Nordic Languages Remain at Risk In Spite of E.U. Linguistic Diversity Policies
Tadas Blinda
The E.U. has stated that all of its citizens should learn at least
two foreign languages, in support of linguistic diversity. Many
residents of countries like Denmark, Finland, and Sweden boast near-
native proficiency in English, but could their bilingual behavior be
putting their mother tongues at risk? This week, we attended a seminar
in Stockholm to learn what the E.U.’s Commissioner for
Multilingualism, Leonard Orban, had to say about this topic.
In the E.U. publication, “Speaking for Europe,” Commissioner Orban
noted, “The ability to communicate in several languages is a great
benefit for individuals, organisations and companies alike.” At the
event in Stockholm, the commissioner reiterated these views, reflected
on the necessity of maintaining and using one’s native language, and
engaged participants to discuss the role of translation and
interpreting in the E.U.:
* Excellent English may entail linguistic disadvantages.
Commissioner Orban pointed out that the commissioners from member
states such as France, Italy, Spain, and Romania normally make
speeches in their native languages. Meanwhile, commissioners from
Nordic countries often use English – but as good as their English may
be, they will never be able to negotiate as well in their second or
third language as they can in their mother tongues. As the
commissioner rightly observed, “If you speak your mother tongue, you
say what you wish; if you speak another language, you say what you
can”. Common Sense Advisory’s research supports the assertion that
English is less effective for Nordic countries when compared to
residents’ mother tongues. When we surveyed software buyers, we found
that 80 percent of respondents based in Sweden preferred to buy
products that were fully translated and localized into Swedish, even
though they reported the highest levels of proficiency in English
(“Localization Matters,” Nov08).
* Linguistic muscles, when not flexed, will atrophy. If the Nordic
languages are not requested with enough frequency, interpreters will
not be able to obtain the experience and practice they require to
maintain their skills. Also, interpreters may find it difficult to
render English spoken by a non-native speaker into the other official
languages. If English is favored, terminology specific to the E.U.
will no longer be developed in languages like Danish and Swedish,
risking impoverished terminological domains for these languages
compared to others.
* Equal participation means equal access to language services.
Professor Sture Allén, member of the Swedish Academy, weighed in, “It
is not until you speak your mother tongue – with professional
simultaneous interpreters transferring the language into the 23
official languages – that all E.U. representatives can participate on
the same conditions.”
* Language policy shows promise. Not all countries with high
levels of English proficiency choose to use this language for official
E.U. proceedings. While most of its officials speak English, Germany
demands all official speeches in the E.U. to be made in German. Since
2005, speakers of Irish have made official addresses in this E.U.
language in spite of their fluency in English. It remains to be seen
if Nordic countries will follow suit, but the newly implemented
language law in Sweden (in effect since July 1, 2009) should help the
Swedes take further steps to preserve the Swedish language.
* For the E.U., translation is not merely an afterthought. As Karl-
Johan Lönnroth, Director-General, Directorate-General for Translation
at the European Commission, pointed out, the E.U. has the largest
public translation service in the world, translating more than two
million pages a year, or an average of three million words per day. As
such, the E.U. is partly responsible for maintaining and developing
the translation and interpretation profession.
But what about the money? Since 2004, each nation in the E.U. budgets
and funds its own interpreting services. Prior to that time, the E.U.
itself covered the costs. So, each nation decides whether it wishes to
address the E.U. in its native language – and whether or not it wants
to foot the bill. Speaking in English and foregoing interpreters might
save nations some money in the short term, but what are the long-term
costs to the language itself, and to those who speak it?
At the end of the day, every nation is responsible for preserving its
languages. So, the choice that countries ultimately face regarding
their mother tongue is this: Use it or lose it.
[Interesting. I have heard, and I would love to hear an update from
other readers, that the Scandinavian countries and Holland face a
growing problem with immigrants (especially from the third world) who
try to get away with living in the relevant country without ever
learning its langauge. What they do, of course, is rely on their
(usually very poor) English. This is ironical. In effect the Dutch
and Scandinavians are being 'punished' (or at least exploited) for
having such a high percentage of English fluency in the country. In
other European countries, immigrants could never get away with living
in the relevant country without ever learning its langauge. Perhaps
that's why all the Arabs, Indians etc entering those other countries
get out as soon as they can and gravitate to UK and Eire, or failing
that — the Scandinavian countries and Holland.]
