15 ms·

Icelandic language battles threat of 'digital extinction'

137 points by bertzzie 9y ago

spraak 9y ago
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.
- nickpeterson 9y ago
  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 bilingual since it serves no apparent value in their lives. It doesn't help that schools basically only push Spanish, which is actively besieged by half the population. I really wish schools would push things like mandarin and german more since it's a much larger part of the world economy.
  - meheleventyone 9y ago
    Isn’t Spanish a globally important language as well?
    - icebraining 9y ago
      In number of speakers it is, but parent talked about the economy, and Germany alone has a GDP of almost 70% of all the nations with Spanish as their official language combined.
  - spraak 9y ago
    I'm not sure that I understand what you're saying, but for my child they see the Swedish version as the real version, firstly because it's the only version they've seen, and that often most of the shows are actually only available in Swedish.
  - irrational 9y ago
    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.
johan_larson 9y ago
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.
- marten-de-vries 9y ago
  There's a middle road, you know: being bilingual. To run with the Icelandic example, you'll be hard pressed to find someone who speaks it but not English. Where I live, there's also a local language (Frisian) spoken beside the 'bigger' language (Dutch). And here too, lots of people speak English. Or if not, you might get lucky with German.
  - Retric 9y ago
    That's the first half of a language dying. If everyone speaks Dutch and it's on signs and menus etc then learning Frisian has limited value.
    - marten-de-vries 9y ago
      I don't think so, or the language would have died out already. I'd argue it's more about whether children learn it as their primary language. Also, because of concerns of linguistic extinction, similar to the ones mentioned for Icelandic in the article, you see somewhat of a counter-movement as well. This caused e.g. a special status of the language by law (see e.g. [1]), and also: * it's a mandatory school subject * you are entitled to using it in government interactions, e.g. in court * a small part of the public television is in Frisian, and there's also a regional tv/radio channel using it exclusively * place name signs are often at least bilingual, and sometimes Frisian-only. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Charter_for_Regional_or_Minority_Languages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Charter_for_Regional_...
      - deleted 9y ago
radagast 9y ago
This has been discussed for as long as I remember myself (am 30 now). First it was the influence of english in TV (we only dub childrens shows and movies). I came unscattered from my youth and really doubt that my children won't be as good or better at icelandic than me. Everyone has learned icelandic, basic danish and advanced english at age 16. From the age 16-20 majority of kids add a fourth language which is either french, german or spanish. I'm now extra grateful for all the languages that I was exposed too in school even though I didn't find them interesting at the time. It's easy to communicating and understanding the basics when travelling. And I really love my language and I'm sure that it'll hold up just fine for the next decades. I know few examples of families with children that have grown up abroad and yes, their grammar often is strange but they speak quite well and they feel a connection back "home" through the language.
- powercf 9y ago
  My problem is that, as time goes by, English use will become more common, and Icelandic less. The spread of the English language (e.g. the children in the article who '“know what the word is” for something they are being shown on the flashcard, but not in Icelandic.') is accompanied by the spread of US culture (TV, film, music). While US culture isn't neccessarily better or worse than any other, I get a lot of enjoyment from visiting places where English isn't spoken, and where one can see different traditions, greetings etc. I see the spread of the English language a step in the Americanization of the world, which is a shame.
  - SEJeff 9y ago
    You know that the English language doesn't originate in America, right? Equating the spread of English as a step in the Americanization of the world (to me) is a bit silly. I can reword your statement to use Spanish and Peru. It sounds just as weird: I see the spread of the Spanish language a step in the Peruvianization of the world, which is a shame. In America, we speak all kinds of languages, of which English is the most common.
    - ardfie 9y ago
erfgh 9y ago
This is bullshit and you can mostly write the same article for any non-English language.
- dsr_ 9y ago
