{"id":993,"date":"2014-08-22T23:19:45","date_gmt":"2014-08-22T22:19:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/?p=993"},"modified":"2014-08-22T23:19:45","modified_gmt":"2014-08-22T22:19:45","slug":"neighbour-languages-linguistic-coexistence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/?p=993","title":{"rendered":"Neighbour languages: linguistic coexistence"},"content":{"rendered":"
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(The Economist 20-8-2014) CROSSING the Oresund bridge from Denmark to Sweden is not merely a matter of a cringe-inducing toll <\/p>\n

(360 Danish kroner, about $66). Those making the trip, as Johnson did recently on holiday, will suddenly find, like the driver whose favourite radio station starts to go fuzzy at a certain radius from home, a curious shift in languages.<\/p>\n

A Dane in Sweden can read most of the signs:\u00a0V\u00e4lkommen<\/em>\u00a0in Sweden means whatVelkommen<\/em>\u00a0in Denmark means. And the Dane will understand most of the short interactions he has with Swedes. The greeting that both languages write as\u00a0hej\u00a0<\/em>is pronounced like \u201chi\u201d in Danish and like \u201chey\u201d in Swedish, and nobody is confused. Thanks is\u00a0tak\u00a0<\/em>on one side of the Oresund and the identically pronounced\u00a0tack\u00a0<\/em>on the other. Even well beyond the pleasantries much of the vocubulary and grammar is similar.<\/p>\n

Danes, Swedes and Norwegians (and to a lesser extent, Icelanders and Faroese) like to say that their native tongues are not, relative to each other, \u201cforeign\u201d languages, but rather \u201cneighbour\u201d languages. Some locals and linguists even muse that they may be in fact dialects of a single language. When Scandinavians from different countries meet, they usually attempt to speak their own languages,\u00a0perhaps with a bit of the rhythm words of the other language mixed in. It\u2019s considered a bit embarrassing to be forced to fall back on English.<\/p>\n

But long, winding and complex conversations\u2014in other words, the really good ones\u2014are another matter. For the inexperienced, understanding is far from perfect. It is also asymmetrical: of the three main Scandinavian languages, Danish is the outlier. Centuries of sound change in Denmark have made it an awkward member of the Scandinavian linguistic trio and it is far harder for speakers of the other two to understand. When a Swede asked your columnist \u201cDo you speak Swedish?\u201d the offer of \u201cDanish?\u201d was met with an immediate switch to English. \u201cI can\u2019t really understand the Danes,\u201d he admitted sheepishly.<\/p>\n

He could, of course, learn. This\u00a0article<\/a>\u00a0(in Danish) by a professor of Danish at Sweden\u2019s Uppsala University promises that a Swede can learn to understand Danish with just 16 hours of study. And given the nearly twin-city nature of Copenhagen and Malm\u00f6 today (and lower prices in Sweden), many Danes might want to return the favour.\u00a0Politiken<\/em>, a Danish newspaper, published\u00a0a cheeky mini-phrasebook<\/a>\u00a0for Danes heading to the Malm\u00f6 summer culture festival. (The phrase: \u201cWhere did you get your mullet haircut?\u201d is, in Danish, \u201cWhere did you get your Swede-neck?\u201d In Swedish, it is \u201cWhere did you get your hockey haircut?\u201d)<\/p>\n

For all the jokes and misunderstandings, Swedes, Danes and Norwegians have made a good go of the \u201cneighbour languages\u201d business. Most don\u2019t find the time to study each other\u2019s languages in much detail but they do their best anyway, out of a sense of regional solidarity. (Politiken<\/em>\u2019s phrasebook also includes the Swedish phrase for: \u201cWhy are you answering in English? We\u00a0are<\/em>\u00a0Scandinavians, after all.\u201d) It helps that the three countries in question are of roughly equal size and weight: Sweden the biggest and most populous, Norway the richest, Denmark the former colonial heavyweight and current cultural darling. No one lords it over anyone else.<\/p>\n

Many other groups could be considered \u201cneighbour languages\u201d on pure linguistic terms, a category that avoids the choice between \u201cforeign languages\u201d and \u201cdialects\u201d while recognising the closeness at hand. But politics often gets in the way. When one language is bigger or more prestigious than the other, the temptation of the bigger one\u2019s speakers to put the smaller language on a distinctly lower pedestal is hard to resist. Johnson\u2019s\u00a0most recent column<\/a>, on Catalan and Spanish, triggered hundreds of anguished comments, in a political situation that is currently frustrating just about everybody. Similar frustrations can be found on the South Slavic continuum running across most of the former Yugoslavia, Macedonia and Bulgaria, where nationalist tensions make the similarity (and often near-identity) of the languages a source of friction rather than friendship.<\/p>\n

It is easy to forget, but Sweden and Norway almost went to war as recently as 1905 over Norway\u2019s independence. And before that, Denmark had fought Sweden plenty (and ruled Norway from Copenhagen until 1814). But today, the closest thing to fighting-words are, like \u201cSwede-neck\u201d, pretty mild. And the Swedes can respond (as\u00a0this comic did<\/a>) that at least they don\u2019t speak, as Danes do, like \u201cChewbacca with a brain haemorrhage\u201d. Funny stuff, and harmless.\u00a0If only other language groups could find their inner neighbourliness.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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