D K Palm
> http://www.globalwatchtower.com/2009/09/09/nordic-language-survival/#...
What is the big deal? The Scandinavian languages already to 70%
consists of words imported from Platen Dütch and German with a
sprinkle French, Latin and English.
Swedish like all languages evolve constantly, and if they don't it's
just a sign that they are dieing. I don't see that Swedish should be
at any risk soon.
Tadas Blinda
Nonsense! Just because you can recognise related words in German
('cognates' is what they are called in linguistics), that doesn't mean
that in Swedish the words were borrowed from German. All those
cognates exist because both Swedish and German descend from an eralier
Proto-Germanic language (Urgermanische Sprache), which in turn
descends from an earlier Indo-European Proto-language that is the
parent of almost all the languages of Europe, except for certain
indigenous languages (Basque, Estonian, Livonian, Finnish, Sami) and a
couple of 'invader' languages (Maltese, Hungarian, Turkish and
Georgian – if you want to argue that Georgia is in Europe.).
Eugene Holman
<47f6ccd3-1f31-46ca...@k19g2000yqc.googlegroups.com>, Tadas
Blinda <tadas....@lycos.es> wrote:
<deletions>
>
> Nonsense! Just because you can recognise related words in German
> ('cognates' is what they are called in linguistics), that doesn't mean
> that in Swedish the words were borrowed from German.
Here you are wrong.
People who know the sound changes that differentiate Old Norse from
Swedish understand the diffrence between cognates and loanwords. Swedish,
Danish, and Norwegian would look much more like Icelandic had they not
replaced most of their inherited vocabulary with Low German cognates
during the Middle Ages.
> All those
> cognates exist because both Swedish and German descend from an eralier
> Proto-Germanic language (Urgermanische Sprache), which in turn
> descends from an earlier Indo-European Proto-language that is the
> parent of almost all the languages of Europe, except for certain
> indigenous languages (Basque, Estonian, Livonian, Finnish, Sami) and a
> couple of 'invader' languages (Maltese, Hungarian, Turkish and
> Georgian =96 if you want to argue that Georgia is in Europe.).
You neglect the issue of cultural colonialism. What are now Sweden,
Norway, Denmark, and Estonia were effectively colonized and
intellectualized by speakers of Low German (Plattdeutsch) during the High
Middle Ages. On his history of the Swerish Language, Svensk spr�khistoria,
Elias Wess�n estimates that the population of Stockholm was as high as 75%
Plattdeutsch speaking at the time of the Reformation. Danish, Norwegian,
and Swedish saw most of their inherited Germanic lexical vocabulary
replaced by Low German cognates, which were loanwords. Swedish, Danish and
Norwegian are mixed Germanic in the sense that most of their lexical
morphemes are West Germanic borrowings, but their grammatical morphemes
are of North Hermanic origin. This can be easily ascertained by comparing
the Swedish, Danish, or Norwegian (Bokm�l) versions of a text with their
Frisian and Dutch (approx. Low German)m as opposed to their Icelandic
equivalents. The lexical morphemes of the continental Scandinavian
languages have far more in common with Dutch and Frisian than they do with
Icelandic, but their grammatical morphemes have more in common with
Icelandic than with Dutch or Frisian.
This is yet another argument for thinking critically about the family-tree
model of language relationship. English, another mixed language, has a far
greater lexical affinity to distantly related French and Latin than it
does to closely related Frisian, Dutch, and German, even if its
grammatical morphemes reveal its West Germanic origins, for the same
reasons.
In Estonian Low German provided phraseological models, making Estomnian in
this respect far more consitent with German than with its spster language
Finnish.
Regards,
Eugene Holman
vello
> In article
> <47f6ccd3-1f31-46ca-b2e5-a1b8fbf04...@k19g2000yqc.googlegroups.com>, Tadas
>
> Blinda <tadas.bli...@lycos.es> wrote:
>
> <deletions>
>
>
>
> > Nonsense! Just because you can recognise related words in German
> > ('cognates' is what they are called in linguistics), that doesn't mean
> > that in Swedish the words were borrowed from German.
