“As a speaker of a small language, it can be alarming to hear the rapidly increasing influx of new words from a dominant force. Back in 2000, linguistics researcher Sylfest Lomheim caused upheaval by claiming the Norwegian language wouldn’t survive the next century. Is this the beginning of the end?” On the Anglicization of Norwegian.
Beginning of the End
The Door to Another World
Recommended Reading: A new short story by Whiting Award-winner Alice Sola Kim.
Glad to hear they’re doing well.
Recommended Reading: “Patterns” by Kristiina Ehin, which has a better opening line than anything else you’re going to read this month, I promise.
●
●
Free Kindles for Big Readers
TechCrunch has discovered that Amazon is (essentially) giving away free Kindles to those readers who are in the prime Kindle demographic: readers who order a lot of books each year.
●
●
One comment:
Add Your Comment: Cancel reply
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
i c wut u did thier
In an interview with the CBC, Anne Trubek makes the argument for the wide acceptance of poor spelling. Trubek also had an essay in Wired earlier this year on spelling and autocorrect.
In China, my name is Mud.
Chinese citizens are increasingly adopting English nicknames. But, why would anyone choose a name like “Rainman” or “Mud”? The new book In China, My Name is… explores this puzzling phenomena. (Awesome t-shirt, Ben)
Fictitious Abstractions
Recommended Reading: On educating teenagers’ emotions through literature.
●
●
Old English isn’t recognizable to most modern speakers. Heck, I once saw a girl post in Yahoo! Answers asking where she could find a video copy of a Charles Dickens novel because she couldn’t understand such “old” English. And that’s only a little over a century of linguistic evolution! Yet ,despite people like her, a lot of English speakers can still enjoy Robert Burns (even if they’re not a teensey bit Scottish) and William Shakespeare (who is a good deal older than Charles Dickens).
Point being: maybe day-to-day Norwegian will sound more Anglican. helpful in a “global village.” keep a good literary tradition and “classic” Norwegian will still be there.
Oh, and if it helps, the native Menominee language nearly went extinct in the mid-20th Century, with only two native speakers left. It’s now rebounded and probably has a few thousand speakers. How many Norwegian speakers are there?