  I'm pretty sure French doesn't think of itself as dying. Or Spanish. Or Portuguese, even if many more people speak it in Brazil than in Portugal. Mandarin, Hindi, Arabic, Russian, Japanese, Malay, Korean -- English may be the most popular second language for all these populations, but there's lots of new work being produced in all of them, and thriving populations who use them all day long.
cal5k 9y ago
Just got back from Iceland! (I'm Canadian) Outside of the touristy parts of Reykjavik, everybody will assume you speak Icelandic until you respond in English. Then they'll switch to almost perfect English, with remarkably few exceptions. It was pretty amazing. In small towns like Akureryi, there's a lot of local pressure to keep signs mostly in Icelandic. I was actually surprised by this since there were a lot of English-speaking tourists in the area, but I respect it thoroughly. It's their country, I should learn how to get around. Oh, as an aside - as someone who is single and still uses the various datings apps, I was also impressed by how idiomatically correct their english was even down to slang and figures of speech. There's clearly a large influence from American media. If you're travelling to Iceland, take the time to learn a few basic Icelandic phrases - the locals have a lot of pride in their culture and will love you for it.
- deong 9y ago
  Akureyri isn't really a "small town" by Icelandic standards though. Once you get into the actual small towns over on the eastern side of the country for example, English proficiency is much, much lower. But yeah, certainly the more populated areas are extremely English-friendly. My folks in Arkansas probably see more non-English speakers in the average month than I did in Reykjavik.
  - pauljaworski 9y ago
    That was not my experience. I spent 3 weeks in Iceland, and only met one person who was not fluent in English (even they were plenty conversational). You're right that Akureyri is not a small town for Iceland, though.
    - meheleventyone 9y ago
      Mind you as a tourist you’re going to be bumping into far more fluent locals than you might in day to day life otherwise. I’ve lived here for seven years and whilst I work in English and live in downtown Reykjavík I still meet a not unsubstantial number of Icelanders who are not comfortable with English. Mostly those 50+ but still some a generation younger. English speaking is definitely nearly ubiquitous in younger generations though.
ocschwar 9y ago
Hebrew, like Icelandic, is subject to a conscious effort to maintain its character as it modernises. Icelanders want their new vocabulary to stay Norse, as opposed to the far less picky tendencies of everyone else who uses Germanic languages. With Hebrew, it's keeping things Semitic. New words should be derived from Arabic/Aramaic/Maltese/Ethiopian sources before anything else, and if that fails, first go to Persian, Greek or Latin before getting words from English or French. Icelanders are going to have a harder time of it, because English can worm its way into Icelandic more easily than it can enter into Hebrew. Plus they have less of a critical mass.
elliottkember 9y ago
"Icelandic is spoken today by barely 340,000 people" The population of Iceland is 334,252.
- dsr_ 9y ago
  Seems reasonable that there could be 6000 or so Icelandic speakers outside Iceland.
  - astrodust 9y ago
    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 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_Canadians
- ocschwar 9y ago
  Plus 5000 or so scholars around the world specializing in the Norse sagas.
  - ptaipale 9y ago
    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).
hyperrail 9y ago
Windows has provided UI language packs for Icelandic since at least the release of Windows 8.0 in 2012, and now offers them for supported versions starting with Windows 7: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/14236/language-packs https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/14236/language-pack... (The UI translation/localization is partial; the most read strings are in Icelandic, but the rest are typically in English, and you need to install the English UI language pack to load those strings.) And if you go to Bing's website https://www.bing.com https://www.bing.com and set your browser to request webpages in Icelandic (via an "Accept-Language: is" HTTP header), then much of the website changes to Icelandic. However, the search query auto-complete suggestions and the search results will only be in Icelandic if you are in Iceland yourself. From the article, it seems like the Guardian reporter either didn't know this, or doesn't think Microsoft is important (!): > Online, however, is the biggest concern. Apart from Google – which, mainly because it has an Icelandic engineer, has added Icelandic speech recognition to its Android mobile operating system – the internet giants have no interest in offering Icelandic options for a population the size of Cardiff’s.
cletus 9y ago