>
> Here you are wrong.
>
> People who know the sound changes that differentiate Old Norse from
> Swedish understand the diffrence between cognates and loanwords. Swedish,
> Danish, and Norwegian would look much more like Icelandic had they not
> replaced most of their inherited vocabulary with Low German cognates
> during the Middle Ages.
>
> > All those
> > cognates exist because both Swedish and German descend from an eralier
> > Proto-Germanic language (Urgermanische Sprache), which in turn
> > descends from an earlier Indo-European Proto-language that is the
> > parent of almost all the languages of Europe, except for certain
> > indigenous languages (Basque, Estonian, Livonian, Finnish, Sami) and a
> > couple of 'invader' languages (Maltese, Hungarian, Turkish and
> > Georgian =96 if you want to argue that Georgia is in Europe.).
>
> You neglect the issue of cultural colonialism. What are now Sweden,
> Norway, Denmark, and Estonia were effectively colonized and
> intellectualized by speakers of Low German (Plattdeutsch) during the High
> Elias Wessén estimates that the population of Stockholm was as high as 75%
> Plattdeutsch speaking at the time of the Reformation. Danish, Norwegian,
> and Swedish saw most of their inherited Germanic lexical vocabulary
> replaced by Low German cognates, which were loanwords. Swedish, Danish and
> Norwegian are mixed Germanic in the sense that most of their lexical
> morphemes are West Germanic borrowings, but their grammatical morphemes
> are of North Hermanic origin. This can be easily ascertained by comparing
> Frisian and Dutch (approx. Low German)m as opposed to their Icelandic
> equivalents. The lexical morphemes of the continental Scandinavian
> languages have far more in common with Dutch and Frisian than they do with
> Icelandic, but their grammatical morphemes have more in common with
> Icelandic than with Dutch or Frisian.
>
> This is yet another argument for thinking critically about the family-tree
> model of language relationship. English, another mixed language, has a far
> greater lexical affinity to distantly related French and Latin than it
> does to closely related Frisian, Dutch, and German, even if its
> grammatical morphemes reveal its West Germanic origins, for the same
> reasons.
>
> In Estonian Low German provided phraseological models, making Estomnian in
> this respect far more consitent with German than with its spster language
> Finnish.
>
> Regards,
> Eugene Holman
Local languages had their influence on Low German also, at least
locally. There are a lot of estonian words in Low German used in
medieval Tallinn, say "karripforte" for "herd gate" (est - kari -
herd). That influence disappeared when "Luther's language" appears as
standard for of German.
Eugene Holman
<deletions>
>
> Nonsense! Just because you can recognise related words in German
> ('cognates' is what they are called in linguistics), that doesn't mean
> that in Swedish the words were borrowed from German.
Here you are wrong.
People who know the sound changes that differentiate Old Norse from
Swedish understand the difference between cognates and loanwords. Swedish,
Danish, and Norwegian would look much more like Icelandic had they not
replaced a substantial part of their inherited vocabulary with Low German
cognates or borrowings during the Middle Ages: e.g. inherited Danish �de
'to eat', largely edged out by the Low German import 'spise', cf. Dutch
spijs 'food', German speisen 'to dine'.
> All those
> cognates exist because both Swedish and German descend from an eralier
> Proto-Germanic language (Urgermanische Sprache), which in turn
> descends from an earlier Indo-European Proto-language that is the
> parent of almost all the languages of Europe, except for certain
> indigenous languages (Basque, Estonian, Livonian, Finnish, Sami) and a
> couple of 'invader' languages (Maltese, Hungarian, Turkish and
> Georgian =96 if you want to argue that Georgia is in Europe.).
You neglect the issue of cultural colonialism. What are now Sweden,
Norway, Denmark, and Estonia were effectively colonized and
intellectualized by speakers of Low German (Plattdeutsch) during the High
Middle Ages. On his history of the Swedish Language, *Svensk spr�khistoria*,
Elias Wess�n estimates that the population of Stockholm was as high as 75%
Plattdeutsch speaking at the time of the Reformation. Danish, Norwegian,
and Swedish saw a significant of their inherited Germanic lexical vocabulary
replaced by Low German borrowings, some of them cognates, which were
loanwords, more precisely etymological doublets.
