old icelandic p-lo

There is a guy who works in our IT infrastructure support company here, and he looks like a late-40s-ish version of my Bostonian friend P-Lo. Every time I see him, for example at lunch, I think, "Wow, that's how P-Lo is gonna look, when he is late-40s and Icelandic." I guess it just goes to prove the old adage that everyone in my old life has a doppleganger in Iceland.

In other news, today's word connection is board, which has its Icelandic equivalent in borð, pronounced almost the same. (The letter eth, ð, is pronounced like a softer d or a bit like the th in this. Of course Old English also had this letter, as does the modern phonetic alphabet.)

A table in Icelandic is called a borð. To eat is að borða, the same as the older English meaning of the verb "to board", as in room and board. Those of you flying Icelandair will hear velkomin um borð, or "welcome on board". See, it's not so different after all.