Hacker News Reader

Comment by checkyoursudo | Hacker News Reader

I lived in Sweden for a couple of years. I would not be surprised if (at least some of) the Nordics eventually made English an official language within my lifetime.

When I was going through my migration process, someone at the tax office said in response to my statement that my Swedish was pretty bad (paraphrasing here): "I think you could live the rest of your life in Sweden pretty easily speaking only English."

I lived in way northern Sweden, so not like a cosmopolitan/metropolitan area like Stockholm/Gothenburg/Malmö. After a couple of years, my Swedish barely improved, and I think the tax office agent was probably correct.

My very young kids were in public school there. Probably almost all of the Swedish kids wanted to be friends with my kids, because my kids could speak English just like these kids' parents and older siblings. Almost all of the kids in my rural town were excited to learn English, and I met many fully Swedish kids whom at 7 or 8 years old were already gaining a good level of proficiency in English.

View on HN

Not Sweden, but I spent 2 weeks in Iceland and was astonished that everyone there spoke pretty much perfect English. We ate dinner one night at a restaurant in a tiny village in Northern Iceland. Our server was a young man who spoke absolutely perfect American English. We asked him if he had spent much time in the States. He responded that he had never left his village - not even to go to Reykjavik. He had learned all his English just from watching American media and listening to American music. I was absolutely floored.

On another note, my daughter spent 9 months in Sweden as an au pair. I asked her, when she came home, if she learned any Swedish. She said she learned a few words, but everyone spoke really good English so there was not really an opportunity to learn Swedish.

I had a very similar experience in Iceland.

Surprisingly, the same Icelandic youth that spoke to my siblings and I in fluent English couldn’t spell. I was floored when after an hour chatting with one of them they couldn’t spell “frog”. Not because they should be able to spell in English, but because I couldn’t understand how someone could be so fluent in a language without being literate. Clearly it’s very possible.

Was it a case where they didn't know how to write it down, or did they have a problem with saying individual letters? The latter seems much more likely as different languages usually small differences in pronunciation of some letters.

Specifically I quizzed him on saying the letters. We were just stuck at a bus stop and having some fun. Not really a pencil and paper type of situation.

You can be perfectly fluent in a language without being literate in any language; for a long time, that was the norm for even first languages, so obviously its possible.

And English, with its extremely complex (frequently irregular, but even where not strictly so still not simple) mapping between phonetics and pronunciation probably has bigger gap between spoken and written proficiency as a first language than languages with a more simply phonetic script.

> in Iceland and was astonished that everyone there spoke pretty much perfect English

On my visit there seemed to be a pretty sharp division based on age where people over 60ish have a good chance of not speaking English. Maybe lower as you move away from Reykjavik. Virtually everyone under 40 speaking English, across the island.

Oddly, while I've always considered my brother and I to look a lot alike, everyone would speak English to him and then immediately switch to Icelandic for me (which I don't speak).

> my daughter spent 9 months in Sweden as an au pair....

Decades ago my wife spent a semester abroad in The Netherlands. She said she never learned any Dutch because everyone wanted to practice their English with her.

Yeah, the Dutch are usually quite English proficient and happy to speak English with you. I was reasonably conversant, and could read a newspaper when I was there 6 years ago. I only spoke Dutch with a few immigrants, and some folks who I let talk while I answered simple questions. As soon as I hit a word with a tricky "g" sound they would switch to English, sometimes mid sentence. It was quite impressive how quickly my mispronunciation identified me as a native English speaker.

This is normal for smaller countries. eg. Most 80s and 90s kids raised in the coastal/western part of Albania know Italian. The reason is simply TV. Albania had just one government channel during the communist times, and after communism fell we had maybe 3 good ones, and a bunch of locally small ones.

Italian TV was the only way to see some good tv, and since Albania is next to Italy, pretty much all the kids of that generation know italian, this is especially since Italians dub/voice over the Hollywood movies shown.

After 2000s, English started becoming mainstream, and local TVs did start becoming much better, and they do show movies in English (with subtitles), and don't generally dub them.

So, know English is slowly overtaking Italian as a foreign language, with German becoming a popular third foreign language.