Swedish, Danish and Norwegian are mixed North/West Germanic in the sense
that a substantial portions of their lexical morphemes are West Germanic
borrowings, but their grammatical morphemes are mostly of North Germanic
origin. The manner in which the grammatical morphemes are used also
deserves mention. Their nouns behave in essentially the same manner as in
Dutch/Plattdeutsch with two genders (three are retained in some types of
Norwegian and dialects of Danish and Swedish) and a reduction of the case
system to an opposition between common and genitive. Verbs in all three
languages have lost personal inflection altogether, even in the verb 'to
be': (Swedish) jag, du, han/hon/den/det, vi, ni, de �r 'I am, you (sg.)
are, he/she/it is; we, you (pl.), they are'. The postpositive article of
Old Norse has been retained: (Swedish) mannen 'the man', huset 'the
house'.
The mixed North/West Germanic nature of Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish can
be easily ascertained by comparing the Swedish, Danish, or Norwegian
(Bokm�l) versions of the same text with their Frisian and Dutch (approx.
Low German), as opposed to their Icelandic, equivalents: Icelandic borga
'to pay', Danish/Norwegian betale, Swedish betala, cf. Dutch betalen,
German bezahlen 'to pay', with Swedish retaining the North Germanic verb
with slightly modified semantics: borga 'to guarantee, vouch for'. The
lexical morphemes of the continental Scandinavian languages have far more
in common with Dutch and Frisian than they do with Icelandic, but their
grammatical morphemes have more in common with Icelandic than with Dutch
or Frisian. Thus, a person who can read Dutch has little difficulty
acquiring a reading knowledge of Danish, Norwegian, or Swedish after
having mastered a few dozen high-frequency North Germanic functional
morphemes ((Swed.) inte 'not', och 'and', gennom 'through', g�ra 'to
do/make', �r 'am, is, are', att 'INFINITIVE MARKER') and grammatical
idiosyncracies (the post positive articles and their behavior with
determiners and adjectives: hus 'house', huset 'the house', ett stort hus
'a big house, det stora huset 'the big house', det h�r stora huset 'this
big house', det d�r stora huset 'that big house'. Learning to read
Icelandic for a Dutch speaker, on the other hand, requires a considerable
amount of learning specifically North Germanic lexicon and morphology.
In a more general sense, this is yet another argument for thinking
critically about the family-tree model of language relationship. English,
another mixed language, has a far greater lexical affinity to distantly
related French and Latin than it does to more closely related Frisian,
Dutch, and German, even if its grammatical morphemes reveal its West
Germanic origins, for the same
reasons.
In Estonian, Low German provided phraseological models and calques, making
Estonian in this respect far more consistent with German than with its
sister language Finnish: e.g. Estonian �lesanne 'assignment' (�les 'up' +
anne 'something given', cf. German Aufgabe, vs. Finnish teht�v�
'assignment' (substantivized non-past passive participle of tehd� 'to do';
'something to be done').
Regards,
Eugene Holman
AgitProp
> http://www.globalwatchtower.com/2009/09/09/nordic-language-survival/#...
>
The EU is the mince machine of the British/Jewish Empire. - What they
say, do and think, are three completely different things. The best way
to judge them is by the end results.
I don't know about Norse, but my native Bulgaria is now extinct.
D K Palm
> In article
> <47f6ccd3-1f31-46ca-b2e5-a1b8fbf04...@k19g2000yqc.googlegroups.com>, Tadas
>
>
> <deletions>
>
>
>
> > Nonsense! Just because you can recognise related words in German
> > ('cognates' is what they are called in linguistics), that doesn't mean
> > that in Swedish the words were borrowed from German.
>
> Here you are wrong.
