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Icelandic language battles threat of 'digital extinction'

theguardian.com

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Re: Icelandic language battles threat of 'digital extinction'

#51

Post by aestetix »

I think that the idea that all languages but English are going to fade away makes sense to people who only speak English.

I've lived in Germany for a couple years, and have noticed that when native English speakers come here, the Germans all speak to them in English, and when the English speakers go away, the Germans immediately revert back to their native tongue. They can usually do the same for French speakers and sometimes Spanish or Italian too. What this means is that Europeans speak several languages, and English speakers speak one, and therefore English speakers only encounter English.

I suspect the same is true in Iceland, but I have never been there so I can't say for sure.

Re: Icelandic language battles threat of 'digital extinction'

#52

Post by irrational »

nickpeterson wrote: post #17
spraak wrote: post #2

Reverse example: I've only [1] let my child consume Swedish media (mostly the SVT app Barnkanalen, while we live in the US) and their accent is really good, and they often correct me and remind me of how something should be said. [1] Not 100%. They still watch e.g. Moana in English, or sometimes watch shows in German, French, some English ones, etc.

I think it would be especially difficult with children, since the English version tends to be the 'real' version. As such I would assume songs to just be more natural in english, and that tends to be the part children obsess over. I'm from the US, so I have the same problem from the other perspective, "Why learn a language when everyone speaks English." So you get a bunch of children who don't want to become bilingua…

I would love it if American public schools offered a wider variety of languages (my high school in south florida offered Latin in addition to Spanish, German, French, and Italian). But my children's high school in Oregon only offers Spanish. There is 1 German teacher in the entire school district, but she is in a different high school.

Re: Icelandic language battles threat of 'digital extinction'

#53

Post by gruez »

tmountain wrote: post #48
johan_larson wrote: post #3

I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, yes, it's a pity to see a cultural artifact like a language fade away. I get that. But on the other hand, having the world Balkanized into thousands of mutually incomprehensible linguistic ghettoes is a bad thing, because it makes it harder to get things done on large scales. Things would just be easier if we spoke a manageable handful of languages.

It'd also be easier if everyone painted all their houses the same color, ate the same foods all the time, and lived in a universally cookie cutter world, but that'd be terribly boring. Culture is embedded into language, and suggesting that we should standardize on a handful of languages for the sake of convenience places very low (or maybe no) value on cultural preservation. As someone who's been working very hard fo…

>It'd also be easier if everyone painted all their houses the same color, ate the same foods all the time, and lived in a universally cookie cutter world, but that'd be terribly boring.

not a fair comparison. learning a second language takes much more resources (time and money) than having different paint colors or food choices.

Re: Icelandic language battles threat of 'digital extinction'

#54

Post by astrodust »

dsr_ wrote: post #22
elliottkember wrote: post #20

"Icelandic is spoken today by barely 340,000 people" The population of Iceland is 334,252.

Seems reasonable that there could be 6000 or so Icelandic speakers outside Iceland.

Many live and work abroad, plus there's several pockets of Icelanders in various countries, like one notable group in Western Canada as you'd see in places like Gimli, Manitoba: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli,_Manitoba

It's not clear how many still speak Icelandic, but there's heritage.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_Canadians

Re: Icelandic language battles threat of 'digital extinction'

#55

Post by rootbear »

luxpir wrote: post #50

Learn Icelandic for free online, via the gov-supported course: https://icelandiconline.com/ Goes up to advanced level. The appeal for me is the ability to understand one of the least changed old European languages, much akin to our Old English. One that is bizarrely and amazingly still spoken. Admittedly I do speak a fair bit of Swedish, potentially making things easier, but even without that there are many cognates…

I wish I'd found that before I went to Iceland last August! I studied German in college but don't speak it now, but it was fun to see some cognates in Icelandic. I loved Iceland and want to go back some day.

