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Why not just one Scandinavian language? | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Skandinavisk & Nordisk |  | |
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5453 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 9 of 69 01 March 2010 at 9:43am | IP Logged | ||||||||
It is right on spot for the Scandinavian languages: a dialect continuum broken up by national borders. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5453 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 10 of 69 01 March 2010 at 9:46am | IP Logged | ||||||||
30 million speakers do not create a world language. Edited by tractor on 01 March 2010 at 9:46am 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| taKen Tetraglot Senior Member Norway mindofthelinguist.woRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6117 days ago 176 posts - 210 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Dutch, French Studies: German, Icelandic | Message 11 of 69 01 March 2010 at 11:34am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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There are about 6000 languages in the world today, 5000 of those languages are spoken
by less than 100 000 people. Even with "only" 10 million people speaking a language like Swedish, it's still pretty big. Uniting Danish, Swedish and Norwegian won't happen anytime soon. Even if it might be a good idea for some, I don't see the actual inhabitants of Scandinavia being too happy about it. There's just too much national pride. And no way if the Danes would accept an etymologically true writing system! :P You've also got to take into consideration that even in mainland Scandinavia there are two different sub-groups of Germanic languages: West Scandinavian languages and East Scandinavian languages. To illustrate my point I'll give you an example of the first person singular pronoun: Old Norse: Ek, iak West Scandinavian (About 4,5 million) Icelandic: Ég (although the pronunciation here more resembles Danish "jeg") Faroese: Eg Norwegian Nynorsk: Eg East Scandinavian (About 16 million) Danish: Jeg Swedish: Jag Norwegian Bokmål: Jeg In my view, coming up with a common writing system for all of Scandinavia would inevitably result in East Scandinavian domination. This is just one of several examples I could give to illustrate the possible difficulties of such a project. The beautiful Old Norse diphthongs would also lose ground, since, as I assume, majority would rule. As you might see, a lot of history would be lost if we suddenly were to along with such a venture, even if it at first would just be in writing. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| ruskivyetr Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5481 days ago 769 posts - 962 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Russian, Polish, Modern Hebrew | Message 12 of 69 01 March 2010 at 1:56pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
My point was that it would create a stronger union between the three countries and possibly unite them not to a point of one "Scandinavian" country, but to a point where their size is regarded as one larger instead of three smaller in Europe. Regardless of what people say, 10 million speakers is small in Europe when you have German being the most spoken language in the European Union, with English second, and French third, and all of these languages being not very far away.
I understand the national pride in the Scandinavian three, but I think that they should at least try to reform Danish Swedish and BOKMÅL. I didn't say anything about western Scandinavian languages either. Faroese is too different from Danish to reform it to anything that would make it anymore intelligible. All people on the Faroe Islands learn Danish in school, right? And Icelandic would still be Icelandic. I'm just talking about Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5453 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 13 of 69 01 March 2010 at 2:14pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
30 million is still small. And really, the number should be around 20 million, not 30.
If you reform Norwegian Bokmål so it's spelling gets closer to Swedish and Danish, you would make it more different from Norwegian Nynorsk, and thus make things more complicated for Norwegians. A great many reforms have already been made over the last 150 years in order to make Bokmål less Danish and more Norwegian. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5838 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian | Message 14 of 69 01 March 2010 at 10:56pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Issues of national pride.
The three countries are like siblings who love each other yet have history of conflicts, bullying, big-brother/little-brother complex.. and much more. Norway has once belonged to both Sweden and Denmark and they are the most patriotic Scandinavians. They'd probably see it as a step back to unify the language with Swedish/Danish. Even though everyone else in Scandinavia loves Norway and delights in its recent success and have no interest at all in dominating Norway. Denmark is more continental and has been in many a war with Sweden in the past. Although there is absolutely no serious problem any more, I doubt they'd embrace the idea of Swedish words and spelling to being introduced (to a degree) into Danish. Finland and Iceland also have complex relationships and language ties with the others - a separate chapter. BUT YES - THIS IS WHAT WE OUGHT TO DO.... It's logically right for hundreds of reasons and our grandchildren would thank us for it. Yet we'd quabble about it ad infinitum and every single word (spelling, really) would become an issue of national pride...I can't see it happening any time soon, SADLY. People are idiots, really. We have MUCH MORE in common than we what sets us apart. Scandinavia is an oasis of stability, peace, welfare, social justice, high ideals and awesome nature in an increasingly crazy and inhospitable word. English WILL EVENTUALLY knock out all languages in Europe if its progression is not stopped. Starting of course with smaller languages like..... OURS. I'd rather use a bit of Danish spelling and Norwegian vocabulary to save my language (OUR language) from inevitable DOOM. Ok, go on start nitpicking about the details of this now, all the while English is doing its Trojan horse trick all across Scandinavia...! And when your grand kids start speaking to you in English... then consider, did it really matter whether we had to start calling korv "pölse" or spell sjuttonde as syttene.....? 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| ruskivyetr Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5481 days ago 769 posts - 962 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Russian, Polish, Modern Hebrew | Message 15 of 69 01 March 2010 at 11:39pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Doubt it. Even though many people speak English, a country won't switch it's national language. Plus, America's economic future is looking quite dim which will allow for other countries to prosper and allow for world languages that will increasingly become more important. English isn't even the most spoken language in the EU. German is, and it's not like monolingual people who don't speak English are going to allow their country to switch languages. You would be surprised at how nationalistic Europeans can be. One of my closest friends is Polish and she says that she would never give up Poland or Polish, no matter what happened. She always says she misses home because she cannot visit Poland again until she gets her green card out of fear that she will not be able to return. No European languages are going anywhere, and if Scandinavians are so close as you say Cordelia, none of your languages (except maybe some dialects) are going anywhere. However, a unified language would create a more ideal situation to keep the Nordic languages strong. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| cathrynm Senior Member United States junglevision.co Joined 6125 days ago 910 posts - 1232 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Finnish | Message 16 of 69 02 March 2010 at 1:28am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Really, don't change anyone's language or spelling. Just come up with a name -- "Scandinavian Language"? Then when movie or videogame companies do translations, they could dub each of the characters based on a cultural stereotype. Pick Danish for one character, Swedish, accent for another. With English language movies we have some characters with an English accent, others with an American accent. It's not a problem.
With a larger potential market more products would be translated, and if some people can't understand other Scandinavian languages, they'll learn soon enough. If the mutual intelligibility is how you guys describe, eventually everyone will be able to understand through passive exposure. Edited by cathrynm on 02 March 2010 at 1:32am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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