A review of the Faroese dictionary (monolingual dictionary), which was published in 1998, has been underway at the Faculty of Faroese Language and Literature for some time now. This means correcting errors and adding new words. The task is almost complete and the dictionary will initially be published online and subsequently reprinted.

The 1998 dictionary contains around 65,000 headwords. Why spend time and money on a dictionary? A dictionary is a tool and if a tool is to serve its purpose, it must be reliable and of good quality, it must provide an answer when you are in doubt. That is why we have to update it. And that is what I am trying to do: Improve the dictionary. A reliable quality dictionary of this kind should mirror the society we live in. And when does it mirror society? When it describes language the way it is when the dictionary is published. I personally participated in editing the 98 version, and therefore have confidence in it. However, my own main criticism of the 98 version has always been that it fails to take contemporary language seriously enough. We are somehow predisposed to not always feel entirely at ease with contemporary language, because we often think it is not good enough. But I feel that lexicographers should have a more professional approach to this issue and deal with it without regard for their subjective perception of what constitutes good language. And that is what I try to do in my work.

The conditions for producing a dictionary today compared with twelve years ago are like day and night. My best instrument as a lexicographer today is the Internet. Twelve years ago it was the citation slip collection at the Faculty of Faroese Language and Literature. The basis for the new edition of the dictionary is a digital corpus with about 40 million Faroese words. This corpus is made up of text accessible in digital format. What characterizes these texts is that they are relatively recent and therefore truly represent modern Faroese. From this soup of words, an IT specialist has compiled a collection of words not included in the 98 dictionary. There are about 130,000 forms of words in this compilation, which, as mentioned, are not represented in the current dictionary. This is an astronomical figure, but it doesn’t daunt me, because, although the figure is high, work is much easier when I have all the material on a computer. I tell the computer to extract the word I need from the heap and, in the blink of an eye, it brings up an overview with perhaps 100 examples of this word, and shows them in context with other words in the sentences. Amazing! And I can then copy the example I need from the corpus into the dictionary software, giving me an authentic example. The 98 version is excellent in many ways; however, new Faroese vocabulary is disastrously absent. The new edition, which is now underway, will, to a large extent, correct this deficit. 

I am often asked: How many words are there in Faroese? I don’t know, I don’t know how to find out or calculate it either. The 98 dictionary contains about 65,000 words and the number of headwords in the next edition will definitely be higher. Around 1,700 new words have been added compared with the 98 version. However, this is after my selection, which has left about 80,000 words out. Which words are included in the dictionary and which aren’t? One of the main requirements for a word to be included as a headword is frequency: If there are many examples of a word in the corpus, this indicates that it is an ordinary word in Faroese, and then it should be included. Yet some words are used frequently, but still not included. I can give you an example. I have included the word vevstjóri (webmaster); firstly because it is a common word in the corpus; secondly because it is a word referring to a contemporary phenomenon with a specific meaning; thirdly the meaning of the word is not immediately obvious to someone who doesn’t know the area. This word occurs 227 times in the corpus and ranks as number 50 on the list. On the other hand, I have not included the word aliburturkast (waste from aquaculture production), even though it occurs 221 times in the corpus and is number 55 on the list. The reason is that aliburturkast is a banal compound, meaning that if you know the component parts of the word individually, then you know what the compound word means. This is not true for vevstjóri, because vevur (web) has a new meaning here, akin to the Internet. Nevertheless, this doesn’t mean that aliburturkast isn’t a good Faroese word, it is. It simply means that I, as the editor, didn’t think it was necessary to include aliburturkast because it describes itself. And there are thousands of words like it, which are never included in dictionaries, because their meaning is self-evident. We also make similar words every single day.

Compiling a dictionary is probably not scientific work, perhaps it is more of a craft – in any case, it is highly subjective. Having said that, I can take the liberty to ask: Why are we so sensitive about foreign words in our language? Well, because according to Faroese discourse, that is how we talk about language in the Faroes.  How many foreign words aren’t there already in Faroese? Foreign words won’t kill off any language, history has repeatedly showed this. The world’s foremost global language, English, has absorbed words from all the world’s languages. Think about all the words we have in Faroese in the area of music, for example. How many of them are original Faroese words? Perhaps one out of every 200, but we don’t think about it. They are there, because we need them. We must be able to talk about music, and, in order to do so, we have to use foreign words, such as: symfoni (symphony), rytma (rhythm), orkestur (orchestra), dirigentur (conductor), satsur (movement), gittari (guitar), klaver (piano), fagott (bassoon), altur (alto), tenorur (tenor) and sopranur (soprano).
What would a builder do without his technical terms? He wouldn’t be able to build a stakitt (fence), a gelendari (handrail) or a gerikt (architrave). He wouldn’t be able to fit a kitchen or stoypa (cast) a trappu (staircase). We wouldn’t be able to go to the vesi (wc) or warm up by a radiator or sit in a sofa. These are all foreign words, which at some point entered Faroese, it was just so long ago that we don’t remember when they first appeared. Today we have to consider these words Faroese.

Let me offer you a selection of words, which are now in the dictionary: abstraktur (abstract), aðalráð (directorate general), alilaksur (farmed salmon), bandbreidd (bandwith), bilstólur (car seat), bloggur (blog), breiðband (broadband), brúksskylda ( ), demokrati (democracy), dna (dna), eldraøki ( ), etikkur (ethics), fanatisma (fanaticism), flytførur (mobility), fundamentalistur (fundamentalist), gjeikari (gay), heilsurøktari ( ), impressionisma (impressionism), oddabrak ( ), rammulóg (framework ), samfelagsskúta ( ), talibanur (Taliban), trygdarskeið (health and safety course), umhvørvisvinarligur (environmentally friendly), vakstrarøki (habitat), yvirgangsatsókn (terrorist attack).
 
(This extract is based on a presentation at the Faroese Research Council’s Research Day in 2010.)