This article was originally published in Danish on October 24, 2016.
Queen Margrethe is reportedly annoyed by Danes’ linguistic errors. We can only agree with this irritation. On the whole, many Danes seem to have forgotten the essential importance of the mother tongue.
A person’s mother tongue is – as the name suggests – the language spoken by their mother, which through its words, idioms and structures has helped to form the child’s conceptual world. With language, our cultural heritage is passed on. Our mother tongue will be the medium in which we dream and think our deepest thoughts – and it will be the key to understanding our past. It is for the preservation of the mother tongue as the language of church, school and administration that people have often gone to the barricades over the years, because if you lose your language, you lose the basis of your national and cultural identity. Thus, it was primarily the mother tongue that was the basis for the battle for Southern Jutland, where foreign princes, in order to preserve their titles, had allowed German to penetrate Danish Schleswig, and with the language came German identity, so that Danish peasants suddenly felt like Germans.
That it is also beneficial to know other languages is, of course, not open to discussion. Understanding other peoples is facilitated by a thorough knowledge of their language, and it is essential for the interaction between countries that people from small language areas like Denmark learn foreign languages – but learn them as foreign languages.
To remedy his own total lack of vision, Prime Minister Poul Schlüter set up a so-called “think tank” of spiritual nobodies whose “brilliant” inventions would help Denmark into the next millennium. One member of this think tank was the writer Paul Hammerich, who can safely be considered a pioneer of the new, the modern, the international man. One of his “brilliant” inventions was to make future Danes bilingual. In this context, it is superfluous to discuss what other language we should be gifted with. It should, of course, be English – whose ill fate it has been to be transformed from a national language of a people to an international instrument of communication for all the world’s creatures from Australians to Eskimos.
Since then, of course, the plan has been fully backed by various governments – and by a succession of education ministers who want to make sure that the poor schoolchildren start learning English from first grade – even before they have learned proper Danish. And who is supposed to teach this “second mother tongue”? Well, it should be seminarians and academics with the same brilliant linguistic background as successive prime ministers and foreign ministers, whose education is certainly not the worst, but whose command of English must usually make any English expert cringe. It is people with this background who are thought to be able to communicate the “second mother tongue”. Several upper secondary schools have introduced international classes where all teaching – with the exception of Danish, which has not yet been removed from the timetable, but will gradually be relegated to the place previously occupied by ancient studies – is in English, taught by subject teachers in the various areas. One might wonder why language teachers are being trained at all when anyone and everyone can apparently teach languages, but so be it. Sadly, students flock to these ‘exciting’ classes. A clear result of an education that, since nursery school, has broken down interest in and respect for national identity.
The idea of bilingualism is of course superficially enticing, but true bilingualism is rare and it is hard to find societies that are truly bilingual. Countries like Belgium and Switzerland may have multiple languages as states, but individuals usually have only one mother tongue and speak one or more other languages as a second language. The fight for the mother tongue has repeatedly threatened the existence of the artificial Belgian state, just as there has been strong friction in Switzerland. In other places, several languages are spoken, but these have a social function. This is the case in large parts of the Third World, where the local languages are spoken by the lower classes, while everything important is done in a European language that only the upper classes have some command of. In South Africa, many whites are bilingual, but it is still the case that it is usually the Afrikaans speakers who are bilingual out of necessity, whereas most English speakers would never dream of speaking Afrikaans. The same is true in Ireland, where the national language has been almost completely supplanted by English – and with it an ancient and very rich culture that only experts can now understand.
And this is the crux of the matter: the dominance of English in media and so-called ‘youth culture’ means that no language will survive in competition with English unless a very conscious effort is made to do so. That such efforts will not be made is obvious. In Denmark, students have lost around 30% of their Danish lessons over the last 25 years, and the remaining hours have largely been spent on nonsense that has nothing to do with Danish. If these hours are now to be shared with English, it’s easy to see where we’re heading.
The attitude now seems to be that Danish is just a cumbersome obstacle to trade and international interaction between states, so we might as well do without it. The result will be like in Ireland, where the Irish language now has only a ceremonial function. When you write a letter, you begin in Irish “Dear Sir” and ends “Yours sincerely”, but everything in between is written in English. The Prime Minister makes a symbolic speech at the opening of Parliament in mostly broken Irish, after which the actual proceedings are conducted in English. Only a few complainers insist on using Irish, but if they get too difficult, they can simply be sent to prison for not understanding the English letters sent to them by the authorities. This is what will happen in Denmark too, if the Danish people don’t remember their heritage and do something to preserve it! The Danish language is already under threat in schools today – not just from English, but also from a myriad of useless third-world languages and concepts like “multicultural education”. Nationally conscious parents must take action against this. Similarly, we must fight the pervasive tendency to use English words for concepts that can just as easily be expressed in Danish. As usual, radio and television are setting a bad example here.
If you really want to get a sense of how much our language has degenerated over the last 25 years, all you have to do is pull up older productions from radio and television to compare the linguistic expression. Vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation and intonation have all been proletarianized over the past quarter century, and the precise and nuanced language has been replaced by an excruciating groping for words and a stream of “ikk”, “å såån nå”, “ligesom” etc. And it’s not the quantity but also the quality of Danish language teaching that is to blame. Where previously we used to read authors whose language could serve as role models for aspiring young people, today we read comics, advertising copy and magazine stories. Role models are undemocratic. Today, the aim is to show young people that what they can do themselves is just as good as what others can do – in fact, much better. For this teaching, classical literature has very conveniently been replaced by the “works” of Klaus Rifbjerg and later writers whose main source of inspiration seems to be the gutter, and by “talents” such as Martha Christensen, whose linguistic equals are hard to find when it comes to linguistic poverty and awkwardness. With these role models, it is clear that the Danish language must be dying and that the young generation is not even capable of reading classic Danish literature, which today has to be “translated” into modern Danish, thereby losing the linguistic uniqueness of the authors. H.C. Andersen is impossible to translate – even into “modern Danish”.
The state of the Danish language is also evident from the fact that several companies – including Danish ones – have adopted English as their corporate language – including for internal communication. In these companies, the mother tongue no longer has any place. Similarly, the advertising world seems to ignore this insignificant little language – especially in ads aimed at young people who find it “smart” to use some form of adapted English. This is of course supported by the Internet, the many foreign satellite channels and the massive import of American crap by the so-called “national” channels. It goes without saying that virtually all government websites are now also available in English, and only backward fools would think of giving their business a Danish name. Going the other way: the reputable company with the good name Bering Blomster (with alliteration) has become the monstrous Bering House of Flowers. Sausage bars, locksmiths and electricians also give their businesses English names, even though they typically cater to a local audience. Several cafés only have their menus in English. There are no more “udsalg”, only the pointless SALE, which is what all businesses do at all times, sell.
A language only lives if it is used in all aspects of life. If it is not, it will die along with the culture it has carried. All that remains are cultureless consumers with no identity other than that given to them by the advertising world. In such a world, everything that is beautiful disappears in favor of what is profitable. If you don’t want to live in such a world, you too must resist. Remember that not so long ago, the Baltic countries had to go through a hard and bloody struggle to regain the right to their mother tongue. If we don’t take care of the Danish language, our children will have to go through the same struggle in a few decades. Spare them that. Speak Danish, and keep speaking Danish – and boycott companies that address you in English.
Povl H. Riis-Knudsen
Translated by means of AI
Danmarks Frihedsraad 