In a world of agricultural monocultures, it's not really surprising that languages fade while others become increasingly dominant. Language is really an artifact of isolation and distance. In an incredibly connected world, the pressure changes from divergence to convergence. Like other commenters, I have mixed feelings about this. Another used the word "balkanized" (which is a great word) to describe a world divided by incomprehensible language. Others note that a monoculture isn't the only solution. (Bi|multi)lingualism is another alternative. Multilingualism was the historical response to a world becoming increasingly connected. My great-grandfather grew up in an area where he spoke Russian, French, German and Latvian... by necessity. Depending on which way the political winds were blowing his generation could be conscripted into the Russian or German (maybe Prussian at this point) armies. That works fine when your sphere is your country and neighbouring countries. But now the sphere is increasingly "the world". Multilingualism seems to be somewhat cultural and, more importantly, is something that's passed down from one generation to the next. Older children and adults can (and do) acquire new languages with varying success (some are adept, others are not). It seems like if you don't have this from birth you're kinda screwed. If there's no pressure for you to use another language, you're also kinda screwed. This comes up particularly in the English speaking world where those countries that have English as the predominant first language tend to have no pressure to use another language nor the cultural heritage of multilingualism. It seems inevitable to me that the world is heading towards a future with a handful of remaining languages. Obvious candidates include English, Arabic, Mandarin, Spanish, Hindi and Russian.
irrational 9y ago
I visited Iceland for 2 weeks in April of 2016 (doing the ring road). Without exception, everyone we met spoke great English. One day we were eating dinner in a small cafe in the north part of the island. Our server's English was so perfect we were convinced he grew up somewhere in the US. He informed us that he had never left his village and had just picked it up from American TV, movies, etc. Amazing.
luxpir 9y ago
Learn Icelandic for free online, via the gov-supported course: https://icelandiconline.com/ 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 that make learning it easier for English-speakers. Or German-speakers, for that matter.
- rootbear 9y ago
  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.
- amyjess 9y ago
  > The appeal for me is the ability to understand one of the least changed old European languages, much akin to our Old English. From what I understand, written Icelandic is mutually intelligible with Old Norse, so if you learned Icelandic you could actually read the sagas. The pronunciation has diverged enough that the spoken languages aren't mutually intelligible, but nobody really speaks Old Norse anymore so it doesn't matter. I guess it's kinda like the relationship between Middle English and Modern English. The written forms are similar enough that Chaucer is usually presented in the original Middle English alongside a gloss for whatever words have disappeared from the language since.
  - legulere 9y ago
    I can't say the opposite is true. I learned a bit of old norse in university reading sagas and looking at modern Icelandic the problem really is the vocabulary, which seems completely different from what you find in the sagas.
aestetix 9y ago
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.
- jsnell 9y ago
  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.
- Mediterraneo10 9y ago
  In the linked article, it is Icelanders too who are complaining about domain loss. It's not just a matter of foreign visitors having a mistaken impression of the local sociolinguistics.
bjourne 9y ago
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.
- kuschku 9y ago
  And the worst part is that with the removal of the language barrier, people also all start to consume the same media. And that means US culture starts to affect more and more people. Already today people that primarily watch english media have significantly different views on driving children to school, or social safety than those who watch primarily media in the local language, even correcting for age, gender, education, etc. It’s scary to see because it’s means more and more of the broken parts of US culture end up here in Europe as well.
  - irrational 9y ago
    What is preventing Europe from creating media that reflect their culture and exporting it to the world? If Europe could create music, movies, etc. that are more popular than the offerings from the US then... problem solved?
    - kuschku 9y ago
      Simply said, economics. This is a winner-takes-all problem, nothing short of banning US media and forcing creation of a local media industry will be able to do that.
remir 9y ago
I wonder what will happen to languages and culture when we will eventually be able to transmit direct thoughts to another person using brain implants or other tech. Imagine being able to communicate without any possibility of misunderstanding. The idea you have in mind is the exact idea the other person receives.
