Group items tagged

This was a fascinating article that focused on one dying language in particular - Icelandic. The article details of how Icelandic is weakening to the point that some of Iceland's youngest children speak English without an Icelandic accent, and when speaking Icelandic, their syntax is unfortunately influenced by English. Further, the article detailed of how the Icelandic government aims to secure a future for this language, spoken by less than 400,000 people, through preserving it in a digital medium on an online database.

Icelandic is a unique dialect of Old Norse, as it was settled by Norsemen over 1,000 years ago. However, this language is now being threatened to be added to the "Latin bin" due to the spread of English. High school students don't even start reading Icelandic novel until late in their senior year.

This article is about the Icelandic language, which is seen as a source of identity and pride, is being damaged by the widespread use of English. Former president of Iceland, Vigdis Finnbogadottir, is worried that the Icelandic language will end up in the "Latin bin".

The publication provides insight into how people in Iceland are recording their language to help keep it alive. Icelandic is suffering from something known around the world as "digital minoritization", where the overwhelming amount of online language use is in a different language (ex. English worldwide, pushing out smaller minority languages). It stresses the importance of the language to the country's identity and how the recordings will help keep the history of the country alive today.

In our mouths or in print, in villages or in cities, in buildings or in caves, a language doesn't sit still. It can't. Language change has preceded apace even in places known for preserving a language in amber. You may have heard that Icelanders can still read the ancient sagas written almost a thousand years ago in Old Norse.

In our mouths or in print, in villages or in cities, in buildings or in caves, a language doesn't sit still. It can't. Language change has preceded apace even in places known for preserving a language in amber. You may have heard that Icelanders can still read the ancient sagas written almost a thousand years ago in Old Norse.

This article examines the evolution of the work like, and how new usages of the word are still arising.