[LINK] "Will Icelanders one day ditch their language for English?"

[rfmcdonald]

Language Hat linked to this Public Radio International by one Patrick Cox noting the concern of some Icelanders that their distinctive language might disappear. The fear does not strike me as likely to be well-founded, if only because Icelandic is described in this article as surviving in core domains. English is joining it, not displacing it. Thoughts?

“I think Icelandic is not going to last,” says [Jón] Gnarr. “Probably in this century we will adopt English as our language. I think it’s unavoidable.”

This is not an outlier view. Some linguists believe it is a distinct possibility that Icelandic will lose out to English. Among them, Ari Páll Kristinsson who is in charge of language planning at the Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies, the Icelandic government's language research agency.

“English is everywhere now, from the moment we wake up until we die,” says Kristinsson.

He means that quite literally. Births take places with the aid of medical devices whose instructions are in English, so hospital staff must be able to read English. And at funerals, Kristinsson says, friends and family often remember their loved one with songs sung in English.

It’s a big deal for any linguistic group to witness the marginalization of their mother tongue. It’s especially poignant for Icelanders.