Re: Icelandic language battles threat of 'digital extinction'

#56

Post by smitherfield »

Balero wrote: post #45
smitherfield wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But is it a sustainable road? French-Canadians have been complaining for many years that Montreal's "bilingual" neighborhoods become English-speaking in a decade or so, and "French-speaking" neighborhoods become bilingual. And this is despite extensive government efforts to encourage or even enforce the use of French. You can see the same trends in Catalonia, Wales, Ireland, etc. Where the government intervenes in th…

In Wales the Welsh language has had a massive revival. It's taught in schools, and a basic understanding is very common amongst younger generations.

Sure, there's more interest in Welsh in recent decades, but I strongly suspect it will resume declining if it hasn't already.

I used Welsh, Irish, Catalan and French-in-Quebec as examples because they're all languages that declined (to varying degrees) over several centuries under (varying degrees of) government suppression, experienced a partial rebound in interest and popularity in the 20th century after government policy was changed to encourage their use, but ultimately returned to the same trend of declining usage, something like

  100|
     N
     |\_
     |  \_
     |    \_          ____
     |      \_      _/    \_
     |        \____/        \
     N_______________________
    0|suppressed   encouraged

Re: Icelandic language battles threat of 'digital extinction'

#57

Post by bjourne »

Same thing with Swedish. :( I feel kind of guilty myself because as a developer, I write almost exclusively in English. Most software related terms simply don't exist in Swedish and with everyone using English no new words are being invented.

It's even worse with the younger generation. They can't even use Swedish idioms so they switch to English. For example, they might know and use "You're on thin ice" but don't know what "Ute på hal is" eller "Ute på tunn is" means. If I say "det ligger en hund begraven här" they will look at me funnily and not understand what I mean. However, if I say "Something smells fishy" they will know.

People older than me used even funnier idioms that no one uses anymore. For example "Du ler förnöjt som en katt som nyss svalt en kanariefågel."

I don't know what to do about it, if anything. :/ Undoubtedly, it is easier if everyone speaks the same language. But it is also much less interesting and much less diverse.

Re: Icelandic language battles threat of 'digital extinction'

#58

Post by jsnell »

aestetix wrote: post #51

I think that the idea that all languages but English are going to fade away makes sense to people who only speak English. I've lived in Germany for a couple years, and have noticed that when native English speakers come here, the Germans all speak to them in English, and when the English speakers go away, the Germans immediately revert back to their native tongue. They can usually do the same for French speakers and…

I don't think what's being proposed here is that all other languages will automatically fade away. It's that a language needs a critical mass to actually produce all the cultural artifacts that make speaking it worthwhile. And it's possible that in the modern world the required critical mass is larger, since the expectations are higher.

Literature and music get made even for tiny languages. AAA-video games mostly get made for maybe the top 10 languages; teams from small countries can still make them, but they have to make sure the project has appeal worldwide. Making a Facebook clone with better Icelandic support? Not going to happen.

Re: Icelandic language battles threat of 'digital extinction'

#59

Post by ptaipale »

ocschwar wrote: post #23
elliottkember wrote: post #20

"Icelandic is spoken today by barely 340,000 people" The population of Iceland is 334,252.

Plus 5000 or so scholars around the world specializing in the Norse sagas.

There are certainly many more than that ordinary Icelanders living in other countries, and they still know the language. (I'd guess it's tens of thousands).

Re: Icelandic language battles threat of 'digital extinction'

#60

Post by schoen »

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #37
throwaway7645 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll be that guy that brings up Esperanto. I don't speak it fluently yet, but know it faaar better than Spanish which I have years of formal instruction in and have been exposed to a lot of Latin American culture. The important point is I've gotten very comfortable with Esperanto with only < 50 hours of learning. When around the house I can think of small things in Esperanto without trying. Esperanto was invented to…

> Esperanto was invented to be an easy auxiliary language to easily allow the world to communicate. It is against language imperialism. It is only a rather recent development, since roughly the 1960s, that the Esperanto movement has advertised itself as a force against language imperialism and as purely an international second language for everyone, one that supposedly “protects” their native languages. Some Esperant…

I appreciated our discussion on this point in a thread a few months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15521817
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