm Basque, I'm a very long time HN regular, and I love linguistics related topics. So I'm keen to see this, but I still don't fully understand how this makes it to the front page :)

Is the Icelandic connection somehow linked with the Basque national dish (and seeming national obsession) salted cod baked in olive oil? I went once and we were literally served it for every meal except breakfast. We visited a lot of different places and our hosts were always very proud of their particular method for making it and keen to show off their skills, but they didn't realise the last people we had been to see had the same idea. Its delicious, but it became a bit of a running joke the fourth or fifth time we had it! I really liked the Basque country, great cities and beautiful landscape.

Re: The Basque-Icelandic Pidgin

#30
post #24
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder what would have happened if someone murdered a person before 2015 on Iceland who happened to be Basque (due to some other disagreement perhaps). Then in court, the accused would claim innocence due to the legal right that in fact was still in existence. Would he walk?

leges posteriores priores contrarias abrogant The Icelandic legal system operates on the well-established principle that later laws implicitly repeal earlier ones if they conflict[1]. So no, killing a Basque person would have been legally no different than killing anyone else. There was also a law on the books until 1991 that you could legally kill Turks on sight, due to an incident that didn't even involve Turkish p…

Maybe? I guess it depends on how old the law against murder is.
Post reply on HN