>He responded that he had never left his village - not even to go to Reykjavik. He had learned all his English just from watching American media and listening to American music

Relevant: "Friends is the most popular way to learn English. 26% of those who watched television to improve language skills cited the 1994-2004 series in a survey, compared to 7% for The Simpsons and 6% for How I Met Your Mother, and were more likely to want to study in the US."(<https://np.reddit.com/r/television/comments/5vqtsa/friends_i...>)

I've heard that Sweden didn't want to make Swedish an official language of the EU when they joined, due to the fact that EU would then use a lot of resources to translate all documents to Swedish. But then Finland (with it's Swedish minority population) went ahead and made it an official language anyway.

I'm not sure if it's true, but it wouldn't surprise me.

I understood that each EU country can only declare one language to be an official EU language (to put a limit on the number of language combinations between which translations are needed). Because of this, there was some talk that English might be dropped as an official language when the UK left the EU, since Ireland puts forth Irish (Gaelic) as its official EU language. If so, since Finland can only propose one language, I suppose that will have been Finnish, not Swedish.

What does Malta have?

Maltese, as the UK had already nominated English when Malta joined.

isn't there one canonical language of the EU which prevails in disputes between different translations of treaties? what will they change to, French I guess?

Not in Canada. Federal laws and trade agreements are in English and French and you don’t simply defer to one if there’s a disagreement.

(And if you want to get off on a technicality, see if one version is more favourable to you, as the “feeling” of words can’t always be a 1:1 match).

No, there isn't really. Different sub-organizations have different working languages, which officially can be either English, French or German; in practice it's either English or French, although there seems to be a slight uptick of use of German. English will remain in wide use officially.

That was a rumor. The European Council votes on official languages, and English remaining was not really in question, since it's an official language in member states and (one of) the major working language(s) of the EU.

AFAIK you can only nominate one language.

Ireland and Malta didn't need to nominate English (as the UK had done so) so they nominated Irish and Maltese. Now the UK is gone I'm not sure how well that works for them now. Perhaps the EU could adopt the Indian strategy of using a language that no national group claims, thus seemingly not favoring any one member group over another.

I think the French would fight English being the official Lingua Franca in the EU as hard as they can.

They already are.

Why would they? It's obvious that French is not going to be the main one and they master English much better than German.

I'm sure it's a point of pride. French people are very proud of their language, in general. And, despite being at-peace and having relatively friendly relations with the UK for at least a century, I'm sure there is a lingering sense of rivalry between them. The Britain and France have been adversaries for nearly a thousand years, after all.

Are they though? I'm pretty sure your vision of the French is more representative of the French from the seventies.

There will definitely be always some rivalry between the too countries. Not animosity though, most people are over that.

Source: French

'Rivalry without animosity', perfectly said.

Now, this is just for fun, but did you know that Queen Elizabeth's grandson is named "George Alexander Louis"? How fun would it be if he decided to call himself "King Louis I" when crowned?

> I'm sure there is a lingering sense of rivalry between them.

That's a common stereotype I hear coming from english-speaking people, but it doesn't really translate to any meaningful behaviour in France. I'm afraid if such a rivalry actually persists, it is one-sided.

> The Britain and France have been adversaries for nearly a thousand years, after all.

Germany and France have been pretty cross too in the past, and bad feelings have died off in a generation. I wouldn't give too much credit to this kind of claims based on folk history.

A similar thing seems to be UK-Germany - and no, not just around football (although there it is very pronounced), with UK seeing things way more as a rivalry. (and they love their war references, which is kinda awkward nowadays... I say as a German)

Those references are cringe inducing for a fair number of us English folk as well. You have my apologies for those types.

I'm just hoping this whole Brexit shitshow will teach my country men some humility.

My phrasing was unfairly generalizing, yes. I know these things are not about everyone, but more about trends in tone in media etc, which often can be influenced by quite small groups.

I too often like to point out the language of the Franks is currently English 8)

France has an institution: "The Immortals" (1) which looks after the French language. Seat 31 is currently this bloke: Michael Edwards (2). He is British.

1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acad%C3%A9mie_Fran%C3%A7aise 2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Edwards_(literary_scho...

> Perhaps the EU could adopt the Indian strategy of using a language that no national group claims, thus seemingly not favoring any one member group over another.

Esperanto.

While I don't see English becoming official it's very true Swedes are proficient in English. At least in tech you are pretty much required to be able to switch to English if anyone non-Swedish joins a meeting.

