Register  Login  Active Topics  Maps  

English influence on Swedish Plurals

  Tags: Swedish | Grammar | English
 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages Post Reply
25 messages over 4 pages: 1 2 3 4  Next >>
Woodpecker
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5811 days ago
351 posts - 590 votes 
Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written), Arabic (Egyptian)
Studies: Arabic (classical)

 
 Message 1 of 25
03 April 2010 at 11:44pm | IP Logged 
I'm currently rereading Bill Bryson's "The Mother Tongue." I first read it when I was
11, and it catalyzed my interest in language. Bits of it seem less credible this time
around, but I am still enjoying it tremendously. However, I came apart one fact that
definitely gave me pause, in the chapter about the influence of English on other
languages.

Quote:

According to a study by
Magnus Ljung of Stockholm University, more than half of all
Swedes now make plurals by adding -s, after the English model,
rather than by adding -ar, -or, or -er, in the normal Swedish way.


Is this true? And if so, how on earth did that come about, and what sort of controversy
has it generated?



Edited by Woodpecker on 03 April 2010 at 11:44pm
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 2 of 25
03 April 2010 at 11:52pm | IP Logged 
No that's nonsense. This must be a misunderstanding.

For words that have been recently borrowed from English, some people might add "s" at the end instead of a normal plural ending. But they certainly don't do it for normal nouns which thankfully still constitute at least 95% of the nouns.

But overall there is a tendency for some stupid people to get too carried away with English; they believe that they appear more "educated" and "international" if they use English words and expressions. Or they spend so much time watching TV that they pick up expressions that have no equivalent in Swedish. Obviously this is controversial among people who value their mother tongue. See earlier rants by me against inappropriate use of English in non-English speaking countries...


4 persons have voted this message useful



Impiegato
Triglot
Senior Member
Sweden
bsntranslation.
Joined 5433 days ago
100 posts - 145 votes 
Speaks: Swedish*, English, Italian
Studies: Spanish, French, Russian

 
 Message 3 of 25
04 April 2010 at 12:08am | IP Logged 
cordelia0507 wrote:
No that's nonsense. This must be a misunderstanding.

For words that have been recently borrowed from English, some people might add "s" at the end instead of a normal plural ending. But they certainly don't do it for normal nouns which thankfully still constitute at least 95% of the nouns.

But overall there is a tendency for some stupid people to get too carried away with English; they believe that they appear more "educated" and "international" if they use English words and expressions. Or they spend so much time watching TV that they pick up expressions that have no equivalent in Swedish. Obviously this is controversial among people who value their mother tongue. See earlier rants by me against inappropriate use of English in non-English speaking countries...



You are right about the plural forms. People tend to choose the English one if it is a loan word, but generally a Swedish form would also fit. An example of this is a word like "scanner".

I have noticed lots of others influences, such as verb constructions that were originally Swedish. In recent years, people have started to use an English equivalent instead. The same goes for dividing words (originally a lot more common in English than in Swedish) and also what you wrote about trying to be regarded as educated or cool: Swedish shops have signs with the text "sale" in the summer. Why is that? Do they think it brings prestige or the simple reason is to be understood by all tourists?   

Edited by Impiegato on 04 April 2010 at 12:18am
2 persons have voted this message useful



cordelia0507
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 5838 days ago
1473 posts - 2176 votes 
Speaks: Swedish*
Studies: German, Russian

 
 Message 4 of 25
04 April 2010 at 2:07am | IP Logged 
I don't know what you mean about verb construction... but use of English when there is a perfectly good Swedish word is just SAD! There should be a FINE for doing that in public places. Seriously.

Today I even noticed that DN (biggest Swedish paper) was writing "judaism" instead of "judendom" in an article! The only "excuse" I can think of is that they translated an English article and missed that word... That's really bad too but for different reasons.

To answer your question: The use of English on town, supposedly for the benefit of tourists, is is also silly in my view. Hardly any of the tourists to Sweden are native English speakers! (They are from the other Scandinavian countries, from Germany, the Baltic states, Poland or Russia... Hardly anyone else goes there.)

Other over-use of English: It's VERY silly when "Folkets hus i Jokkmokk" changes name to "Jokkmokk International Centre for Culture" or something like that. I'm sure you know what I mean! Often the English they use for these names is quite questionable or sounds "off"... Half the locals can't even pronounce these types of names reasonably, and these places probably have no more than ONE native English speaking guest per year, on average! If they want a foreign name, Finnish is more appropriate.

2 persons have voted this message useful



Chung
Diglot
Senior Member
Joined 7156 days ago
4228 posts - 8259 votes 
20 sounds
Speaks: English*, French
Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish

 
 Message 6 of 25
05 April 2010 at 7:59pm | IP Logged 
Tombstone wrote:
   
cordelia0507 wrote:
Obviously this is controversial among people who value their mother tongue. See earlier rants by me against inappropriate use of English in non-English speaking countries...




