Thursday 6 April 2000

Pic of the day: "Chambers English dictionary" is my friend. When I was younger, I used it to look up words I was uncertain what meant. Now I use it mainly to check the spelling and style of unusual words I write. And sometimes, as you may have noticed, I just think about doing it and then forget.

I am a Norwegian. In fact, unlike most Norwegians, I have never been outside Norway. Growing up in a rural province on the west coast, I learned to write Nynorsk (New Norwegian), the variant of Norwegian that is dominant in the west country. I learned English at school from fourth grade, and accidentally chose to specialize in English and foreign languages in high school - or the Norwegian equivalent, which at the time was called "gymnas", from the ancient Greek word for nudity. Go figure.

Today, kids start learning English in school almost from the start, and by then many already have a basic understanding of the language from television films and computer games. They are immersed in English from early on, and so unlike us elderly they don't have the problem of pronouncing "th" as "t". Of course you don't notice this much in writing.

Research in the 1990es showed that babies for their first 9 months absorb language sounds indiscriminately. If you expose babies to the sound of exotic languages regularly, they will be able to pick up the pronounciation of these later on, even if they only heard them from the radio. Children who are not exposed to the sound of a foreign language, will learn it by substituting the sounds from their own language. This can be slightly embarassing, such as when we Norwegians tend to say "t" instead of "th", or extremely embarassing, such as when Japanese are unable to notice any difference between "r" and "l". But the newer generations don't have this problem so much, because they hear English on the radio and TV and stereo from the day they arrive.

Speaking (or at least reading) English is useful if you want to take part in the new global culture. I suspect that the Nordic countries are so advanced today largely because they are so small. Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Iceland each have their own language, though three of them can understand one another. But with populations of a few million each (even less for Iceland), it will often be less than practical to translate everything into the native language. This way, today I can walk into a Norwegian news kiosk and find magazines and books in English standing right beside the Norwegian ones. To me, it makes little or no influence on my buying decision. I am as likely to buy the English translation of a Norwegian book, because it is cheaper. Mass markets do things like that.

A nice side effect of this is that we can start to use software right out of the box, though there is also a market for translated software. (Mainly to state, province and local administration. Not sure if this says anything about those who work there, or just the leaders.)

And now that the Internet has arrived, it has quickly reached the same level of penetration in the Nordic markets as in the USA. Of course there is more and more content produced in the local languages, but we did not need to bootstrap our own Internet. We just attached. In marked contrast, you have places like France where anything English is regarded as tainted by evil, or something like that. Germans are not too keen on having to read another language, either. And see what it has brought them: Only a third as many people use the Internet in the EU, compared to the US or Scandinavia. (In proportion to the whole population, of course.)

***

It's not like I feel sorry for the Germans, anyway. In three days we shall commemorate the 60 year anniversary of their cruel, unprovoked attack on our neutral and peaceful little country. Don't think we have forgotten it. And besides, they eat disgusting things until they are fat like pigs; they dress horribly; they are grumpy and unfriendly; they lack any decent sense of humor; and their language sounds like they are always giving orders. If they did not plot something ugly, why don't they speak English so people can understand them?

(OK, so I went a little over the top there. Actually my best friend studies in Germany and is unharmed so far. But their missing sense of humor is legendary. Now the Dutch, those are people who know how to have fun!)

I think it is entirely reasonable to be sceptical to nations that have tried to take over the world: Germany, France, Spain etc. On the other hand, you have nations who have been colonies and learned to appreciate freedom. Such as Norway, Ireland, and above all the USA. The USA has repeatedly had the power to conquer much of the world and carve out an empire. At the end of the second world war, they were the only ones with nuclear weapons. They could pretty much do what they wanted. Their troops held Japan and much of Europe. But what did they do? They gave their former enemies a helping hand and pulled them back on their feet. Who else has ever done that?

I don't mean that all Americans are personal saints, or that all Germans are evil. But there are obviously cultural differences between nations. And I suspect that some of those are inherent in the very languages we speak.

I am pretty sure I have mentioned this before, but it fits in. There was a study in southern USA, where there lived bilingual students who spoke fluently both American English and Mexican Spanish. They were given a questionnaire, randomly in either English or Spanish. The ones who replied in Spanish stressed somewhat different values than those who replied in English. This indicates that language and mindset are connected, and that for some of us there may be different world views existing inside us at the same time, depending on how we think. In the same way that thoughts leave traces in the brain, ideas leave traces in the language. Some concepts are subtly different from one language to another. There are tens of thousands of words; together it adds up.

"English - for a better world!"