7 ms·

ESR: Is Danish Dying?

43 points by mdemare 17y ago

davidmathers 17y ago
Most linguists think it’s Just Not Done to say that a speaker population is evolving its own language out of existence ESR == Steve Sailer No matter what he's writing about there will always be a mention of how he can see situations more clearly than other people, but only because he's fearless in the face of the overbearing political correctness to which other people succumb. He's just so unafraid of thinking "taboo" thoughts.
- gustavo_duarte 17y ago
  I think you underestimate his ego. What you describe is true, but it's not all. For example, he's also smarter than all physicists: http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=690 http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=690 Oy! For relief, I suggest his epic spanking in the Linux Kernel Mailing List: http://lkml.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0202.1/1909.html http://lkml.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0202.1/1909.h... Which is actually a good thread to understand kernel development.
  - davidmathers 17y ago
    I think you underestimate his ego. You're right. Painfully right. "Eric realizes that if he’d had a bit more courage and self-discipline, and moved from mathematics into physics rather than programming, he would have been rather likely to have invented decoherence theory himself and become a physicist renowned for kicking the props out from under the Copenhagen Interpretation." From the followup: "I just turned 51. That means, in order to believe that I could do really strong and original physics work now, I’d have to start with a justified belief that I’m as talented as Hawking or Einstein. This is almost certainly not the case. I would say “certainly”, except that my general track record of creativity and insight is far enough off the mean to raise just the tiniest smidgen of realistic doubt about this. And I was, after all, ahead of the physics literature on something conceptually important at least once - even a lot of physicists never manage that." One reads such words, and what can one say but... "esr."
abrahamsen 17y ago
#1 (rapid evolution) is not a sign of language dying, it is a sign of language living. Only dead languages don't evolve. #2 and #3 are true, not sure if they are a sign of death. As a (Danish) kid I found Norwegian (bokmål) far easier to read than Danish. #4: I don't believe the ads are significant, and certainly not English street signs in areas a tourist may visit. However, the last example is what Danish linguists consider the greatest threat to the language: Domain loss. Danish is really to small a language for specialized domains. When I write about my work, I use English, as the majority of people who might potentially be interested are from outside Denmark, and those Danes that might be interested can all read English. A generation ago similar texts would likely be in Danish, but a generation ago there was far less international collaboration. [ Domain loss in Denmark is nothing new, Latin, French and German have all been dominating various domains earlier. The German dominance was far greater than English today, before the rise of nationalism Danish was merely a peasant language, and even for the peasants German words replaced Danish to a large degree. ]
- dantheman 17y ago
  I'm intrigued by your comment that German dominance was far greater than English, for some reason I don't think that's true. Could you expand upon this?
  - albertcardona 17y ago
    I have been told that German almost made it as the official language of the entire USA when the constitution was set up. The legend says it lost to English for a few votes, but that poll apparently didn't take place. In any case: "On January 13, 1795, Congress considered a proposal, not to give German any official status, but merely to print the federal laws in German as well as English" See this: http://www.english.illinois.edu/-people-/faculty/debaron/essays/legend.htm http://www.english.illinois.edu/-people-/faculty/debaron/ess...
    - tokenadult 17y ago
      I was told that (or, rather, read that) when I was young, but this is incorrect. http://www.snopes.com/language/apocryph/german.asp http://www.snopes.com/language/apocryph/german.asp http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhlenberg_legend http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhlenberg_legend The United States has had a lot of German-speaking residents since colonial times, who became United States citizens when the country was founded, but there was never, ever a serious attempt to designate German the national language. Theodore Roosevelt campaigned for the presidency with German-language public speeches (and also French-language public speeches), and my two maternal grandparents, both born in the United States, were educated solely in the German language, but English has always been the main interlanguage among the various ethnic communities living on United States territory.
arihelgason 17y ago
Another interesting development in the Danish language is the rise of 'multietnolekt' (multiethnolect) - a type of ethnolect that's emerged among multicultural communities. It's gramatically different from Danish, and has words from Kurdish, Turkish and Arabic. As far as I know it's confined to immigrant communities, but that might change. Not sure how this fits in with the idea that Danish is dying. More info here http://dialekt.dk/multietnolekt/ http://dialekt.dk/multietnolekt/ (article in Danish)
pelle 17y ago
I wrote this comment on ESR's site but it's in the moderation queue: Interesting article. I myself am Danish but living in Miami. I left about 20 years ago but was back in Copenhagen for a couple of years recently. I did see a big change in Danish, in particularly with the use of English. In the 80’s it was not all that cool to talk English all the time. It was only a few of us in the hip hop community and programmers who got a way with it. This has changed, but not in the way you might think. I think even on the street someone would be thought of as a poser if he used nothing but English. What Danes do, do is import English words and make them their own. A lot of this I think comes from the hip hop community which has gone mainstream in Denmark in the period I was away. My 2 favorite examples of English words that have become Danish is Slice and Fck. Slice was new to me when I returned to Denmark. It means a slice of pizza. In Danish you can leave of Pizza and you can’t use “slice” for anything else unless you’re talking about servers. Fck has become such a common use in Denmark, that I don’t think people even realize that it isn’t Danish. It is used by just about everyone younger than 40 all the time, to such extent that Danes travelling to the English speaking countries routinely and unwittingly cause offence. So my point about these words is that while they both come from English, they have now become absorbed with changed meaning into Danish. So when I’m in a 7/11 in Copenhagen saying “give mig et slajs” I’m not actually talking English, just modern street Danish. This absorption of new words reminds me of when I lived in Panama, where words have been imported whole sale from Jamaican and American English to the local Spanish language. The word “Man” for example means “Person” and not “Male”, which caused me never ending confusion when I heard people talking about “la man” and I thought they were talking about some guy. My theory about what has happened in Denmark is that it is an extremely egalitarian society. Elitist language snobs are frowned upon. There was also a period (say the 80s) where very few decent TV or movies where made in Denmark. So my generation who grew up then absorbed everything we could from American and English culture. The growth of Hip Hop in Denmark has I’m certain also had a huge influence. In the 80s though there were lots of Danish groups singing in English, now I think the majority sing/rap in Danish. I’m very interested in these kinds of changes to culture all over the world. I wrote this article about how globalization doesn’t homogenize music and food, but rather create lots of interesting new micro fusions. It’s kind of related to this debate and uses Denmark, the Philippines and others as examples. http://stakeventures.com/articles/2007/09/18/why-globalization-wont-make-everything-the-same http://stakeventures.com/articles/2007/09/18/why-globalizati...
barry-cotter 17y ago
No, but it is undergoing domain loss. Dialects with their very own army and navy don't disappear. I spend a bit of time in Germany and while I can't speak to phoneme shifts in German because I can't speak the damned language yet, there's pseudo-English all over the place in advertising, street signs, tourist info. But for the advertising really is pseudo-English and sometimes translations are pretty desperate. At the very, very least 10% of Germans have English good enough to hold an intelligent conversation in. ESR is putting too much weight on his personal experience. Most of the Germans I know are CS/Comp Ling or Psychology students and they use lots of English texts in their undergraduate courses and in the computery ones the Masters are all in English. But English is a domain specific language for them. But that's not a language shift. German's not going anywhere. Hell, German dialects aren't going anywhere, most of the Deutschsprecher countries are heavily diglossic, I'd be surprised if Denmark wasn't similar. I think the post could have been written about any of the Germanic languages and it'd be just as wrong.
dot 17y ago
so it's come full circle. anglo saxons that 'invaded' england originated from denmark.

