impressum - KOPS - Universität Konstanz

CONTROL IS CONTROL
Once upon a time Danish computers spoke Danish, yet computing in
the mother tongue never took root in Denmark
Jacob Kornbeck 1
Look at a German computer keyboard: That button on the far left, in the bottom row,
which in English you know by the name "control", here it is called "Steuerung". Now
turn to a Danish computer. It will say "control", even though the computer is
equipped with the three odd-looking Danish letters æ, ø and å. The dominance of
English is obvious, and the keyboard is not the only example.
Control is Control.
Linguist Pia Jarvad, of the Council for Danish Language (Dansk Sprognævn), calls
for a differentiated view of the problem: In scholarly books on literature there may be
only 0.01% English words, while titles on marketing may fetch 1.1%. And some
commercials contain 25% English and "only" 75% Danish! The English words are
almost always nouns, so the structure of a sentence is Danish but: "What people
speak about is English!"
Danish will not cease to be spoken, but in some areas of life it is being abandoned
by those who were born with it. The problematic of the Information Society is a most
illustrative example: New products, new working processes and new lifestyles are
imported. And so are the English words they are known by - they quite simply aren't
translated! Are there any initiatives to counterbalance this? The most common user
programmes exist today in Danish versions, states Mr Finn Bejer-Andersen,
Managing Director of Borland Development Centre in Værløse. But generally
speaking, rather the reverse seems true. "In the seventies we thought we were going
to speak Danish," says Mrs Kirsten Graversen, International Officer of Roskilde
Business College (Roskilde Handelsskole) with a sigh: "It didn't work." She shows a
1970s computing textbook.
That was the time when computers were slowly moving out of the professional
milieus of programmers and engineers, starting to serve a wider public of users. On
realising this, it was thought that the all-English terminology would need to be
replaced by one in the national language. A glance in Mrs Graversen's old textbook
reveals that the diligent student was required to learn both English and Danish
1 This essay does not pretend to be entirely scientific. Readers disinclined towards its author's
polemics may turn towards: Kornbeck, J. (1995): A qualitative appreciation of the future of the
Danish language in the information society, Luxembourg: European Parliament, PE 165.541 -
Kornbeck, J. (in print): "Linguistic hybris in the realm of English? Some remarks on the
information society debate in Denmark", in: Kornbeck, J. (ed.), Sprachpolitik und Interkulturalität,
Trier.
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