Tobias Schwarz, who now also writes for the Fistful of Euros group blog, picks up on a discussion we had in January about language. It's mostly a recycle of an old post from his other blog, but it's a good thread to continue.

I'm not sure I agree with everything I wrote in January any more. There are some parts of it I believe very strongly, and others that were (uninformed) speculation. So let me, hm, "rephrase" what I said then about using a common language on the internet.

The important thing for me is not what people speak in their own homes or at work - here in Norway that will remain Norwegian for a long time, until some major change wipes out national differences in Europe. (Perhaps a successful EU where people move from Norway to Italy as easily and often as an American would move from the east coast to the west coast would force a common social language.) It will be a Norwegian more and more influenced by English, but still recognizably Norwegian.

What's important for me is that we acknowledge the benefits of a common language, the benefits of having conversations with people from all over the world, which is only possible when you use the same language. One obvious example is blogs. Better ones are movies, music, books, and, as Tobias points out, research. You can always translate, but there's a large treshold for translation. I translate excerpts from Norwegian newspaper articles all the time in this blog, but this nowhere near reflects all the things that are written in our newspapers. Translation only ventures outside the mainstream when the receiving market is very large. Few markets can compare to the English-speaking world.

A conversation across borders will change cultures, but this will happen by cultural cross-fertilization, not the conquest of one culture by another. The opposite of conversation is isolation, which is a stupid strategy unless you believe your culture right now is absolutely perfect, and will have nothing to learn from or contribute to other cultures ever again. This is what has happened in Norway with news and politics. Ideas, facts and perspectives simply do not float easily between Norway and the outside world, but only through a very small number of gatekeepers who have their own biases in what to report and how. This was illustrated by Norway's late discovery of neo-conservatism as a force in American foreign policy. It took one and a half year for those ideas to cross the language bridge, and they only arrived at all as parodies.

Complete isolation is not the only alternative to open conversation, though. It used to be, but in many fields no longer is. In entertainment and art, the alternative to conversation is one-way isolation - influence goes one way, but not the other. Even if you account for size, Norway is a lot more influenced by American and British culture than the US and UK is by Norwegian culture. We know their language well enough that we don't have to depend on translators to use their cultural products, but we use our language to create our cultural products. This isn't as bad as full isolation, but it's a counterproductive strategy if you believe that Norway has anything to contribute to the growing part of our own culture that is global and in English. I think we do, and our language discourages that.

I'm not saying we should make movies in English. That would be a good idea, but it's culturally impossible. We don't want to watch Norwegian movies in English. But we should acknowledge the threat of one-way isolation, and try to find ways around it where possible. This is different from the official view that using Norwegian is good for our culture. It may be necessary, but whether it's good depends. Many highly Norway-specific things can perhaps be said best (or only) in Norwegian, but much more can be said in English than is today. Where realistic this would be a good thing.

So I stand by one statement Tobias quotes me on, that "nothing beautiful or sensible should ever be written in Norwegian, if it could have been written in English", but the qualifier "could" is important. You can't market English-language Norwegian movies, novels or newspapers in Norway, so they're unlikely to be made. You can do this with music, - and with websites. Perhaps also with games. One of my favourite games at the moment is Battlefield 1942, which was made by Swedes. Another is Operation Flashpoint, made by Czechs. (OF is mainly about small countries being overrun by the Soviets. I wonder why.)

My main point is this: Lacking other realistic media where Norwegians can carry out a conversation with people from other countries, we should at least try to use English on the Internet. Not everyone can, and that's fine, but if you can you should. There's also a strong incentive here, making this attractive and realistic: There are lot more people who know English than who know Norwegian, but almost all Norwegians know English, so if you want visitors to your website (and most do) the conclusion is obvious - write English. And we'll all benefit from that.

It strikes me that the kind of English-whenever-possible makes Norwegians _more_ than less provincial ...

Battlefield 1942 was made by Swedes? What in living hell...what on God's green earth do Swedes know about WWII? That sounds like announcing the book Brilliant Tank Tactics by someone named Pierre.

As a possibility, you could maybe shoot movies in english and Norwegian. It shouldn't cost that much more, and, you know, maybe making money on them might be an incentive. Just a thought!