Outside of work I haven't really met anyone native below the age of 50 who can't communicate in English. That said we are doing an awful job at making it easier to immigrants to learn Swedish, as soon as any Swedish diffuclty is detected a lot of us auto-switch to English.

“ I think you could live the rest of your life in Sweden pretty easily speaking only English."

It’s all fun and games until the ESL people start correcting your English too because they actually learned the rules of it instead of just knowing it by being born in an anglophone environment.

My Japanese wife knows all the grammar rules for English and sometimes corrects me. But she still asks me to proof read her public documents because her writing doesn't always flow like a native, she'll use unusual sentence constructs that, though grammatically sound, don't sound "native".

All those conversations help me learn the formation of the rules I follow but don't know. ;)

Also, I have to say, the best French language reference I found was on a Hong Kong university site. It was written in English (or I couldn't use it!) and would often explain things in reference to English, but also provide a formalized definition of the behavior in English, often that I never had seen formalized.

Of course, I spent a few hours trying to learn French, didn't use it much and it evaporated. Oh well, maybe next time.

I had the same experience. I spent a bit more than 1 year in Sweden and pretty much spoke English the whole time.

I did learn a bit of Swedish via reading, watching TV, etc, but it was near to impossible to actually practice my Swedish with people. I would say something with an obvious foreign accent, and they would just switch to English immediately. In any setting, at the grocery store, in a bar, at work, at the freaking McDonald's.

In a way, they don't really have many other options, it's not like the Swedish language has any sort of "soft power" in the world. But still, it would have been nice to be able to practice a bit more :)

I lived in Sweden for 8 years this month; I’m ashamed to admit I don’t speak much if any Swedish. (Though Skånska makes it harder anyway!!) honestly it’s totally possible to live out the rest of my life here never learning it.

There’s a few times I feel completely powerless, telephone systems, random slips of paper through the door, written notices (in bad handwriting) in the elevator- but everyone speaks English and every company manages to accommodate me.

I still want to learn Swedish, but it always seems to take a back seat to my stressful worklife.

I managed to get a citizenship without any Swedish either.

I have lived in Germany during many periods of my life (adding up to 3 years) and German language is still difficult for me even although I can speak and have simple conversations in German, I'm not able to write letters with the required formality in that language. Where I live (medium-size town in west Germany) few people speak English.

If I was to take a job in say, The Netherlands, I feel that at 39 yo, I have no chance of learning a fourth language (I already speak ES, EN, DE) with the needed proficiency to integrate by purely speaking Dutch.

Therefore, I hope that language barriers are lowered in favour of a real European integration.

>I managed to get a citizenship without any Swedish either.

Not only does Sweden not have a language requirement for citizenship, the country has [no income, employment, or skills requirement](http://www.migrationsverket.se/English/Private-individuals/B...) either.

In completely unrelated news, [Arabic is now the second most spoken language in Sweden](https://digitaledition.chicagotribune.com/tribune/article_po...).

I studied German for years and I dabbled in Swedish just to get a sample of what the language was like.

I was surprised how closely related Swedish and English are. In my opinion, I think Swedish is closer to English than German even. I still think Dutch is closest to English, and data tends to agree, but Swedish's similarities, minus being a declarative language and a few other aspects, really caught me off guard.

I had a similar experience. I taught immersion summer camps in French when I was in college. At a teacher training session, we were paired with the Swedish camp to try out our lesson plans on each other. I was shocked by how comprehensible Swedish was to me as an English (and French) speaker.

I spent a few summers as a camper/credit student at the Finnish language village (I assume it’s the same set of language villages you taught at), which is where the Swedish camp was (is?) after the Finnish sessions were complete. One of the Finnish counselors stayed on and learned enough Swedish during the one-week break between Finnish and Swedish camps to be able to muddle through being a Swedish camp counselor!

The French Voyageur program looked super fun, they stopped by our camp for some soccer, dinner, and sauna once, had a great time with them.

> I still think Dutch is closest to English

Frisian is very similar to English

One rhyme demonstrates the palpable similarity between Frisian and English:

"Bread, butter and green cheese is good English and good Friese," which is pronounced more or less the same in both languages

(Frisian: "Brea, bûter, en griene tsiis is goed Ingelsk en goed Frysk.")

Interestingly, English has become a world language, while Frisian must fear extinction. 10 centuries ago, neither development would be predictable.

Predictions a year out are a crap shoot, I think all bets are off when we get to a thousand!

