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English in Scandinavia | ||
Tags: Scandinavia | English | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| LorenzoGuapo Triglot Groupie United States Joined 6445 days ago 79 posts - 94 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: French | Message 1 of 36 04 April 2007 at 9:33pm | IP Logged | ||
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Do you think that if there were to be a massive number of immigrants from English speaking countries to Scandinavia that in 10 or 20 years English would become an official language in those countries or be spoken by more people than the scandinavian languages? Or do you think that situation in Scandinavia would be like that of Quebec?
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6583 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 2 of 36 05 April 2007 at 1:10am | IP Logged | ||
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First of all, immigration from English speaking countries to Scandinavia is pretty slim (it seems to me), so it'd have to rise pretty dramatically. And the result would of course depend on how many people immigrate. It'd take a lot of people to push out Swedish entirely (though there are Swedes who want to do it themselves).
Besides, in Sweden, at least, Swedish isn't an official language, so I don't see why English would be. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Hampie Diglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 6660 days ago 625 posts - 1009 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Latin, German, Mandarin | Message 3 of 36 05 April 2007 at 1:39pm | IP Logged | ||
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No... Swedish linguists do not think so, and I have my faith in them. And there are far more immigrants coming from other countries than from English speaking ones...
I myself, nor my parents, would for our life accept English as an official language - only the thought is absurd to me... Trough out history Sweden has had big influences from Low German, Latin and French. I read in a book, that around 40 % of the Swedish vocabulary comes from Low German (20 %) and Latin (24 %) and around 4% from French - they all had an impact on Swedish, but they left... We will probably have a lot of loanwords from English in the future - but I don't think Swedish will be replaced.. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| hernanday Diglot Newbie Canada Joined 4545 days ago 18 posts - 23 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish | Message 4 of 36 17 June 2012 at 12:44am | IP Logged | ||
Probably wouldn't be made an official language for nationalist reasons. I mean Danish, Swedish and Norwegian are all the same language but for political reasons they are called different languages. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| davidwelsh Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5530 days ago 141 posts - 307 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, Norwegian, Esperanto, Swedish, Danish, French Studies: Polish, Sanskrit, Tibetan, Pali, Mandarin | Message 5 of 36 17 June 2012 at 9:28am | IP Logged | ||
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Enlish isn't that far off becoming an official language in Norway. When I did my teacher training at Oslo University,
one of the points we discussed was that it had recently been decided English was no longer to be designated as a "foreign language" but as a "second language" in schools. English is a compulsary subject for all school pupils from the ages of 6 to 17, and the level that's expected is quite high. A 17/18-year-old student for example is expected to be able to "express himself/herself in writing and orally with subtleness, proper register, fluency, precision and coherence", and to analyze and discuss a range of different kinds of literature. Also, whenever I need to interact with Norwegian officialdom (applying for a marriage license, registering to vote, doing my taxes etc.) I always have the option of doing so in English. If I'm downloading official forms for example there are always three options - Bokmål, Nynorsk and English. I don't think English will ever replace Norwegian, but I think its status as a well-established quasi-official second language is only likely to get stronger. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| hernanday Diglot Newbie Canada Joined 4545 days ago 18 posts - 23 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish | Message 6 of 36 17 June 2012 at 12:02pm | IP Logged | ||
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I remember going to the office to get my health insurance and filling immigration papers,
and they were not in English 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4669 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 7 of 36 17 June 2012 at 12:33pm | IP Logged | ||
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If you look at job offers at finn.no, you are expected to speak and write Norwegian (unless you work for Statoil).
''Søkeren må ha god norsk muntlig og skriftlig fremstillingsevne'' The language is many times given explicitly. So, if you are not willing to learn Norwegian, you have better chances in India with the English language. This just proves Norwegians (still) care about their language. Edited by Medulin on 17 June 2012 at 12:54pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| caam_imt Triglot Senior Member Mexico Joined 4863 days ago 232 posts - 357 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2, Finnish Studies: German, Swedish | Message 8 of 36 17 June 2012 at 12:52pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm not really into politics, so I don't know if Finland is REALLY part of Scandinavia
or not (even Finns disagree on this matter to a certain degree). However, I suppose that commenting on Finland may contribute to your question. When you are here for a short time (tourist, exchange student), they make sure to tell you that English is enough for most purposes and you shouldn't worry about this complicated language. Things change, however, when you plan to stay here a bit longer. It is encouraged everywhere to learn Finnish, and even in some cleaning jobs (even if you don't need to speak at all) your employer requires it. Finland has a complicated history (IMO) and they fought for a long time in order to become independent. They fought hard to make Finnish the official language, and there is A LOT of people who even question the importance of Swedish language in contemporary Finland (ranging from "make it optional to learn, as it is not very useful", to "this is Finland and we speak FINNISH only"). I'm not saying that all Finns are the same, but they seem to be really proud of their language (even if some might not show it openly) and I don't think that English is going to be official in the short/long term. And yeah, Finland has a very small foreign population (in %) compared to other countries, and a lot of them (specially refugees) use their mother tongue or Finnish to communicate, so English as an official language doesn't quite make sense here. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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