- wil421 9y ago
  I don’t think it works that way. My thoughts are in English. I’ve asked bilingual people about their dreams and thoughts. Most of them say it can be both languages usually depending on where they are. If you mean transfer a feeling then I’d agree it’s possible. Like happy, sad, angry etc.
  - intrasight 9y ago
    He may be implying a hybrid, which does non-spoken translation but also add emotional queues in order to make things clear.
  - boreas 9y ago
    When people make vector embeddings for words, it's fairly common that the embedding for one language is just a rotation of the embedding for the synonym in another language. So I think the higher level (and lower dimensional) representations of thoughts could be pretty consistent across native languages. Even though you might perceive your thoughts to be formulated in your native language, your brain almost certainly generates that representation from another, which is probably more universal. That means we could exchange these universal representations of thoughts and our own brains would do the "translation" as necessary.
  - remir 9y ago
    I am bilingual. I personally do not dream in a specific language. When I wake up, I'll remember scenes, people, feelings and actions. Sometimes there are dialogues in French, but it's rare. As for thoughts, I often think in French or English, but for a lot of thoughts, no language is involved. For example, I do not think "I must pay my electricity bill" or "I should do some laundry today".
bitcoinboi9 9y ago
Very easy, make Duolingo as a CAPTCHA for translating the web into Icelandic.
jonathanyc 9y ago
Not to be trite, but note that Iceland's total population (~300k) is less than half of San Francisco's (~800k). > “It’s called ‘digital minoritisation’,” said Eiríkur Rögnvaldsson, a professor of Icelandic language and linguistics at the University of Iceland. “When a majority language in the real world becomes a minority language in the digital world.” This makes the phrase "digital minoritisation" seem pretty silly. We should definitely try to protect the heritage of uncommonly spoken languages like Icelandic, Basque, etc. But it's not clear why the plight of Icelandic, a language with its "own country," is particularly deserving of this sort of dramatization.
lopmotr 9y ago
Oh no, not another save-the-language story. As with all of them, it takes for granted the assumption that it needs saving but doesn't explain why beyond "cultural heritage". Why do people need to persist the same culture as their parents and grandparents? Whatever good that does should be more than the cost of learning it and using it everywhere. Does anyone know what the good of maintaining a little-used language is? In my country we have a similar issue except the local language was artificially revived from dead so there's no or almost no unbroken chain of native speakers. There's still debate about how some (English) letters are supposed to be pronounced. They've added useful words, then changed them to sound more authentic. Eg days of the week used to be transliterations from English but now they're references to various native Gods and things. The whole concept of a week didn't exist in the original culture so how can authentic day names exist at all?! It's a big effort with no justification. It leads to things like this gem of nonsense in an code of practice for electrical work: "From a Maori perspective, the term “earth” or Papatuanuku translates as Earth Mother – the source of all energy. When aligning this concept to the flow of electricity, a useful parallel can be made to the 3-pin plug."
- stinkytaco 9y ago
  There's historical importance to. If you lose the native speakers and writers of language, you lose the ability to read and interpret the written history of a culture. There's ancient Mediterranean civilizations we don't understand because we cannot read Linear A or Cretan.
- atlih 9y ago
  Language affects our thought process, so therefore the fewer languages there are in the world the more monotone the thought process of the world. I'm not saying there's any chance of saving the languages, we will most definitely end up with only one language somewhere in the next 200 years, I'm just pointing out that there's something we'll lose along the way.
  - lopmotr 9y ago
    This has come up a lot but do you have any examples where it's significant?
microcolonel 9y ago
Well, they could start by making Icelandic accessible to the outside world, good luck learning it outside Iceland.
gabordemooij 9y ago
I am creating a programming language that supports native languages, I would love to release a version in this language. If any of you here is a native Icelandic speaker pls contact me and help me create a proper translation (https://citrine-lang.org/ https://citrine-lang.org/)! I'll send you a dictionary file that contains the translation strings (from everything like IF-ELSE to CREATEHASH and so on...)