Jim: What do any of us know about WW2? Swedes are not disqualified from studying military history. Battlefield 1942 is in any case an arcade game, with more focus on fun than realism. If you want realism, (or perhaps I should say plausibility), Operation Flashpoint is a better choice. So is Combat Mission: Beyond Overlord.

Michael: What is provincial about writing English? Isn't that more a matter of _what_ is written, rather than how?

No, no, sorry, you can't play if you don't pay. You didn't put the quarter in the slot, so you're not even allowed to watch our movies. Please turn in all your copies of Patton to your nearest embassy. And you're forbidden from learning about WWII in schools. Sorry. We have it copyrighted.

You didn't think we fought the war for political reasons, did you? Nooo. It was so we could liscense cool products. Now you know the secret.

"We don't /want/ to watch Norwegian movies in English."

Pardon? Remember _I am Dina_?

http://www.iamdina.com/

Your comment software strips away the p, a, em, and cite tags, by the way.

Bjoern: "What is provincial about writing English?"

Nothing, what I think is provincial is the idea that English is a kind of silver bullet solution for international communication. It's convenient (more for Norwegians than for most Europeans) but it's not magic and it's not enough.

Mike: Actually, the use of an international language is against provincialism by its very nature. That's sort of the definition of the lingua franca. It's the language the world communicates with -including Norway- which makes it internationalist in character. You have your logic perfectly backwards.

Arent: If you don't make them in english, then all you get watching the movie on an international stage are intellectuals and snobs like I am, and there aren't enough snobs to get an audience. Hey, I would watch any Norgie movie you put in front of me so long as it was properly Nordic and dark and moody, but then I'm a snob and an intellectual. You're looking for audience, and there aren't enough of us to go around.

Or, to put it one last way: why are we all conversing here in english? The answer is "because you want to talk to other people outside Norway".

James, using English in an of itself isn't provincial, but in my experience, those who assume that it's the only language(or even foreign language) that matters to be pretty provincial.

Oops that didn't come out right (I hit post before I should have).

add "I have found" between "experience," and "those"

Mike: So then you really don't have a problem with the actual logical mechanics of the english lingua franca so much as you look down on anyone who accepts this state of affairs without protesting or finding the dominance of english disquieting. I suppose I would defend myself based on the other languages I speak, but that's just a silly tack to take.

To add to your distaste, english is slated within the next thirty years to be spoken as a primary language by 600 million people, a fluent second language by another 650 million and a "working capacity" language by another 200 to 300 million.
This will be considerably higher if its spread as a secondary language completes itself in India, where it is spreading rapidly with industrialization. It's the only language spoken by significant numbers of people in nearly every country on earth, and is the defacto language of all the elites of Europe.

By way of comparison, the only other international language of note, French, will be spoken by merely the same number of people who speak it now, this despite agressive efforts on the part of the France to protect and spread French. After French, there is nothing (especially not Mandarin, which, while spoken by nearly a billion people, is restricted almost entirely to China, Taiwan, and the Asian countries with significant Chinese minorities). If anything, simple assumption of english as the international language is something of an understatement.

Bjoern:

I certainly appreciate you posting in English. Were it not for that your valuable insights would be more or less lost outside a Norwegain audience and I and others would not get the benefit of reading them. Also the feedback you receive would be less rich and varied. This is good for dialog and cultural\political cross-pollination, just as you suggest, and may have hard to predict but undoubtedly beneficial effects in the long term. I have certainly appreciated getting a thoughtful Norwegian viewpoint over the last year and reading the associated comments.

James thank you for proving my point. A gloating tirade against the French and the idea that anyone who's anyone, dahling, speaks English is pretty much exactly the attitude I had in mind.

I do find your claim that it's the only language spoken by significant numbers in nearly every country on earth to be simply wrong, staggeringly so.

There are only two countries in Europe that fit that description. It fits maybe one country in South America and hardly any countries in Africa or Asia. Is that really what you intended to write?

I think you've helped me along. First you have a problem with people who don't get apoplectic at the thought of english dominance, now you see gloating where there is purely neutral analysis: I rather wish you would just come at this more honestly and say "I don't like these people and I don't like english dominance" or something similar, and not pretend to have an observation. It's more honest and close to where you are.

