# Icelandic: fés in fésbók



## charlotte23

Hi, I'm doing a university linguistics assignment which I won't attempt to explain here, but one very small part of it is explaining the word 'fésbók' in Icelandic. Can someone please tell me whether the word 'fés' has a bit of a negative meaning? I read that 'andlit' is the normal word for 'face' and that 'fés' is a bit slang. So obviously 'fésbók' was chosen because it sounds more like the English word.. Can someone please confirm or deny the meaning of 'fés'? It would really help me, takk!!!


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## sindridah

Yeah It has a pretty negative meaning, It's rarely used unless in insults or for a translation for facebook. Some also even call facebook just fés with an article "fésið" I don't know what there is more to explain, Just let me know then


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## Alxmrphi

If you want to use some sophisticated terminology in your essay, you can mention it's a calque, which is a componential analysis and re-building using the words in the other language. You could also refer to it as a "_tökuþýðing_" (Ice. for calque), obviously where the one that sounds the most similar is chosen (it'd be weirder I think to chose_ andlitbók_ over the other one).


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## Gavril

Alxmrphi said:


> If you want to use some sophisticated terminology in your essay, you can mention it's a calque, which is a componential analysis and re-building using the words in the other language. You could also refer to it as a "_tökuþýðing_" (Ice. for calque), obviously where the one that sounds the most similar is chosen (it'd be weirder I think to chose_ andlitbók_ over the other one).



Isn't this also a case of "phono-semantic assimilation" as well as a calque? A more straightforward calque would have been _andlit(a)bók_, but in the case of _fésbók,_ the word _fés _was specifically selected for its similarity to English _face_ (also, the meaning of _fés _was altered in this context to make it more similar to Eng. _face_).

A similar process can be seen in a lot of other Icelandic words, e.g., _tækni_ "technology", _hrísgrjón _"rice" etc. (You may well have read about these examples in your studies.)


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## Alxmrphi

Yeah I suppose so, calques aren't usually specifically deliberate to replicate the form of a word (c.f. skyscraper/grattacielo) but when the similar word exists, I think it's just natural to go with it. I haven't come across fés used in Icelandic unless talking about Facebook, but I knew it existed before so it seemed intuitive the similarity would be desired and it'd be used to match this calque, unlike some other languages. Italian for example has (in a colloquial context) faccialibro (though often Italians deny this exists if they haven't heard it), but I've heard it from enough random sources of people who don't know each other to know it's used on some levels. Anyway, maybe andlit+bók would have been more "intuitive" if fés didn't exist, but as I mentioned, my lack of familiarity with it is also why I have no idea if/how there's been any sort of adjustment/assimilation, which means I can't say, or didn't know about any photosemantic twists to make the word fit.



> A similar process can be seen in a lot of other Icelandic words, e.g., _tækni_ "technology", _hrísgrjón _"rice" etc. (You may well have read about these examples in your studies.)


I don't follow what process you mean? Loan-translation, or phonosemantic assimilation? 
I can't see that in _tækni_, maybe_ hrísgrjón_ is a calque from another language, but I don't know which one 

Can you explain?


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## AutumnOwl

I don't know how it is in Denmark and Norway, but in Sweden the use of Fejsbok or Fej(j)an is common for Facebook.


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## Gavril

Alxmrphi said:


> Yeah I suppose so, calques aren't usually specifically deliberate to replicate the form of a word (c.f. skyscraper/grattacielo) but when the similar word exists, I think it's just natural to go with it.



I'm not so sure about this as a general rule, but the discussion of this probably belongs in another forum.

 In the case of _fés_, it seems as though this word had to undergo a significant semantic change (i.e., the loss of its negative connotation) in order to be used in the term _fésbók_. This suggests that the main motivation for using the word _fés _in _fésbók _was its phonetic similarity to English _face_, rather than its meaning. In other words, I would say that _Facebook > __fésbók _is more a case of phonosemantic assimilation than of calquing.



> I don't follow what process you mean? Loan-translation, or phonosemantic assimilation?



Phonosemantic assimilation/matching. This article has many more examples from Icelandic.



> I can't see that in _tækni_, maybe_ hrísgrjón_ is a calque from another language, but I don't know which one
> 
> Can you explain?



Sorry for the lack of detail. _tækni _resembles the _techno- _of _technology _and _hrísgrjón _resembles _rice grain_. Both words were formed from native roots, selected on the basis of this similarity.


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## Alxmrphi

> I would say that _Facebook > __fésbók _is more a case of phonosemantic assimilation than of calquing.