137 points by bertzzie 9y ago

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.

nickpeterson 9y ago
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 bilingual since it serves no apparent value in their lives. It doesn't help that schools basically only push Spanish, which is actively besieged by half the population. I really wish schools would push things like mandarin and german more since it's a much larger part of the world economy.
- meheleventyone 9y ago
  Isn’t Spanish a globally important language as well?
  - icebraining 9y ago
    In number of speakers it is, but parent talked about the economy, and Germany alone has a GDP of almost 70% of all the nations with Spanish as their official language combined.
- spraak 9y ago
  I'm not sure that I understand what you're saying, but for my child they see the Swedish version as the real version, firstly because it's the only version they've seen, and that often most of the shows are actually only available in Swedish.
- irrational 9y ago
  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.

johan_larson 9y ago

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.

marten-de-vries 9y ago
There's a middle road, you know: being bilingual. To run with the Icelandic example, you'll be hard pressed to find someone who speaks it but not English. Where I live, there's also a local language (Frisian) spoken beside the 'bigger' language (Dutch). And here too, lots of people speak English. Or if not, you might get lucky with German.
- Retric 9y ago
  That's the first half of a language dying. If everyone speaks Dutch and it's on signs and menus etc then learning Frisian has limited value.
  - marten-de-vries 9y ago
    I don't think so, or the language would have died out already. I'd argue it's more about whether children learn it as their primary language. Also, because of concerns of linguistic extinction, similar to the ones mentioned for Icelandic in the article, you see somewhat of a counter-movement as well. This caused e.g. a special status of the language by law (see e.g. [1]), and also: * it's a mandatory school subject * you are entitled to using it in government interactions, e.g. in court * a small part of the public television is in Frisian, and there's also a regional tv/radio channel using it exclusively * place name signs are often at least bilingual, and sometimes Frisian-only. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Charter_for_Regional_or_Minority_Languages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Charter_for_Regional_...
    - deleted 9y ago

radagast 9y ago

This has been discussed for as long as I remember myself (am 30 now). First it was the influence of english in TV (we only dub childrens shows and movies). I came unscattered from my youth and really doubt that my children won't be as good or better at icelandic than me. Everyone has learned icelandic, basic danish and advanced english at age 16. From the age 16-20 majority of kids add a fourth language which is either french, german or spanish. I'm now extra grateful for all the languages that I was exposed too in school even though I didn't find them interesting at the time. It's easy to communicating and understanding the basics when travelling. And I really love my language and I'm sure that it'll hold up just fine for the next decades. I know few examples of families with children that have grown up abroad and yes, their grammar often is strange but they speak quite well and they feel a connection back "home" through the language.

powercf 9y ago
My problem is that, as time goes by, English use will become more common, and Icelandic less. The spread of the English language (e.g. the children in the article who '“know what the word is” for something they are being shown on the flashcard, but not in Icelandic.') is accompanied by the spread of US culture (TV, film, music). While US culture isn't neccessarily better or worse than any other, I get a lot of enjoyment from visiting places where English isn't spoken, and where one can see different traditions, greetings etc. I see the spread of the English language a step in the Americanization of the world, which is a shame.
- SEJeff 9y ago
  You know that the English language doesn't originate in America, right? Equating the spread of English as a step in the Americanization of the world (to me) is a bit silly. I can reword your statement to use Spanish and Peru. It sounds just as weird: I see the spread of the Spanish language a step in the Peruvianization of the world, which is a shame. In America, we speak all kinds of languages, of which English is the most common.
  - ardfie 9y ago

erfgh 9y ago

This is bullshit and you can mostly write the same article for any non-English language.