43 points by mdemare 17y ago

Most linguists think it’s Just Not Done to say that a speaker population is evolving its own language out of existence ESR == Steve Sailer No matter what he's writing about there will always be a mention of how he can see situations more clearly than other people, but only because he's fearless in the face of the overbearing political correctness to which other people succumb. He's just so unafraid of thinking "taboo" thoughts.

gustavo_duarte 17y ago
I think you underestimate his ego. What you describe is true, but it's not all. For example, he's also smarter than all physicists: http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=690 http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=690 Oy! For relief, I suggest his epic spanking in the Linux Kernel Mailing List: http://lkml.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0202.1/1909.html http://lkml.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0202.1/1909.h... Which is actually a good thread to understand kernel development.
- davidmathers 17y ago
  I think you underestimate his ego. You're right. Painfully right. "Eric realizes that if he’d had a bit more courage and self-discipline, and moved from mathematics into physics rather than programming, he would have been rather likely to have invented decoherence theory himself and become a physicist renowned for kicking the props out from under the Copenhagen Interpretation." From the followup: "I just turned 51. That means, in order to believe that I could do really strong and original physics work now, I’d have to start with a justified belief that I’m as talented as Hawking or Einstein. This is almost certainly not the case. I would say “certainly”, except that my general track record of creativity and insight is far enough off the mean to raise just the tiniest smidgen of realistic doubt about this. And I was, after all, ahead of the physics literature on something conceptually important at least once - even a lot of physicists never manage that." One reads such words, and what can one say but... "esr."

abrahamsen 17y ago

#1 (rapid evolution) is not a sign of language dying, it is a sign of language living. Only dead languages don't evolve. #2 and #3 are true, not sure if they are a sign of death. As a (Danish) kid I found Norwegian (bokmål) far easier to read than Danish. #4: I don't believe the ads are significant, and certainly not English street signs in areas a tourist may visit. However, the last example is what Danish linguists consider the greatest threat to the language: Domain loss. Danish is really to small a language for specialized domains. When I write about my work, I use English, as the majority of people who might potentially be interested are from outside Denmark, and those Danes that might be interested can all read English. A generation ago similar texts would likely be in Danish, but a generation ago there was far less international collaboration. [ Domain loss in Denmark is nothing new, Latin, French and German have all been dominating various domains earlier. The German dominance was far greater than English today, before the rise of nationalism Danish was merely a peasant language, and even for the peasants German words replaced Danish to a large degree. ]