It might involve the assimilation as you say, to adapt 'fés', which did already mean 'face', it was only a shift from reducing the tone of the meaning, not a whole new, or even any different nuanced meaning that the word represented. Besides that change it (at least the way I see it) couldn't be a more classic example of what calquing is, otherwise it could be called something like_ samskiptavefsíðan _or whatever. I can see in the page about the eyðni example and other related ones, that's clear psm, but of a different category to fésbók, en kannski er þetta bara _hártogun_ (nicely worked in? ).

Good article.
Definitely saving that and reading it tomorrow (of dauðþreyttur núna!).

Edit: I think looking at this specific example, it has clear PSM qualities, being so so similar, yet the nature of the related vocabularly could also be at play to confuse the issue.
I am leaning more towards considering fésbók in that way now, but with "bók/book" I don't think it's that sort of matching, due to the cognates the calque look alike, which gives off this more PSM impression, and then we have the andlit/fés thing. It's not really like taking "destroy" and making it mean "AIDS" like what happened with eyðni, since there was already a word meaning 'face' represented as 'fés' (although with a nuance that isn't present in 'fésbók'), so for me, that seems a sort of, well not obvious, but I think when the term came into usage it would have been natural for people to say "we have a word that means face and we can use it to make the word sound very similar", and whether that's calquing or PSM, is actually probably a very fine line, maybe one without a clear answer. If it was just that word, I'd be on the fence or probably agreeing with you, but looking at it as the whole compound, I'm more inclined to believe it's more linked to calquing, but that doesn't mean your in any sense wrong. Our thoughts don't even have to be, what's the word, if mine is right then yours has to be wrong? Ugh I am too tired to think, you know what I mean anyway


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## Gavril

Alxmrphi said:


> It might involve the assimilation as you say, to adapt 'fés', which did already mean 'face', it was only a shift from reducing the tone of the meaning, not a whole new, or even any different nuanced meaning that the word represented. Besides that change it (at least the way I see it) couldn't be a more classic example of what calquing is,



A clearer and simpler case of calquing is _hreistur__vængjur_ "lepidoptera": both the Icelandic word and the international word literally mean "scale-wing", and yet there are no strong phonetic similarities between the two. In other words, the selection of _hreisturvængjur_ was based on the semantic match between the two compounds' elements (_hreistur- _"lepido-" and -_vængjur_ "-ptera"), not on the two words sounding alike. By contrast, in the case of _fésbók_, there is a phonetic and semantic similarity with English _Facebook, _and I'd argue that phonetic similarity was a stronger motivating factor in the adoption of _fésbók_ in Icelandic.


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## Alxmrphi

Okay, I do see what you mean, but:

1) There's no other option to translate "book" with anything other than "bók" so no matter what the phonetic similarity would have been, this would have been the only option.
2) _Fés_ *does* mean_ face_, there's not really any big change in the meaning like there is in the prototypical PSMs in Icelandic.

Overall, I think it's hard to say whether, once you've got* bók* in the compound, if you're faced with a choice between using _andlit_ or _fés_, it's obvious when you have the option of fés that the result, matching so closely with the English is an advantage, but is that really phonosemantic matching? I'd say definitely you're right in saying:


> and I'd argue that phonetic similarity was a stronger motivating factor in the adoption of _fésbók_ in Icelandic.



I completely agree with that, but whether it's tantamount to a clear example of the other PSM matching, or just chosing phonetic similarity because that option is there, which is quite a special situation. Like with tool ('tæki') to technology ('tækni'), there's a mixture of similar sounds and a sort of similar meaning, that's obviously nothing to do with calquing, but here, I guess you can calque when the words are available to you, and in this case, yes fés might not have been the standard word to use when loan-translating 'face', but there was also a word *that just happened to sound exactly like it*, with the same meaning (though not the same exact nuances). I can accept phonetic similarity played a part in the choice, or it probably did, but it doesn't look to me like an example where you can say it's not really a calque, but more of this matching and adapting of the native word-stock to specifically achieve a closer link to the other language.

Agree to disagree?
I hope we haven't given charlotte a headache!


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## charlotte23

Thank you to everyone who replied, I really appreciate it! Yes, I am talking about phono-semantic matching, like in Ghil'ad's work, which was posted. He talks a lot about this phonomenon in Modern Hebrew aka Israeli.

Yes _tækni_ is a good example since it seems to come from _tæki_ 'tool' and _teknik_ from Danish. Any word could have been created from nothing for technology/technique, but I think this was chosen because of the phonetic (and of course semantic) similarities.

I think 'fésbók' could qualify as a phono-semantic matching, or at least a partial one since bók hasn't been phonetically matched, that's just the normal work that happens to have a common etymology. I don't think fésbók qualifys as being a total calque since 'andlit' is the normal word for face, but 'fés' was chosen because it is phonetically so similar and the stretch of meaning isn't very far. I think my lecturer will be pleased that I tried to find some of my own examples for this small essay. Well, I don't speak any Icelandic, so it's a bit hard to find good information on it.