dsr_ 9y ago
I'm pretty sure French doesn't think of itself as dying. Or Spanish. Or Portuguese, even if many more people speak it in Brazil than in Portugal. Mandarin, Hindi, Arabic, Russian, Japanese, Malay, Korean -- English may be the most popular second language for all these populations, but there's lots of new work being produced in all of them, and thriving populations who use them all day long.

cal5k 9y ago

Just got back from Iceland! (I'm Canadian) Outside of the touristy parts of Reykjavik, everybody will assume you speak Icelandic until you respond in English. Then they'll switch to almost perfect English, with remarkably few exceptions. It was pretty amazing. In small towns like Akureryi, there's a lot of local pressure to keep signs mostly in Icelandic. I was actually surprised by this since there were a lot of English-speaking tourists in the area, but I respect it thoroughly. It's their country, I should learn how to get around. Oh, as an aside - as someone who is single and still uses the various datings apps, I was also impressed by how idiomatically correct their english was even down to slang and figures of speech. There's clearly a large influence from American media. If you're travelling to Iceland, take the time to learn a few basic Icelandic phrases - the locals have a lot of pride in their culture and will love you for it.

deong 9y ago
Akureyri isn't really a "small town" by Icelandic standards though. Once you get into the actual small towns over on the eastern side of the country for example, English proficiency is much, much lower. But yeah, certainly the more populated areas are extremely English-friendly. My folks in Arkansas probably see more non-English speakers in the average month than I did in Reykjavik.
- pauljaworski 9y ago
  That was not my experience. I spent 3 weeks in Iceland, and only met one person who was not fluent in English (even they were plenty conversational). You're right that Akureyri is not a small town for Iceland, though.
  - meheleventyone 9y ago
    Mind you as a tourist you’re going to be bumping into far more fluent locals than you might in day to day life otherwise. I’ve lived here for seven years and whilst I work in English and live in downtown Reykjavík I still meet a not unsubstantial number of Icelanders who are not comfortable with English. Mostly those 50+ but still some a generation younger. English speaking is definitely nearly ubiquitous in younger generations though.

ocschwar 9y ago

Hebrew, like Icelandic, is subject to a conscious effort to maintain its character as it modernises. Icelanders want their new vocabulary to stay Norse, as opposed to the far less picky tendencies of everyone else who uses Germanic languages. With Hebrew, it's keeping things Semitic. New words should be derived from Arabic/Aramaic/Maltese/Ethiopian sources before anything else, and if that fails, first go to Persian, Greek or Latin before getting words from English or French. Icelanders are going to have a harder time of it, because English can worm its way into Icelandic more easily than it can enter into Hebrew. Plus they have less of a critical mass.

elliottkember 9y ago

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

dsr_ 9y ago
Seems reasonable that there could be 6000 or so Icelandic speakers outside Iceland.
- astrodust 9y ago
  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 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_Canadians
ocschwar 9y ago
Plus 5000 or so scholars around the world specializing in the Norse sagas.
- ptaipale 9y ago
  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).

hyperrail 9y ago

Windows has provided UI language packs for Icelandic since at least the release of Windows 8.0 in 2012, and now offers them for supported versions starting with Windows 7: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/14236/language-packs https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/14236/language-pack... (The UI translation/localization is partial; the most read strings are in Icelandic, but the rest are typically in English, and you need to install the English UI language pack to load those strings.) And if you go to Bing's website https://www.bing.com https://www.bing.com and set your browser to request webpages in Icelandic (via an "Accept-Language: is" HTTP header), then much of the website changes to Icelandic. However, the search query auto-complete suggestions and the search results will only be in Icelandic if you are in Iceland yourself. From the article, it seems like the Guardian reporter either didn't know this, or doesn't think Microsoft is important (!): > Online, however, is the biggest concern. Apart from Google – which, mainly because it has an Icelandic engineer, has added Icelandic speech recognition to its Android mobile operating system – the internet giants have no interest in offering Icelandic options for a population the size of Cardiff’s.

