Language Replacement

[Stu]

Every time I visit family in Sweden, I notice how English is replacing Swedish. I am seeing this on TV, in shop, public signs and the like and Swedish is definitely becoming less visible.

Last Christmas, my granddaughter in Sweden, then age 5, bought me a coffee mug which reads:

"Världens bästa MORFAR" which translates as "The world's best grandpa"

I was asked what I might like this Christmas from her and I said that I had used the coffee mug she bought me so much that it was beginning to look a little worn, with a few tiny chips, so I could use a new one - preferably identical.

My daughter checked with the same supplier and the mug has been discontinued and replaced with one which reads:

"MORFAR - Simply the BEST"

So "Världens bästa" is now "Simply the best".

I am British. I love my own language and I have no Swedish heritage. However, I still find it sad the way that Swedes are gradually replacing their precious language with mine

[Myopic Bookworm]

I tend to agree with you.

(I would love to have a mug with a slogan in Swedish to impress visitors with my cosmopolitanism; but then, English is not under pressure from the Swedish language.)

[r.m.anderson]

Language - the reverse "Tower of Bable" effect - slowing developing into a few common languages - - -
Chinese in its many forms
Asian
Spanish and the romance forms
English
AND a sprinkling of the worlds rest

[Kirbstone]

Having been ruled by them for nigh-on 800 years the British and Irish enjoy an ambivalent relationship nowadays, but at the end of the 19th Century they made it mandatory to learn English in schools throughout this land and inadvertently, their greatest gift to us, the Irish was their language, which only towards the end of the 19th Century became the 'mother tongue' here.

Our current National economic success is almost entirely due to the attactiveness of this place to the Multi-Nationals who use our educated English-speaking workforce.

It would have been a different scene altogether if we had persisted with irish, or Gaelic and had to learn English as a second language. The exact reverse is now true, and while we all can speak some Gaelic, very few of us are really fluent.

Tom

[denimini]

Culture is closely associated with language and much can be lost in translation.
Where I live there are not many fluent speakers of the original local language because at one time the British colonisers forbade and punished people for speaking their own language.

[rode_kater]

These days you can self-printed mugs cheaply enough, so one could be mocked up easy enough, though perhaps not in exactly the same style.

But yeah, the English is really infecting everywhere in in NL too...

[rivegauche]

We still have Scottish Gaelic and Welsh in the UK and they both have to be given support to survive. Gaelic does not have the same legal status as Welsh. English was imposed on the Gaelic speaking areas by physically belting any pupil who spoke in Gaelic in school. In the Highlands there is still resistance to bilingual road signs so the fight has to go on. There are now Gaelic medium primary schools and the problem is finding enough teachers to staff them, not attracting pupils. We also have a Gaelic-speaking college in Skye which is part of the University of the Highlands and Islands.

The French have an ongoing battle with English and there is legal protection for the French language against this invasion. Le Pen wanted to take this even further and she became know as Le Stylo!

The way that many people speak English very well indeed as a second language is very impressive as it is not an easy language. Despite this, if someone's grammar is faultless, they are often someone who has learned it as a second language - Brits wreck the language and even the BBC News is now riddled with language faults. Newspapers tend to do better but even The Times has a column called "What I have learnt" (it should be learned). Some would see this as evolution of language. I would agree that "innit?" is a legitimate version of "n'est-ce pas?" but the likes of "We was stood on the corner" has become accepted despite having no less than two faults (It should be "we were standing on the corner". Even as a Scot I would argue that the Glasgow "We have came" isn't a local dialect - it is just wrong. So even the English language needs protection!

[familyman34]

These days you can self-printed mugs cheaply enough, so one could be mocked up easy enough, though perhaps not in exactly the same style.

But yeah, the English is really infecting everywhere in in NL too...

I've noticed that in Belgium, marketing aimed at the whole nation is in both French and Flemish (sorry for the small German-speaking minority, the Fourons/Voeren/Fuhren who are almost always ignored), e.g. product labels.
But more and more stuff has English too, often to the exclusion of French and Flemish; using just English avoids the appearance of favouring/discriminating against either the Walloons or the Flemish!
And I can understand the economic advantage of only having to sign-write on the back and sides of your vehicle in one language when it distributes your products across the whole country.

[rode_kater]

And I can understand the economic advantage of only having to sign-write on the back and sides of your vehicle in one language when it distributes your products across the whole country.

I think it's a consequence of the expanded markets (aka the Common Market). It used to be that most packaging here had Dutch + French, because that allowed them to use the same packaging for NL/BE/LUX/FR. Adding on German meant you could cover a lot of space further east, though that market was big enough to warrant its own packaging. But then I think cost cutting just made them want to reduce the variation, and if you have a packaging that can be sold in many places makes distribution easier since you can just send excess to wherever you want. Probably also for consistent branding.

The Wasa crackers next to me here has the front in English, and the rest of the packaging is filled with Dutch/French/Italian/Spanish/Portuguese and Greek. The notable exceptions are German and English. Yes, while the front in in English, the ingredient list is not so it can't be sold in the UK. Go figure. Or maybe it can, because sometimes here we can buy super-discount Andrelon products where the packaging is Greek, no Dutch to be found. Perhaps because it's not edible the rules are more relaxed.

Another thing I think at play here specifically is that English words tend to shorter, so work better for slogans. Also, when looking for a slogan, everything in Dutch has done before, but English offers a whole new source.

[Grok]

I have never visited any of the Scandinavian countries. But based simply on YouTube, I have the impression that these nations have achieved a remarkable fluency in a language not their own.

One Norwegian woman, Cornelia Grimsmo, has been using her knowledge of English to study the French language.

BTW, I think Covid is the reason she stayed at home rather than going to France.

[Myopic Bookworm]

I remember many years ago a British intellectual writing about being impressed that, when he was interviewed for Dutch media, the interviewer switched seamlessly from Dutch to English and back again, and no translation was required for the Dutch audience.

[pelmut]

I was astonished once to hear a British politician being interviewed on French radio in French !.  I forget who it was, but I was most impressed at the time.

A Frenchman once told me that even if he could speak English, he would not do so where he might be overheard by another Frenchman because it might be inferred that he was being insulting to his mother tongue.  I replied that an Englishman who could speak French would be reluctant to do so where he might be overheard by another Englishman because it would be inferred that he was only showing off.

[geron]

....but the likes of "We was stood on the corner" has become accepted despite having no less than two faults....

Bzzzt! That should be "no fewer than two faults"!

[Kirbstone]

In the 80's-90s well before sat-navs and the like we were returning from N. Germany where I worked at the time and wished to look up a Dutch couple in Eindhoven, Netherlands whose son had been an exchange student with us the Summer before.

We stopped a couple walking on the footpath and enquired the way to a particular crescent, our friends' address. The couple said we were nearly there, just first right and 2nd or 3rd left &c and we couldn't miss it. They both spoke perfect English like they were from Walton-on-Thames!

At that time your average German, when asked directions would give them to you in German, not English.

Tom

[rivegauche]

....but the likes of "We was stood on the corner" has become accepted despite having no less than two faults....

Bzzzt! That should be "no fewer than two faults"!

Oh dear. Quite right. I shall just slide under the table ...