Icelandic

What does "nerds" mean? is it some synonym of Kazoo?

"You people are real nerds."

Haha. You say it as if it were a bad thing :) As a linguistics major, I've devoted much of my college time to studying such issues, so I better be interested in it!

As for ?'s question, "nerd" isn't a synonym for kazoo, but usually refers to someone who's "an unstylish, unattractive, or socially inept person; especially : one slavishly devoted to intellectual or academic pursuits" (according to Webster). In recent usage, tho, I've noticed "nerd" has been swept up in the whole "geek chic" ("geek" is a similar word, tho subtly different than "nerd") movement, and doesn't always carry quite the same meaning formerly attached with unstylishness, but can refer to anyone who's generally good at academic pursuits or who knows a lot in a particular area, so they can be a "language geek" or a "poli-sci geek" etc.

Although Icelandic has changed during the last 1000 years (in phonetics + all the new words they have created instead of borrowing them from other langauges) it is a fact that an Icelander can still read and understand the sagas while I as a Norwegian only can understand a few words here and there.