Icelandic language fighting tsunami of English
Two centuries ago experts predicted that Icelandic would be a dead language by now. But the doomsayers can eat their words: Icelandic is alive and kicking despite an onslaught of English brought on by modern technology. Currently spoken by the 355,000 inhabitants of this North Atlantic island, Icelandic has repeatedly come under threat through the ages-following migrations, invasions by Norway and Denmark from the 16th to the early 20th centuries, and the Industrial Revolution. But it has always survived, with the written language little changed since the 11th century.
With just a little guesswork, an Icelander today can read the Icelandic Sagas, medieval literary masterpieces written in Old Norse in the 13th and 14th centuries. Yet English usage has in recent decades skyrocketed in Iceland-as around the world-thanks to the dominance of American pop culture as well as the adoption of modern technology such as the internet, YouTube and smartphones with lightning speed.
Visitors to the capital Reykjavik need only ask locals for directions to quickly discover that Iceland is in fact bilingual. For youths here, speaking English is simply a matter of necessity. “I have to be able to read English because it’s everywhere and it’s universal,” 11-year-old Sigthor Elias Smith says-in Icelandic. Here, people watch videos and play games on their laptops, tablets and smartphones in English for the most part. Like in other Nordic countries, dubbing is almost non-existent. And Icelandic is glaringly absent in the online world. “I watch YouTube a lot, I learn a lot of English that way, and also on Netflix,” says Sigthor’s friend Eva Bjork Angarita, 12.
Icelandic in the digital age
Amid some concern that English is too prevalent, Iceland has adopted several measures to promote its own language. In 1996, the government designated November 16 as Icelandic Language Day, aimed at drawing attention to its contribution to national identity and culture. In 2011, a new law recognized Icelandic as the country’s official language.
And Education, Culture and Science Minister Lilja Alfredsdottir announced in September that authors or editors publishing books in Icelandic would have 25 percent of their expenses reimbursed, in a bid to increase the diversity of books available in Icelandic. To counteract the dominance of English in technology, Alfredsdottir has also earmarked 2.4 billion kronur (around 17.5 million euros, $19.3 million) to develop Icelandic versions of voice recognition services for virtual personal assistants such as Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa. Sigthor and Eva’s Icelandic teacher, Solveig Reynisdottir, is among those concerned about the rise of the Bard’s tongue. She worries that the tsunami of English that children are exposed to online is affecting their Icelandic vocabulary.
“The children sometimes lack words because there are many they’ve never heard,” she laments as she hands out a language comprehension assignment to her 23 students. “The technological changes are a real challenge,” Alfredsdottir admits. Eirikur Rognvaldsson, an Icelandic professor and linguist at the University of Iceland, agrees.
He acknowledges that the ubiquity of English is not unique to Iceland, but notes that in contrast to other countries, many young Icelanders choose to live abroad. “Young people in Iceland ... don’t necessarily see Iceland as their home in the future. They want to go abroad, study and live abroad. It seems their connections to their country and language are not as strong as they used to be.” A 2016 Forbes study showed that 11.4 percent of Icelanders lived abroad, in sixth place of OECD countries with populations living overseas.
No worries
Others say the fears are unwarranted. Icelanders are prolific writers. Some 1,600 books are published in print each year, according to Iceland’s National and University Library. That’s three times more per capita than in France. “We shouldn’t be worried by a few red flags,” says Ari Pall Kristinsson, a researcher at the Arni Magnusson Institute for Icelandic Studies. “Cultural life in Icelandic is very dynamic today.” And it is worth noting that English may be gaining ground orally, but it is not making its way into Icelandic dictionaries.
While English loanwords and slang regularly creep into other languages, Icelandic remains one of the world’s purest languages. The government’s Icelandic Language Committee sees to that. It guards the language closely, working meticulously to devise new words with Icelandic roots when necessary. For computer, it came up with “tolva”: a mix of “tala” (number) and “volva” (prophetess), to create the poetic “prophetess of numbers”. “I don’t think Icelandic will disappear,” says Gudrun Kvaran, head of the committee. “Two centuries ago, our famous Danish language experts predicted that Icelandic would be dead within 200 years. And yet we’re still speaking Icelandic today.” — AFP
For decades the bright-eyed boy in the photograph was believed to be the legendary artist Vincent Van Gogh at the age of 13. But experts revealed Thursday that the picture is most likely not the Dutch “Sunflowers” painter but his brother Theo, who was 15 at the time. The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam announced the shock discovery about what was previously thought to be one of only two photos of Vincent, and which has appeared in dozens of books. “With this discovery we are an illusion poorer and a portrait of Theo richer,” said Axel Rutger, director of the Van Gogh Museum.
“Of course there was a slight twinge of disappointment also because we have so few photographs of Vincent van Gogh and now we have even one less,” he told AFP. “But on the other hand of course I am always happy if you can discover more of the truth.” The discovery leaves just one known picture of the artist, taken when he was 19 years old. While Vincent Van Gogh is famed for his vividlycoloured, emotionally turbulent self-portraits in oils, he showed a surprising reluctance to be captured on camera.
He committed suicide at the age of 37 in 1890 after an emotionally turbulent life, detailed in years of correspondence with Theo, an art dealer who supported the artist emotionally and financially. “When I heard that this is most likely a picture of my great-grandfather Theo-and not of Vincent-I was surprised, but I am glad that the mystery has been solved,” Willem van Gogh, Theo’s great-grandson and an advisor to the board of the Van Gogh Museum, said in a statement.
‘Image that everybody knows’
Uncovering the case of mistaken identity took years of artistic detective work. The picture was taken by taken by Brussels photographer Balduin Schwarz in the late 19th century, but did not emerge publicly until 1957, in an exhibition by Mark Edo Tralbaut, a Belgian researcher who identified it in a catalogue as “Portrait of Vincent Van Gogh (circa 1866)”. “It is the image that everybody knows as the portrait of the artist as a young boy,” Teio Meedendorp, chief researcher at the Van Gogh Museum, told AFP. But after a Dutch TV program raised questions about it in 2014, the Van Gogh Museum launched an investigation.
Coincidentally, another Van Gogh expert from Belgium, Yves Vasseur, had also started his own enquiries and got in touch with the museum. Vasseur said he discovered by chance that the photographer had only moved to his Brussels studio in 1870, four years after the photo was taken, and that Vincent Van Gogh would have been much older at the time. “I decided to share my doubts about the identification with the Van Gogh Museum, and we subsequently decided to collaborate to solve this ‘identity crisis’ once and for all,” he said.
Confusing the issue was the fact that the brothers looked alike, with reddish-blond hair-but Theo had more delicate features and a “very light eye color” which looked like it could be seen in the photo, “The light color of Theo’s eyes is especially striking in the known photographs of him, and this can also be seen in the Schwarz portrait-this was another indication that the person in the portrait is probably Theo,” added Meedendorp.
The museum then commissioned a forensic study by a professor at Amsterdam University which showed with a “high degree of probability” that the photo was of Theo. “In the end we have lost a portrait, a photograph portrait of Vincent but we have found a new photography portrait of Theo,” Vasseur told AFP. — AFP