Norway: First languages fear second place

[Francis Hult]

Via lgpolicy...
 

First languages fear second place



Scandinavians' pride in their facility for English is turning to concern as their mother tongues fall out of use in business and academia. Gwladys Fouché reports from Norway on action to reverse the decline 

Friday May 23, 2008
Guardian Weekly <http://www.guardianweekly.co.uk/>  


Few countries voluntarily adopt a foreign tongue as one of their main languages, but Norway has been doing it for years with English. Now, however, its government wants to protect its national language. "I tried to learn Norwegian when I came here. But when they hear you're a foreigner, Norwegians naturally switch languages. They're very nonchalant about it," says Tom Jackson, a 30-year-old academic from England. He moved to Oslo three years ago to work in a research institute. There was no need to speak Norwegian there as the working language was English. 

"The only place I met people who did not speak English was at a fish shop," says Jackson. "I knew before I moved that Scandinavians were good at English, but I was amazed at their level of fluency." Norway has long promoted the use of English at home to enable it to be part of the globalised economy. English has been compulsory at school for decades, and for several years universities have been able to teach classes in English so they can attract international students and staff. English has become so predominant that the government says it is threatening the existence of Norwegian. "Languages around the world are simply vanishing and are not being used anymore," says the culture minister, Trond Giske. "Norwegian is under entirely new pressure than it was just a few years ago, especially because of the internet and the media." 

To address this situation Giske is due to present a white paper to parliament next month declaring that the survival of the Norwegian language is becoming a policy priority. The white paper will focus on two areas where English has overtaken Norwegian: business and academia. "In business, all the top international Norwegian firms already use written English day in day out," explains Sylfest Lomheim, director of the Norwegian Language Council. "Norwegian colleagues will talk in Norwegian to one another, but when it comes to writing reports or sending emails, they will do it in English. 

"In academia, 30% of social sciences theses were written in English in the early 1990s. Now it's 70%. It is possible that in 30 to 40 years' time Norwegian will no longer be used in higher education. Do we want that to happen?" The culture minister has suggested other ways to promote Norwegian, such as calling for more video games to be in the national language. The focus of the white paper will be on written English, not spoken. "It is absolutely necessary for Norwegians to speak good English. English is not the enemy here," Lomheim says. Instead, the "enemy" is Norwegians' relaxed attitude towards the written form of their language. It is essential to preserve it, Lomheim says, because "we need to keep up the ability to discuss central issues of public debate in Norwegian. If we don't have the vocabulary for it, we can't discuss them." 

Full story:
http://education.guardian.co.uk/tefl/story/0,,2281720,00.html


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