cletus 9y ago

In a world of agricultural monocultures, it's not really surprising that languages fade while others become increasingly dominant. Language is really an artifact of isolation and distance. In an incredibly connected world, the pressure changes from divergence to convergence. Like other commenters, I have mixed feelings about this. Another used the word "balkanized" (which is a great word) to describe a world divided by incomprehensible language. Others note that a monoculture isn't the only solution. (Bi|multi)lingualism is another alternative. Multilingualism was the historical response to a world becoming increasingly connected. My great-grandfather grew up in an area where he spoke Russian, French, German and Latvian... by necessity. Depending on which way the political winds were blowing his generation could be conscripted into the Russian or German (maybe Prussian at this point) armies. That works fine when your sphere is your country and neighbouring countries. But now the sphere is increasingly "the world". Multilingualism seems to be somewhat cultural and, more importantly, is something that's passed down from one generation to the next. Older children and adults can (and do) acquire new languages with varying success (some are adept, others are not). It seems like if you don't have this from birth you're kinda screwed. If there's no pressure for you to use another language, you're also kinda screwed. This comes up particularly in the English speaking world where those countries that have English as the predominant first language tend to have no pressure to use another language nor the cultural heritage of multilingualism. It seems inevitable to me that the world is heading towards a future with a handful of remaining languages. Obvious candidates include English, Arabic, Mandarin, Spanish, Hindi and Russian.

irrational 9y ago

I visited Iceland for 2 weeks in April of 2016 (doing the ring road). Without exception, everyone we met spoke great English. One day we were eating dinner in a small cafe in the north part of the island. Our server's English was so perfect we were convinced he grew up somewhere in the US. He informed us that he had never left his village and had just picked it up from American TV, movies, etc. Amazing.

luxpir 9y ago

Learn Icelandic for free online, via the gov-supported course: https://icelandiconline.com/ 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 that make learning it easier for English-speakers. Or German-speakers, for that matter.

rootbear 9y ago
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.
amyjess 9y ago
> The appeal for me is the ability to understand one of the least changed old European languages, much akin to our Old English. From what I understand, written Icelandic is mutually intelligible with Old Norse, so if you learned Icelandic you could actually read the sagas. The pronunciation has diverged enough that the spoken languages aren't mutually intelligible, but nobody really speaks Old Norse anymore so it doesn't matter. I guess it's kinda like the relationship between Middle English and Modern English. The written forms are similar enough that Chaucer is usually presented in the original Middle English alongside a gloss for whatever words have disappeared from the language since.
- legulere 9y ago
  I can't say the opposite is true. I learned a bit of old norse in university reading sagas and looking at modern Icelandic the problem really is the vocabulary, which seems completely different from what you find in the sagas.

aestetix 9y ago

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.

jsnell 9y ago
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.
Mediterraneo10 9y ago
In the linked article, it is Icelanders too who are complaining about domain loss. It's not just a matter of foreign visitors having a mistaken impression of the local sociolinguistics.

bjourne 9y ago

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.

kuschku 9y ago
And the worst part is that with the removal of the language barrier, people also all start to consume the same media. And that means US culture starts to affect more and more people. Already today people that primarily watch english media have significantly different views on driving children to school, or social safety than those who watch primarily media in the local language, even correcting for age, gender, education, etc. It’s scary to see because it’s means more and more of the broken parts of US culture end up here in Europe as well.
- irrational 9y ago
  What is preventing Europe from creating media that reflect their culture and exporting it to the world? If Europe could create music, movies, etc. that are more popular than the offerings from the US then... problem solved?
  - kuschku 9y ago
    Simply said, economics. This is a winner-takes-all problem, nothing short of banning US media and forcing creation of a local media industry will be able to do that.

remir 9y ago

I wonder what will happen to languages and culture when we will eventually be able to transmit direct thoughts to another person using brain implants or other tech. Imagine being able to communicate without any possibility of misunderstanding. The idea you have in mind is the exact idea the other person receives.