I certainly don't think people should get apoplectic about English diffusion (I'm an English teacher, after all). But the process is not entirely benign. I've observed the process of English diffusion (as a foreign language) in Poland for almost ten years and believe me, it's often not a pretty picture.
Amd while English dominance may suit the needs of a country like Norway, it's not nearly so convenient for a country like Poland which can't afford to put all its foreign language eggs in one basket.

I'll agree with that. IF you'd bothered to ask instead of backhanded sneering, I'd admit that the english evolution (revolution?) seems to mean the defacto disengagement from the more beautiful romantic and European languages like German and French. Moliere and Goethe are those whom should ever die.

I am less sure about Poland, though. English seems on glance to me to be more suited for the eastern European region. Of course, you're there and know more than I do, but seeing the evolution of that EU monstrosity makes it seem logical, so long as it rides along with German in greater degree.

English has a great benefit; it is a pain to learn well, but communication is possible with only rudimentary knowledge. More importantly pronounciation can be broad and varied but still intelligible.

I've listened to people who can barely speak english from many countries who all pronounce the same words differently and can understand what they mean.

In english, the phrase "Hi, how are you" is pronounced with such incredible differences and is still understandable. Consider an Australian speaker, a Tennessean speaker, or a Brooklyn speaker. Consider the accent of a native Cantonese speaker, French speaker or (so famous here in California) an Austrian speaker. In many other languages the same spread of difference can make a phrase or word entirely different.

My own name is almost always mispronouced to mean "the voice of heaven" as opposed to "the beloved child of heaven." My son's name is consistently mispronounced as "the dirt road" rather than "the path of peaceful contemplation." Even people who are fluent in other languages (what is it about dipthongs that makes it so hard for people?) mispronounce them.

Now, mind you, I doubt very many people can understand Hawaiian or Acadian Pidgin, but then they're not really english.

Kal

If English didn't exist, we would have to invent it. It is good for international communication if one language, and maybe a handful of others, can make you understood across much of the world.
I don't see anything wrong with that. And English is better suited to be a lingua franca than, say, Chinese.

Dear Audience...if you were pushed against a wall and had to make a "Sophies Choice" between a Europe using euro-english vs. a polyglot union, which would you decide on for the greater good? please let me know, as this is my history fair topic and I would love some international feedback (hence I wrote it in english) meagan

Dear Audience...if you were pushed against a wall and had to make a "Sophies Choice" between a Europe using euro-english vs. a polyglot union, which would you decide on for the greater good? please let me know, as this is my history fair topic and I would love some international feedback (hence I wrote it in english) meagan

Dear Audience...if you were pushed against a wall and had to make a "Sophies Choice" between a Europe using euro-english vs. a polyglot union, which would you decide on for the greater good? please let me know, as this is my history fair topic and I would love some international feedback (hence I wrote it in english) meagan

Dear Audience...if you were pushed against a wall and had to make a "Sophies Choice" between a Europe using euro-english vs. a polyglot union, which would you decide on for the greater good? please let me know, as this is my history fair topic and I would love some international feedback (hence I wrote it in english) meagan

"I don't see anything wrong with that. And English is better suited to be a lingua franca than, say, Chinese".

Why? Because it happens to be more closely related to your own language?

In fact, the Chinese script system, although it is far from as pictographic as people often believe, makes it possible to write different languages in the same language. Thus the word "one", which is "yi" in Mandarin, "yat" in Cantonese and "tsit" in Hokkien is still written in the same way. Thus, a whole list of Chinese languages or dialects, have a common literary vocabulary, Mandarin, Wu, Xiang, Gan, Hakka, Cantonese, Min, Jin, Pinghua, Hui, Danzhou...

Ah, yes, English has the potential to be a worldwide lingua franca, but in reality there will probably continue to be regional lingua francas. And if English did not exist, we would not have to invent it. It would be better to go for the utopic solution; Esperanto. The latter is easier both to learn and master.

Øyvind: Why? Because it happens to be more closely related to your own language?

No, because it's very popular. People all over the world know it or want to learn it. That makes it more and more valuable. Chinese could be a competitor if it becomes popular in Asia, which isn't difficult to imagine considering the economic gravity of a country with a billion people.

I'd rather it were Japanese, though. Then all those hours watching undubbed anime might come to some use.