Takk again!


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## Alxmrphi

> I don't think fésbók qualifys as being a total calque since 'andlit' is the normal word for face


But nowhere in the rules (which I doubt exist anyway) of calquing does it say that you have to chose the most normal or standard word.
Either way, not completely, a bit, half, whatever, there are bigger things in the world than if 'fésbók' is more of a calque or more of a PS matching


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## Gavril

> Agree to disagree?



Almost.  I'm curious about one thing you said, which I think might be the key to our disagreement:



Alxmrphi said:


> 2) _Fés_ *does* mean_ face_, there's not really any big change in the meaning like there is in the prototypical PSMs in Icelandic.



And also,



> fés might not have been the standard word to use when loan-translating 'face', but there was also a word *that just happened to sound exactly like it*, with the same meaning (though not the same exact nuances).



In the sections that I highlighted in blue, it seems like you are saying (implicitly) "the difference between _fés _and _andlit_ (and therefore the difference between _fésbók_ and _andlitabók_ as calques) is so small as to be negligible". What's the basis for saying that this difference (or, really, *any *semantic difference between two words) is negligible? (I don't mean this as a rhetorical question -- I never went very far into historical semantics in my studies, and perhaps there is a more precise methodology of semantic comparison than I've learned about thus far.)


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## Alxmrphi

Well I'm no expert in the field (at all), so it's still all personal opinion based on what I already know.

I'm not approaching this with a wealth of knowledge and set of rules that leaves me to believe that I am right, just expressing an opinion, which is based on the logic that I've already said. As far as I am concerned if two words have the same meaning, well obviously there's always a difference (I class myself with the group of people who don't believe in exact synonymy), so essentially the closely-similar (fairly strictly) then they are both candidates in a loan translation, and here the idea was to chose one that fits well with the word in the original language. No semantic difference is negligible in all contexts, but my opinion on calques and loan translations are, if it's the same word in a general sense, it's a candidate, so in this case it's nothing more than using the native wordstock with the same meaning to create a counterpart in another language.

A linguist who studies word formation and componential morphology might come along and tell me I'm wrong here, and I'd be glad to change my way of thinking on their advice if I believed he knew his stuff inside out and was credible. I'm never averse to changing my mind, no matter how strongly I seem to stick to my claims. I'm not trying to prove you wrong or anything, or trying to academically challenge you in any way (as I've explained before), merely giving my view. If it's not clear I'll have another stab at trying to explain it, but I think I explained it. If you believe only using "andlit" as the first component would be a complete calque, I can't argue with that. There aren't strict rules, just differing opinions.

I just am of the view that (in a really basic sense) if you can go to ordabok.is, type in "face", see "fés", then type "book" and see "bók", then you can make a calque of "Facebook" from English to Icelandic. If you're not going to pull up the same definition, but a possibly similar one, that looks the same phonetically, then you can call it a PSM. That's a really crude way of putting it, but I guess it's an easy way to explain how I view it. I don't think it'd be wrong to analyse the specific choice as wanting to create a phonetically-similar parallel, but I've said that before, in my last post actually. I don't see that as compromising the authenticity of this being a completely prototypical calque, however. Very often the words are not alike, but that doesn't mean they always have to be dissimilar (like fjarkensla [fjar][kennsla] for 'distance teaching').


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## Tjahzi

I think I'm with Alex regarding _fés_. Given the fact that the word (_fés_, that is) does indeed exist, I'd say it should be regarded as a claque, as in the case of _tækni_, _eyðni_ and so on.


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## TomTrussel

_fés was_ also derived from English _face_ via Danish_ fjæs_, while _andlit_ probably derives from Low German _ansicht. _I know they don't match in meaning, just thought I'd throw it out there 

TT


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## NorwegianNYC

_Fés_ is ultimately from Latin _facies_ - 'appearance, form', and is recognizable in _facilitate_ - 'to make something take form'. 'Face' in Norwegian is _fjes_, but also has the dialectal pronunciations "fes" and "fjæs". Another word in Norwegian is _ansikt_ (as TT says above, from German 'ansicht'), but also (in Nynorsk) _andlet _(which is akin to Icelandic 'andlit'). There is no rule, but I normally translate _face <> fjes_ and _ansikt/andlet <> visage _in Norwegian


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## sindridah

How about the word "smetti" ? does other nordic languages have that as well? Smetti have also same meaning as fés


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## TomTrussel

Not in Norwegian that I know, we do however have "åsyn" with the same meaning as andlet/fjes, which derives from old norse _ásjón, __ásýn_, I'd guess you guys also got this in some form 

TT


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## Alxmrphi

TomTrussel said:


> which derives from old norse _ásjón, __ásýn_, I'd guess you guys also got this in some form
> TT



*Á**sjóna *(face; visage)


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