dantheman 17y ago
I'm intrigued by your comment that German dominance was far greater than English, for some reason I don't think that's true. Could you expand upon this?
- albertcardona 17y ago
  I have been told that German almost made it as the official language of the entire USA when the constitution was set up. The legend says it lost to English for a few votes, but that poll apparently didn't take place. In any case: "On January 13, 1795, Congress considered a proposal, not to give German any official status, but merely to print the federal laws in German as well as English" See this: http://www.english.illinois.edu/-people-/faculty/debaron/essays/legend.htm http://www.english.illinois.edu/-people-/faculty/debaron/ess...
  - tokenadult 17y ago
    I was told that (or, rather, read that) when I was young, but this is incorrect. http://www.snopes.com/language/apocryph/german.asp http://www.snopes.com/language/apocryph/german.asp http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhlenberg_legend http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhlenberg_legend The United States has had a lot of German-speaking residents since colonial times, who became United States citizens when the country was founded, but there was never, ever a serious attempt to designate German the national language. Theodore Roosevelt campaigned for the presidency with German-language public speeches (and also French-language public speeches), and my two maternal grandparents, both born in the United States, were educated solely in the German language, but English has always been the main interlanguage among the various ethnic communities living on United States territory.

arihelgason 17y ago

Another interesting development in the Danish language is the rise of 'multietnolekt' (multiethnolect) - a type of ethnolect that's emerged among multicultural communities. It's gramatically different from Danish, and has words from Kurdish, Turkish and Arabic. As far as I know it's confined to immigrant communities, but that might change. Not sure how this fits in with the idea that Danish is dying. More info here http://dialekt.dk/multietnolekt/ http://dialekt.dk/multietnolekt/ (article in Danish)

pelle 17y ago

I wrote this comment on ESR's site but it's in the moderation queue: Interesting article. I myself am Danish but living in Miami. I left about 20 years ago but was back in Copenhagen for a couple of years recently. I did see a big change in Danish, in particularly with the use of English. In the 80’s it was not all that cool to talk English all the time. It was only a few of us in the hip hop community and programmers who got a way with it. This has changed, but not in the way you might think. I think even on the street someone would be thought of as a poser if he used nothing but English. What Danes do, do is import English words and make them their own. A lot of this I think comes from the hip hop community which has gone mainstream in Denmark in the period I was away. My 2 favorite examples of English words that have become Danish is Slice and Fck. Slice was new to me when I returned to Denmark. It means a slice of pizza. In Danish you can leave of Pizza and you can’t use “slice” for anything else unless you’re talking about servers. Fck has become such a common use in Denmark, that I don’t think people even realize that it isn’t Danish. It is used by just about everyone younger than 40 all the time, to such extent that Danes travelling to the English speaking countries routinely and unwittingly cause offence. So my point about these words is that while they both come from English, they have now become absorbed with changed meaning into Danish. So when I’m in a 7/11 in Copenhagen saying “give mig et slajs” I’m not actually talking English, just modern street Danish. This absorption of new words reminds me of when I lived in Panama, where words have been imported whole sale from Jamaican and American English to the local Spanish language. The word “Man” for example means “Person” and not “Male”, which caused me never ending confusion when I heard people talking about “la man” and I thought they were talking about some guy. My theory about what has happened in Denmark is that it is an extremely egalitarian society. Elitist language snobs are frowned upon. There was also a period (say the 80s) where very few decent TV or movies where made in Denmark. So my generation who grew up then absorbed everything we could from American and English culture. The growth of Hip Hop in Denmark has I’m certain also had a huge influence. In the 80s though there were lots of Danish groups singing in English, now I think the majority sing/rap in Danish. I’m very interested in these kinds of changes to culture all over the world. I wrote this article about how globalization doesn’t homogenize music and food, but rather create lots of interesting new micro fusions. It’s kind of related to this debate and uses Denmark, the Philippines and others as examples. http://stakeventures.com/articles/2007/09/18/why-globalization-wont-make-everything-the-same http://stakeventures.com/articles/2007/09/18/why-globalizati...

barry-cotter 17y ago

No, but it is undergoing domain loss. Dialects with their very own army and navy don't disappear. I spend a bit of time in Germany and while I can't speak to phoneme shifts in German because I can't speak the damned language yet, there's pseudo-English all over the place in advertising, street signs, tourist info. But for the advertising really is pseudo-English and sometimes translations are pretty desperate. At the very, very least 10% of Germans have English good enough to hold an intelligent conversation in. ESR is putting too much weight on his personal experience. Most of the Germans I know are CS/Comp Ling or Psychology students and they use lots of English texts in their undergraduate courses and in the computery ones the Masters are all in English. But English is a domain specific language for them. But that's not a language shift. German's not going anywhere. Hell, German dialects aren't going anywhere, most of the Deutschsprecher countries are heavily diglossic, I'd be surprised if Denmark wasn't similar. I think the post could have been written about any of the Germanic languages and it'd be just as wrong.

dot 17y ago

so it's come full circle. anglo saxons that 'invaded' england originated from denmark.