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English influence on Swedish Plurals | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| 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 9 of 25 06 April 2010 at 4:23pm | IP Logged | |||||
I don't think that it's that much of a stretch so long as we keep the comparison with the Ustasha to language policy. Turning spelling "mistakes" or "bad" grammar into criminal trangressions usually provokes strong reactions, wherever it turns up or is proposed (note that this is different from "hate speech" which in most countries IS treated as a punishable offense). I can also bring up last year's case from Slovakia where the nationalist coalition there (despite its EU-credentials) has passed a law whereby anyone can be fined if caught using "incorrect" Slovak (including spelling mistakes or inserting non-Slovak words into a conversation) in official situations. www.euractiv.com/en/culture/german-mep-slams-slovak-language -law/article-183982 This has been interpreted as a shot not only at poorly-educated Slovaks, but also at citizens who are not native speakers of Slovak (i.e. the minorities of Gypsies and Hungarians in Slovakia). There's no need to discount or complicate the analysis or the comparison when we draw out only the common theme of criminalization of non-standard orthographical/grammatical/lexical use. It doesn't matter if such language policing would "protect" the "little good guys" like French or Slovak or the "big bad guys" like English. Such criminalization is equally reprehensible. 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 11 of 25 06 April 2010 at 9:25pm | IP Logged | |||||
Actually, I was originally thinking that maybe there should be a serious labour camp in the frozen Arctic for such people. Really ;-) Very seriously. But your brilliant arguments finally made me see the errors of my ways and I now realise that I was totally pathetic for loving my native language and culture. Sorry to have caused offense with my hostile comments. Of course, I ought instead to embrace the language, culture and values of a certain other country and forget the outdated, bigoted, backwards ways of my own country. Not to mention the language which is commercially practically useless. Why value ones' own culture and heritage when there is Superman, Barbie, Westerns, Big Macs and so much more to replace it all! (And why really do we even need our own governments by the way? They know how to run the entire world too and what's best for all countries...) So really, I don't know why I used to express surprise or anger in my own language when there are so many much "cooler" English expressions... LIKE.. a totally AWESOME realisation for me! I just needed to CHILL a bit... Well, now I have an even better idea: Let's send those who refuse to fully embrace and support English at the expense of their own language to Guantanomo Bay, along with the rest of the enemies of the free world! Hopefully they can all be re-educated and then go to EuroDisney together. Ok, happy now, T ;-) ? High five man! This idea rocks!!! (as a Swedish six-year-old ought to say..) Edited by cordelia0507 on 06 April 2010 at 9:28pm 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 12 of 25 06 April 2010 at 9:44pm | IP Logged | |||||
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One more comment on this, for the benefit of Tombstone:
------------------------------------------------------------ Fifty years from now it is POSSIBLE (not sure how likely) that the Chinese language has taken the position that English now holds. (Say, for example, that the US has gone down the drain after spending all it's money on warfare, while China has focussed on minding its' own business and building its strenth.) If this happens, give me a call for some moral support when your grandkids are idolizing Chinese looks, attitudes, junk culture and ideology that you don't like... Peppering every sentence with Chinese words and expressions... Meanwhile, people who can't speak Chinese with a good accent are laughed at by other Americans and you miss out on some good job offers due to inadequate skills in Chinese. If you are lucky, stuff that you buy comes with (poorly translated) English manuals, else you're left to work out the Chinese as best you can.. Meanwhile Chinese TV, cinema and music is everywhere -- not to mention constant glorification of the Chinese government and it's excellent politics.. And when you complain about any of this you are labelled "anti-Chinese", a very negative term; you constantly have to defend your position and why you like your own culture and language. 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 13 of 25 06 April 2010 at 9:52pm | IP Logged | |||||
I don't see that as "rightfully". As you also can see in my formulation I accept that Danes (and others) have the right to listen to American music, watch American films and read American magazines. In fact I do that myself. But my evalution of the consequences of their preferences does not depend on what is in their heart. I can just acknowledge the simple fact that the amount of material in English is already now threatening to crowd out anything in other languages, including Danish. And above some treshold their uncritical adoption of Anglosaxon culture at the expense of anything else will destroy Danish culture and language. This will happen irrespective of whether anybody actually wanted it to happen. The Anglification process will not only hit Danish, but also any other language. For instance: if no employee of the Danish TV channels cares to listen to songs in for instance Italian of French or German or Swedish, then the audience won't hear them. The same applies to film. And without that interest in non-Anglosaxon cultures some vital cultural connections to our neighbours will wither away. Another very realistic threath: if all important scientific material from Danish scholars and scientists must be printed in English and only English then our language will lose terrain to English. And this development is already underway. So it is not a question of judging the heart and soul of the Americanized segment among the Danes for judgments sake, - it is a simple and sober assessment of what the consequences of their total fascination with everything American will be, and I have the right to point this out. After all I have to live with those consequences. PS: feel free to replace "Danish" with "Swedish" in this message, - we are in the same boat. Edited by Iversen on 06 April 2010 at 10:10pm 4 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 14 of 25 06 April 2010 at 10:01pm | IP Logged | |||||
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And with that comment, which ironically implicated myself in a heated political discussion, I would ask everybody to tune down the political rethorics and return to a sober technical discussion of the English influence on Swedish morphology.
4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| robsolete Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5385 days ago 191 posts - 428 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Arabic (Written), Mandarin | Message 16 of 25 06 April 2010 at 11:39pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Tombstone just pretty much made my argument, but I would like to also point out that many people forget that the U.S. has no official language, and never has.
In my city I run across public signage and business advertisements in Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, and Chinese on a daily basis. All these languages have their own legal protections in courts of law and are often represented in local schools. Part of the legal precedent for these efforts is the lack of an official language. Cordelia, I actually can appreciate your overall frustration. But your last post was a strawman argument and rather inflammatory. I don't know you from Adam, but if you think that Barbie and Big Macs are all there is to U.S. culture then I am guessing you haven't spent much time here. And hey, you don't have to. I've never been to Sweden. But then again I'm not making vast generalizations about your culture in a public place, so why don't you back off of mine? Even better, why don't you take up your quarrel with the Swedish youth who are selling out their own culture instead of electronically yelling at a bunch of Americans on the internet who work in neither Hollywood nor Washington D.C.? And hey, aren't the British also responsible for this travesty? What with colonizing half the world for three hundred years, they probably set the precedent for the Anglophone takeover. I mean, all the kids in India that I taught were aiming for British accents, not American. Or is that all water under the bridge because you're living in the U.K.? If you and I become right ol' chums an' have a pint down at the pub will my country get a pass, too? I'd be chuffed to bits about that! Anyway. I'm happy to drop out at this point as I have nothing to contribute to a discussion on Swedish morphology. But I feel it's within my rights to question why I and 300,000,000 of my countrymen are being attacked here. Edited by robsolete on 06 April 2010 at 11:44pm 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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