Hør dog hvad de siger - Note-to-Self: Trials & Errors

calized versions of) American youth cultures (Preisler 1999a, 1999b). And English is univer-
sally regarded as the most important foreign language for Danes, and as a language everybody
should have a working command of.
The pressure from English on the other Nordic languages is quite similar. The linguistic out-
come of the influence, however, could be expected to be quite dissimilar. In part due to the
different histories of independence, the communities have very different language policies
(Sandøy & Östman 2004, Vikør 2003). Lund (1986) lists the hypothetical (common know-
ledge) order of the Nordic communities ‘linguistic consciousness’ 51 as shown in table 1. Noti-
ce that Iceland is not included in the list. However, it is equally common knowledge that Ice-
land is among the most linguistically conscious, i.e. purist, of the Nordic communities
Table 1: Jørn Lund’s hypothesis of linguistic consciousness:
Most linguistically conscious
The Faeroes
Norway
Swedish-Finland
Finland
Sweden
Denmark
Least linguistically conscious
We can compare Lund’s hypothetical list with the results of two questions of language policy
scope that were posed in MIN’s representative telephone surveys, presented in table 2 (see
Kristiansen & Vikør 2006, for a discussion of the individual differences, see Thøgersen 2004).
Suffice it to note that when we compare MIN’s results with Lund’s hypothetical list, a general
trend emerges where Iceland, Norway and the Faeroes, i.e. the ‘young’ nations, appear more
purist/linguistically conscious, and the ‘old’ nations, Denmark and Sweden, appear less pu-
rist/linguistically conscious.
51 ‘Linguistic consciousness’ refers to the peoples’ interest in ‘their’ language. It has close, albeit indirect, rela-
tions with linguistic purism and protectionism.
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