It is also one of the most linguistically pure languages in Europe in terms of vocabulary , and a campaign to rid the language of foreign (mostly English) words has led to the coining of many new, purely Icelandic, words and phrases, devised by a committee of linguistic experts. Modern inventions especially have been given names from existing Icelandic words, such as simi for telephone (literally "long thread"), and hence brefasimi ("letter telephone") for "fax machine"; eggjakaka ("egg cake") for "omelette"; and even fara a puttanu ("to travel on the thumb"), for "to hitchhike". Although there's no Icelandic word for "interesting" (the closest is gaman - "fun"), there's a plethora of words to do with fish and the sea: pin porskur! ("you cod!") is a term of abuse, whilst "to give up" is often rendered as leggja ara i bat , "to lay one's oars in the boat". If something isn't up to much, it's ekki upp a marga fiska - "not worth many fish". Rural life has also left its mark on the language: on Friday nights in Reykjavik you'll find plenty of people who're sau?drukkinnn - "as drunk as a sheep"; the word for sheep, fe , is also the generic term for money. Dogs also speak Icelandic and can quite clearly be heard to say voff (small children will refer to a dog as a voffi ) whilst cows on the other hand say mo .

Icelandic has also maintained many old names for European cities that were in use at the time of the Settlement, such as Dyflinni (Dublin), Jorvik (York, in Britain, hence Nya Jorvik for New York) and Lundunir (London) in London).

Anyone learning Icelandic will also have to grapple with a mind blowing use of grammatical cases for the most straightforward of activities: "to open a door", for instance, requires the accusative case ( opna dyrnar ) whilst "to close a door" takes the dative case ( loka dyrunum ). Not only that, but "door" is plural in Icelandic, as is the word for Christmas, jolin , hence jolin eru i desember , literally "Christmasses are in December" (as opposed to the English "Christmas is in December"). Thankfully, there are no dialects anywhere in the country.