-- If that use of English is a choice made by a number of citizens of Sweden, be it using English itself are a morphing of a Swedish word to include English influence...how exactly are you able to deem that practice 'inappropriate?'

If the person speaking and the person being spoken to have no issue with it, it's not anyone's place to tell them they are wrong.

This type of thing has happened whenever a popular language is introduced and embraced. It has been this way since the beginning of time.

English has thousands of such words that have been embraced from French, German, Latin, etc. The words were embraced by English speakers who, through usage you would deem 'inappropriate,' made them part of the fabric of the English language.

You may not like that this is happening in Sweden, but it is far from 'inappropriate.'




cordelia0507 wrote:
I don't know what you mean about verb construction... but use of English when there is a perfectly good Swedish word is just SAD! There should be a FINE for doing that in public places. Seriously.



-- Just want to make sure I understand you correctly.

You want to fine Swedish citizens who choose to speak to other Swedish citizens using English words instead of Swedish words?

You literally want criminalize this practice?

Unbelievable.




Unfortunately this type of draconian foolishness/interference has been applied before (not with English, mind you). During WWII, the Croatian puppet government (Ustasha - Croatian Revolutionary Movement) instituted laws whereby Croats could be arrested if caught using words or expressions deemed to be Serbian.

Alexander, Ronelle. “Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, a Grammar: With Sociolinguistic Commentary”. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006, p. 413 wrote:
"Within days [of the establishment of the fascist Croatian puppet state in April 1941 - Ed.], the Cyrillic alphabet was banned, and before the month was out, the new state established the Hrvatski državni ured za jezik. This, the Croatian State Office for Language, was charged with four major tasks: monitoring all aspects of Croatian language use, preparing school textbook and language reference materials, enforcing language laws, and carrying out linguistic propaganda. [...] Because confusion reigned over the precise implementation of this law [i.e. the law by which Croatian spelling would henceforth adhere strictly to the morphophonemic principle rather than the phonetic one which was being shared with Serbian spelling - Ed.], a manual called Koriensko pisanje (roughly, “Root-Oriented Writing”) was written. This manual appeared in early September, 1942, and a four-month grace period was allowed for adaptation. After this, one could be arrested for misspelling - presumably on suspicion of anti-Ustashe [i.e. anti-government - Ed.] sympathies.”


Greenberg, Robert David. “Language and Identity in the Balkans: Serbo-Croatian and its Disintegration” Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004, p. 49 wrote:
The period of extreme purism in Croatia was at the time of the Croatian Fascist state (1941-1945), when Croatian was declared a separate language from Serbian. The regime embarked on a campaign to eliminate from the Croatian language all perceived Serbian elements, and to ethnically cleanse Croatia of its Serbian population. In addition, many words of foreign origin were replaced by Croatian ones. The new words were either revived from early Croatian literature, or invented. New Croatian words were added, such as "munjovoz" (literally 'lightning vehicle') replacing the foreign "tramvaj" 'tram', osposoba (instead of "kvalifikacija" 'qualification'), and "novačiti" 'to recruit, to conscript', rather than "regrutirati".


(What is not mentioned explicitly in Greenberg's description is that many of the foreign words or "internationalisms" were used by Serbs. Their replacement by Croatian authorities was not only seen as a way to strive for an illusory linguistic purity, but also as a way to express the Croatian fascists' virulent contempt for anything associated with the Serbs.)

Edited by Chung on 05 April 2010 at 11:49pm
3 persons have voted this message useful





Iversen
Super Polyglot
Moderator
Denmark
berejst.dk
Joined 6703 days ago
9078 posts - 16473 votes 
Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan
Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian
Personal Language Map

 
 Message 8 of 25
06 April 2010 at 11:30am | IP Logged 
Chung wrote:
(...)
Unfortunately this type of draconian foolishness/interference has been applied before (not with English, mind you). During WWII, the Croatian puppet government (Ustasha - Croatian Revolutionary Movement) instituted laws whereby Croats could be arrested if caught using words or expressions deemed to be Serbian.


I can't see the difference from the things that happened to speakers of Celtic languages in Ireland and Scotland or to the American Indians. But today English doesn't need to implement draconian measures, - it is spreading quite automatically, helped along by people who want to be 'global and 'smart' or who just like the products of the English-American entertainment industry. Which is OK, provided that you don't care about other cultures and languages. But pretending that those who want the spread of English to continue unabated are the good guys and that those who oppose it are in the same league as the Ustasja is far too simplistic.





4 persons have voted this message useful



This discussion contains 25 messages over 4 pages: 1 2 3 4  Next >>


Post ReplyPost New Topic Printable version Printable version

You cannot post new topics in this forum - You cannot reply to topics in this forum - You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum - You cannot create polls in this forum - You cannot vote in polls in this forum


This page was generated in 0.4058 seconds.


DHTML Menu By Milonic JavaScript
Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved
No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization.