as a swede whose accent is a hodgepodge of everything between scottish to RP to some vague average of american plus of course swenglish, i have spoken into the void and it spake back.
etymologically the word is made up of “i” and “land”, the “s” was added by some idiot in the 15th century. “i” is cognate with “ö” in swedish which simply means “island”, so just pull a power move and drop all the other letters completely.
fun fact: the S in island is completely fucking made up, the original spelling was “iland” with “i” being cognate with “ö” in swedish. It basically means island land and the only reason why there’s an S in there is because some shithead thought it was related to the french word “isle” and felt that INCORRECT idea warranted changing the spelling.
i mean they are right, it’s just… they’re the ones responsible for ruining it…
around the 60’s is when most of the world nuked its public transport infrastructure and bulldozed an absurd amount of area to build massive roads, and older cars were actually reasonably repairable and didn’t have computers and antennas to send data about you to their parent company…
but they merrily switched to cars so they could enjoy the freedom of being stuck in traffic and having to ferry kids around everywhere, and merrily kept buying new cars that were progressively less repairable and ever increasing in size, until we’re at the point where parents are backing over their own children because their cars are so grossly oversized that they can’t see shit without cameras.
that’s by biking is superior, cyclists greet each other with a smile because we’re glad to finally see another person on the road who isn’t liable to murder us with their vehicle