Posted by Leonhard Jóannasson
I suppose foreign residents can keep their family names? I’d like to live in Iceland someday, but I don’t want to change my name to Carl Edwardsson!
—Someone, on Icelandic names (statement changed cosmetically for anonymity).
The language ego permeability hypothesis argues that adults have difficulty learning foreign languages because they are reluctant to give up control over self-presentation. Giving up this control is necessary to learning a new language.
—Guiora, Beit-Hallahmi, Brannon, Dull, and Scovel in: “The Effects of Experimentally Induced Changes in Ego States on Pronunciation Ability in a Second Language: An Exploratory Study (“The hypothesis tested in this study was that the ingestion of a small amount of alcohol will lead to an increase in the ability to pronounce a second language.”)
(via Mark Beadles on StackExchange; see also comment by jlawler: “Guiora told me that the two-drink level was optimum. Any more and mechanical performance and memory suffer; any less and normal social anxieties constrain performance and learning.”)
Related: Exhaustive list of valid Icelandic names.
Related: The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life.
Wait, patronyms (and matronyms) need the genitive? So it should be, let’s see, Leonhard Jóönnuson? That’s even cooler! But no Google hits for it…