CHAT: Anglification (was Re: My Conlang Museum in Netscape too)

* daniel andreasson (daniel.andreasson@telia.com) [000124 23:26]:
> Vasiliy wrote:
> > 3) Why don't you expose your materials in Swedish? You
> > shouldn't deprive your fellow conlangers of an occasion
> > to practise Swedish *free* ;)
>
> Well, I hardly write anything conlangy in Swedish anymore.
> No one who is interested in conlanging knows Swedish, but
> almost everyone knows English, so...
> I can hardly think in conlanging terms in Swedish. In fact,
> I write and read so much English on this list, that whenever
> I'm thinking about e-mails that I'm going to right, I think
> in English. It has happened that I have written e-mails to
> Swedish friends and halfway through them I realize that I've
> written in English. Scary actually.
Huh, tell me about it! My written Norwegian has become so rotten I
really don't know what to do, not to mention my hand-writing!

I write and think and dream as easily in English as I do in my mother
tongue, now that's scary! The other day I was watching a silly
game-show, the localized version of "Do you want to be a millionaire",
and one of the on-lookers shouted out some ditty -in English- and I
hadn't really thought about it before, how much English has soaked
through and invaded these windy, cold rocks I call home... I feel
violated and want to purify my language and keep my to selves, the
English-thinking and the Norwegian-thinking, apart, but I think it's
too late and *that* is sad.

I've read Dixon's "The rise and fall of languages" and his conclusion
is not a happy one; language death can be slowed but not stopped. So are
we heading for a world where most of Europe is speaking some pidgin
based on English and eventually a creole? AIIIIIIGH!

Those of you that has English as L1 don't know how fortunate you are,
you have really no idea. I can picture a future social divide here,
until English prevails and Norwegian is crushed; that of an underclass
of people that can't tackle an L2 (yes there are ppl who can only ever
learn one language), thereby never learning English good enough to
function in society. I can too readily picture the 'last stand', like in
Ireland now; the last vestiges of L1 speakers speaking to their children
in English only, to improve their chances at a better life.
</rant>

Damn, I gotta go get fluent in Norse or something, maybe that can
balance things a bit :(


t.