Well, as long as humanity itself survives to 3021, neither English, nor Spanish, nor Chinese are likely to be gone. Even Quechua is likely to persist.

Languages of massive empires rarely die out; they might be transformed (such as when Latin gave birth to an entire family or related languages), but outright disappearance is typically not their fate.

The curious thing about English is that it gained a massive role after spending almost a thousand years of its previous existence as a niche language spoken on a small island on the edge of Europe.

Fries is apparently closer to English than Dutch. For me learning Dutch wasn’t too difficult, perhaps due to my Yorkshuh background. Lots of common words with my dialect.

"I still think Dutch is closest to English"

The language we speak here in the US is pretty close to English...

"I still think Dutch is closest to English, and data tends to agree"

I'd be curious to see the data. I can understand a bit of german based on my very limited knowledge of dutch, but I struggle in dutch despite speaking english and actively seeking to learn the language.

I find that knowing french is more helpful than english when it comes to dutch. (e.g. "vind je" is "trouves-tu" but it's "do you find" rather than "find you" in english. "ik heb dorst" is "j'ai soif" but it's "I'm thirsty" rather than "I have thirst" in english)

To add on (anecdotally), I've met people online who are Swedish and you basically can't tell they aren't just native English speakers.

Back at the time of German reunification, P.J. O'Rourke wrote that West Germans were just like Americans, except that they could speak English.

I sometimes host some EU-based ESL people with barely an accent when speaking English, and they’ve never lived in Canada or US. So whenever we drive across the US-Canada border, I always ask them to fake an accent and grammar error to avoid suspicion that they’ve been living in Can/USA illegally.

> ...met many fully Swedish kids whom at 7 or 8 years old were already gaining...

Who. No m.

Downvoters: Way not to grok the context.

Given the content of GP's comment, I thought they (and everyone else) would appreciate the correction... That is, appreciate the humour of being corrected by a Swede.

I didn't downvote you, and I don't mind. But I think my usage was correct.

I wrote myself as the subject (who) of the sentence and the children the object (whom).

Let me rewrite it like this:

I met children. I met Swedish children. I met Swedish children, many of whom were becoming proficient in English by the age of 7 or 8.

> I met many fully Swedish kids whom at 7 or 8 years old were already gaining a good level of proficiency in English.

I think whom is correct, given that the children are the objects of the sentence. The real error was more that my original construction was a bit awkward.

Is your wife tall or short -- are you married to a woman whom is tall, or are you married to a woman whom is short? Hope you can see how horrendous that looks. And yet, she is the object of the sentence!

I think that's because it's not just her, but her and her attributes (here: height) that is the subject of the sentence: The whole clause "a woman who is tall" is the object of he sentence "I am married to ...". In Swedish I think it's called inskjuten relativbisats; dunno the grammatical term in English, but a direct translation would be something like inserted related-secondary-clause. Within that secondary clause, the wife is the subject, so "who", not "whom". The fact that the whole clause is the subject of "I am married to..." apparently just doesn't get a grammatical marker of its own.

Then, for the difference between

> I met Swedish children, many of whom were becoming proficient in English by the age of 7 or 8.

and

> I met many fully Swedish kids whom at 7 or 8 years old were already gaining a good level of proficiency in English.

I absolutely agree that the first is correct, but still contend that the second is not. The structure of the second is perfectly analogous to "I am married to a woman whom is tall"; the first differs... Somehow. I think it's the "many of", which makes it not a grammatically complete clause so it can't have a subject, or something. Or perhaps more specifically, the "of", which moves the following pronoun from object to subject. Like: "As a polygamist, I am married to several women, some of whom are tall"; "As a bigamist, I am married to two women who are tall".

Should we go check if Lieberman & Co have any eggcorn of enlightenment to shred on this? :-)

The first sentence is definitely correct, the person is the subject talking about themselves and secondarily about meeting children.

However to me as a native English speaker (from England) the second sounds wrong. It feels like the Swedish kids are the subject of the sentence, and using "whom" jars slightly. My guess is this may be down to the active way their increasing proficiency was described: "were becoming proficient" in the first sentence sounds passive; whereas "already gaining a good level" sounds active, shifting the emphasis and thereby making them the subject of the sentence.

"I think you could live the rest of your life in Sweden pretty easily speaking only English."

Like Latin in medieval times (at least for the educated), and Greek in the Roman Empire.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com