>
> People who know the sound changes that differentiate Old Norse from
> Swedish understand the difference between cognates and loanwords. Swedish,
> Danish, and Norwegian would look much more like Icelandic had they not
> replaced a substantial part of their inherited vocabulary with Low German
> 'to eat', largely edged out by the Low German import 'spise', cf. Dutch
> spijs 'food', German speisen 'to dine'.
>
> > All those
> > cognates exist because both Swedish and German descend from an eralier
> > Proto-Germanic language (Urgermanische Sprache), which in turn
> > descends from an earlier Indo-European Proto-language that is the
> > parent of almost all the languages of Europe, except for certain
> > indigenous languages (Basque, Estonian, Livonian, Finnish, Sami) and a
> > couple of 'invader' languages (Maltese, Hungarian, Turkish and
> > Georgian =96 if you want to argue that Georgia is in Europe.).
>
> You neglect the issue of cultural colonialism. What are now Sweden,
> Norway, Denmark, and Estonia were effectively colonized and
> intellectualized by speakers of Low German (Plattdeutsch) during the High
> Elias Wessén estimates that the population of Stockholm was as high as 75%
> Plattdeutsch speaking at the time of the Reformation. Danish, Norwegian,
> and Swedish saw a significant of their inherited Germanic lexical vocabulary
> replaced by Low German borrowings, some of them cognates, which were
> loanwords, more precisely etymological doublets.
>
> Swedish, Danish and Norwegian are mixed North/West Germanic in the sense
> that a substantial portions of their lexical morphemes are West Germanic
> borrowings, but their grammatical morphemes are mostly of North Germanic
> origin. The manner in which the grammatical morphemes are used also
> deserves mention. Their nouns behave in essentially the same manner as in
> Dutch/Plattdeutsch with two genders (three are retained in some types of
> Norwegian and dialects of Danish and Swedish) and a reduction of the case
> system to an opposition between common and genitive. Verbs in all three
> languages have lost personal inflection altogether, even in the verb 'to
> are, he/she/it is; we, you (pl.), they are'. The postpositive article of
> Old Norse has been retained: (Swedish) mannen 'the man', huset 'the
> house'.
>
> The mixed North/West Germanic nature of Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish can
> be easily ascertained by comparing the Swedish, Danish, or Norwegian
> Low German), as opposed to their Icelandic, equivalents: Icelandic borga
> 'to pay', Danish/Norwegian betale, Swedish betala, cf. Dutch betalen,
> German bezahlen 'to pay', with Swedish retaining the North Germanic verb
> with slightly modified semantics: borga 'to guarantee, vouch for'. The
> lexical morphemes of the continental Scandinavian languages have far more
> in common with Dutch and Frisian than they do with Icelandic, but their
> grammatical morphemes have more in common with Icelandic than with Dutch
> or Frisian. Thus, a person who can read Dutch has little difficulty
> acquiring a reading knowledge of Danish, Norwegian, or Swedish after
> having mastered a few dozen high-frequency North Germanic functional
> do/make', är 'am, is, are', att 'INFINITIVE MARKER') and grammatical
> idiosyncracies (the post positive articles and their behavior with
> determiners and adjectives: hus 'house', huset 'the house', ett stort hus
> big house', det där stora huset 'that big house'. Learning to read
> Icelandic for a Dutch speaker, on the other hand, requires a considerable
> amount of learning specifically North Germanic lexicon and morphology.
>
> In a more general sense, this is yet another argument for thinking
> critically about the family-tree model of language relationship. English,
> another mixed language, has a far greater lexical affinity to distantly
> related French and Latin than it does to more closely related Frisian,
> Dutch, and German, even if its grammatical morphemes reveal its West
> Germanic origins, for the same
> reasons.
>
> In Estonian, Low German provided phraseological models and calques, making
> Estonian in this respect far more consistent with German than with its
> anne 'something given', cf. German Aufgabe, vs. Finnish tehtävä
> 'assignment' (substantivized non-past passive participle of tehdä 'to do';
> 'something to be done').
>
> Regards,
> Eugene Holman
Thank you. Tack så mycket. Bonan Dankon.
David Ames
I believe that if you know English, you can study numerous languages
at fsi-language-courses.org (or dot-com). Bulgarian should be among
them. I once ordered a book from Bulgaria. I wrote in Russian.