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The EU has 24 official languages. More than 200 indigenous languages are spoken throughout Europe. If we want to nurture and develop our European culture (our cultures!) we must also nurture our languages.
The considerable migration we have had to Europe over the past few decades has put a certain amount of pressure on our indigenous languages. This is particularly noticeable in countries that have long had large minorities, such as France and Sweden. There, their own minority variants of the indigenous languages have developed, and these variants have in turn influenced the language use of younger generations in certain parts of the indigenous population in these countries.
But the question is whether our European languages are not being affected even more by globalization and the Internet. And here it is English that is becoming an increasingly used lingua franca worldwide, including in Europe.
In Sweden, where it is easy to start independent schools, several “English schools” have been started at both primary and secondary school level. In these often-popular schools, large parts of the teaching is conducted in English. This has been criticized previously by the Swedish Academy (known for selecting the Nobel Prize winner in literature each year), which believes that Swedish schools should teach in Swedish.
Sweden is traditionally a country that easily absorbs foreign influence. And many people perceive that Sweden has gone further than many other countries in the Anglicization of public space and conversation that unfortunately results from globalization and the Internet throughout Europe.
The daily newspaper Dagens Nyheter recently published a column that has attracted some attention. The author of the article, Aron Lund, is a Middle East analyst and works at the Swedish National Defense Research Institute. He believes that Sweden must tighten its language laws and seriously dare to challenge the Anglicization of the language that has become so widespread and obvious that many no longer react to it.
He notes, among other things, that some companies are abandoning Swedish as a working language, that most doctoral theses produced at Swedish universities are written in English, and that language conservators warn of so-called “domain losses,” that is, that Swedish no longer offers sufficient terminology in various fields and thus becomes unusable in academic and professional contexts.
Aron Lund speaks here of a “vicious circle”: “The more space English takes in a given context, the more Swedish appears inappropriate, unnecessary, cheesy and foreign.”
He also points out that universities take English names, that various theme weeks in cities are called “Art Week”, “Design Week” or “Craft Week” (in English, that is), and that even the Swedish Armed Forces (which is now becoming part of NATO) use English terms such as “Chief Information Officer” and “Marine Weekend”. Aron Lund wonders if Sweden is already occupied by an English-speaking foreign power? Shouldn’t the Swedes also defend their language and culture?
Lund notes that those who point out this development are often portrayed as grumpy backward-looking people. They don’t understand that languages are always evolving. They even risk being accused of using “racist language”. Aron Lund frankly explains that it is “important to give a shit about people like that”. What is needed is more Swedish language fascism. Swedish authorities must intervene to reverse the trend, he believes. What is needed are not subtle and sophistical arguments about change and openness, but concrete measures to save the Swedish language.
Swedish is a Nordic, Germanic language that developed from the common Old Norse that was spoken throughout Scandinavia (not Finland) until around 1000 AD. Old Norse was preceded by Proto-Norse and researchers simply do not know how long it had existed in what is now Sweden, Norway and Denmark. In general, it is not known how long the Germanic languages, which are one of several varieties of the Indo-European languages, have been spoken in northern Europe.
The only thing we know is that a country like Sweden has had a long uninterrupted development of what can be seen as one and the same language. Now this is threatened to some extent by the strong presence of English in Swedish society. All conservative people should be concerned about this development and work to ensure that not only Sweden, but all our European countries retain and develop their own original languages. Long live European diversity!