English is popular in part because of the influence of hollywood and the US. England and her colonial adventurism in the past certainly helped. Do i also dare say that aggressive evangelism by sales-men/women of the 'jealous-God' corporations ie. Churchianity,Inc. has also helped to diffuse the english language world-wide?

I doubt chinese will ever become an international lingua franca. I do agree with Oeyvind and Bjoern though that i may become popular regional language because of its growing economic influence.

The traditional chinese script is pictographic, the simplified script current in mainland china has lost its pictographic 'charm'. The pictographic script although cumbersome is an ideal unifying script to write the various chinese languages ( actually 'dialect' is a misonmer in my opinion, because the chinese languages are tonal and a mandarin speaker can hardly understand a cantonese speaker, unless they resort to the written word - but then many chinese can speak 'chinese' but may not be able to write the complicated script or write it well!). Here are some sample scripts:

回教可能損壞您的健康 (traditional script)
回教可能损坏您的健康 (simplified script)

( ahem....Islam can ruin your health )

打倒 回教 ! ( ahem, ahem...Down with Islam !)
ta tau hui chiao ( mandarin)
pak toh huey kau ( hokkien)
tah tou houi kaou ( cantonese)

to complicate matters for non chinese speakers, the chinese languages are tonal - mandarin has 4 tones ( shang shen, hsia shen, chi shen, ping shen). Each sound has 4 tones and each tone denotes a different meaning..so that 'ching' depending on the tone may mean 'invite', 'green', 'eye','reed' etc. Hokkien or Min-Nang is peculiar in that it has more triphthongs than diphthongs ..making the speech very lilting. Swedish have words that are bi-tonal.

Bulky as the chinese pictographs are , the influence of chinese on all the asian countries have been considerable, old korean and old vietnamese used chinese scripts to write their language until more recently when korean now use their own korean syllabary( south koreans still learn chinese pictographs for their names and historical / literary language -- north koreans have abandoned chinese script altogether- courtesy of the north korean language ayatollahs -- may Allah put a pox on them ..tee hee ) and vietnamese used an adapted form of latin script.

The japanese are of course hopelessly quagmired in their syllabary cum kanji mess although romaji is an option for all norske and international Anim(e)ists ( oh Bjoern i did not know you are an Animist....worshipping stones and trees are good , hail Gaia !..........hmmm did we say STONE (gasp!).....i wonder who else worship and kiss a big black stone ( a meteorite to whit LOL ) ????? LOL LOL LOL

Interestingly Danish, Norwegian and Swedish could be construed as dialects although for nationalistic and political reasons are designated the status of languages. The same can be said of Dutch, Vlaams and Afrikaans. I once had a danish friend who haughtily proclaimed to me and Jeltje my Dutch friend that Norwegian is really a dialect of Danish ( o.k. this calls for a Norwegian Fatwa against the Danes )

By the way Esperanto was contrived as an artificial language but overtime native (!) and not so native speakers of Esperanto have evolved dialects , so it is a living language now -- beset with all the problems that face a living language !--- slang, modismos, argotisme, dialects etc.etc....

Sister Issu Lam-Phuob :)

أخت إاس لام فوب

Bjørn:

Of course, you are completely right that English is a popular language. But this is not because of the language - nor because it is "better suited to be lingua franca", as Peder Jensen stated above.

In many ways English is the Latin of the day, because of its cultural, economical and political significance. Jensens statement seems to be somewhat culturally arrogant.

Obviously, this can change. And while I do not believe Chinese is gonna be world language number one very soon, I do believe that we will actually see an increased importance of a number of other languages than English, and this will definitely not be to the benefit of the anglosaxon dialect of Norwegian.

Furthermore, I do agree with Kim Sook-Im that "dialects" is not a good word when it comes to the Chinese languages, the Chinese themselves have a better word, of course, but like much in the language world - it is quite intranslatable.

The idea of the Scandinavian languages as one language is somewhat odd, but intriguing enough. I work together with a heap of Scandinavians, and do actually feel that we have a language in common. I am also surprised by the feel of common culture I have with these people.

".... I am also surprised by the feel of common culture I have with these people."

>>>>>Kung Gustav doppade hans bröd in hans koffiekop....to show a bond and sense of communality with his subjects. Does Kong Harald or Haakon etc and norwegians and danes do that too......

.....just a curiose non 'issu ran foobu' questjion LOL ????

Søster Ingrid Kim

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