wil421 9y ago
I don’t think it works that way. My thoughts are in English. I’ve asked bilingual people about their dreams and thoughts. Most of them say it can be both languages usually depending on where they are. If you mean transfer a feeling then I’d agree it’s possible. Like happy, sad, angry etc.
- intrasight 9y ago
  He may be implying a hybrid, which does non-spoken translation but also add emotional queues in order to make things clear.
- boreas 9y ago
  When people make vector embeddings for words, it's fairly common that the embedding for one language is just a rotation of the embedding for the synonym in another language. So I think the higher level (and lower dimensional) representations of thoughts could be pretty consistent across native languages. Even though you might perceive your thoughts to be formulated in your native language, your brain almost certainly generates that representation from another, which is probably more universal. That means we could exchange these universal representations of thoughts and our own brains would do the "translation" as necessary.
- remir 9y ago
  I am bilingual. I personally do not dream in a specific language. When I wake up, I'll remember scenes, people, feelings and actions. Sometimes there are dialogues in French, but it's rare. As for thoughts, I often think in French or English, but for a lot of thoughts, no language is involved. For example, I do not think "I must pay my electricity bill" or "I should do some laundry today".

bitcoinboi9 9y ago

Very easy, make Duolingo as a CAPTCHA for translating the web into Icelandic.

jonathanyc 9y ago

Not to be trite, but note that Iceland's total population (~300k) is less than half of San Francisco's (~800k). > “It’s called ‘digital minoritisation’,” said Eiríkur Rögnvaldsson, a professor of Icelandic language and linguistics at the University of Iceland. “When a majority language in the real world becomes a minority language in the digital world.” This makes the phrase "digital minoritisation" seem pretty silly. We should definitely try to protect the heritage of uncommonly spoken languages like Icelandic, Basque, etc. But it's not clear why the plight of Icelandic, a language with its "own country," is particularly deserving of this sort of dramatization.

lopmotr 9y ago

Oh no, not another save-the-language story. As with all of them, it takes for granted the assumption that it needs saving but doesn't explain why beyond "cultural heritage". Why do people need to persist the same culture as their parents and grandparents? Whatever good that does should be more than the cost of learning it and using it everywhere. Does anyone know what the good of maintaining a little-used language is? In my country we have a similar issue except the local language was artificially revived from dead so there's no or almost no unbroken chain of native speakers. There's still debate about how some (English) letters are supposed to be pronounced. They've added useful words, then changed them to sound more authentic. Eg days of the week used to be transliterations from English but now they're references to various native Gods and things. The whole concept of a week didn't exist in the original culture so how can authentic day names exist at all?! It's a big effort with no justification. It leads to things like this gem of nonsense in an code of practice for electrical work: "From a Maori perspective, the term “earth” or Papatuanuku translates as Earth Mother – the source of all energy. When aligning this concept to the flow of electricity, a useful parallel can be made to the 3-pin plug."

stinkytaco 9y ago
There's historical importance to. If you lose the native speakers and writers of language, you lose the ability to read and interpret the written history of a culture. There's ancient Mediterranean civilizations we don't understand because we cannot read Linear A or Cretan.
atlih 9y ago
Language affects our thought process, so therefore the fewer languages there are in the world the more monotone the thought process of the world. I'm not saying there's any chance of saving the languages, we will most definitely end up with only one language somewhere in the next 200 years, I'm just pointing out that there's something we'll lose along the way.
- lopmotr 9y ago
  This has come up a lot but do you have any examples where it's significant?

microcolonel 9y ago

Well, they could start by making Icelandic accessible to the outside world, good luck learning it outside Iceland.

gabordemooij 9y ago

I am creating a programming language that supports native languages, I would love to release a version in this language. If any of you here is a native Icelandic speaker pls contact me and help me create a proper translation (https://citrine-lang.org/ https://citrine-lang.org/)! I'll send you a dictionary file that contains the translation strings (from everything like IF-ELSE to CREATEHASH and so on...)