16.884, Media: Houston Chronicle: Icelanders on a mission...

[LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-16-884. Wed Mar 23 2005. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 16.884, Media: Houston Chronicle: Icelanders on a mission...

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1)
Date: 23-Mar-2005
From: Karen Chung < karchung at ntu.edu.tw >
Subject: Houston Chronicle: English in Icelandic 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Wed, 23 Mar 2005 12:55:51
From: Karen Chung < karchung at ntu.edu.tw >
Subject: Houston Chronicle: English in Icelandic 
 


The Houston Chronicle  March 19, 2005, 8:18PM

Icelanders on a mission: Fighting English invasion
Can proud people preserve their ancient language?
By WILLIAM ECENBARGER
The Los Angeles Times

...Language preservation worked nicely for centuries because Icelanders
lived diphthongs apart from the rest of the world, but in recent decades
the cultural floodgates have been opened. English is everywhere ¡X on
televisions, VCRs, the Internet and commercial products. ...

I left Iceland pessimistic. Everywhere I went, I heard English spoken.
Although a written language can be purged of foreign words and phrases,
policing how people speak is another matter. Many young Icelanders cannot
be bothered with a language that is a minefield of subjunctive, inflections
and gender (the number 2 has three genders). ...

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/editorial/outlook/3092847

Karen Chung
http://ccms.ntu.edu.tw/~karchung/
http://lists.topica.com/lists/phonetics/ 
Linguistic Field(s): Anthropological Linguistics
                     Sociolinguistics




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