Attitudes to English loanwords in Norwegian

More documents

Recommendations

Info

In the following section, I give some examples of typical responses of both kinds, and drawattention to some of their most typical characteristics. I should like to emphasize that I know nextto nothing about who the respondents are; I have made no attempt to contact the respondents viathe (possibly not genuine) email-addresses that appear together with their messages (see above),quite simply because I am mainly interested in assessing the general nature of the debate, and notin distinguishing trends according to sociolinguistic parameters. Thus, ‘people in general’ is asclose to an identification of the group of subjects as it is possible to come in this case, althoughthe debate must be said to be characterized by a young tone.Serious, non-serious, and rebellious contributionsSo far, I have been talking about one division line and two main categories of response, althoughit is obviously not as simple as that. I have, for instance, already briefly mentioned a group ofpeople who seem to respond to the invitation to translate English loanwords in positive terms,but who do not seem to take the assigned task seriously. In the following, I situate this categoryof response between the straightforward, ‘serious’ responses and the rebel responses, since it isindeed a borderline category: it is close to impossible to assess, merely on the basis of what isgiven in the responses, whether these people are just indifferent to the implicit issue (yes/no toEnglish loanwords in Norwegian), or whether they rather constitute a class of good-naturedrebels.A typical ‘distribution of numerical power’ between these three categories – serious, non-seriousand rebellious contributions – is for the first to be in the lead, the second not far behind, and thethird constituting a minority. For the word zipoffbukse 6 , for example, there were 33 responses allin all. 13 of these were clear-cut serious responses; 15 were non-serious/hard to determine, theremaining five were rebel responses. 7In the following, I look at some of the contributions pertaining to zipoffbukse from each of thethree categories. Later on, I also look at some contributions pertaining some of the otherloanwords, but only with respect to the rebel category. For each example, I provide a ‘loose’English translation, both for the translation proposal (when there is one) and for the justification.Serious contributionsProposal: Vårbukse‘Spring trousers’Justification: For om våren er det ofte kaldt først på dagen og så blir det varmt og da kan du ta avbeina på buksa omtrent samtidig som du tar av genseren . . .‘Because in the spring it is often cold early in the day and then it gets warm and then you cantake the legs off the trousers at the same time as taking off your sweater . . . ‘This is quite typical of serious proposals. The respondent basically does as he or she is asked. Ifwe were to judge the quality of the proposal, however, we would probably find that it floutsseveral of the rules regarding how to put together a good loanword equivalent (cf. Sandøy6 A compound with both English and Norwegian elements denoting a pair of trousers where the bottom part of theleg is attached with a zip and comes off.7 As the list proceeds, with more and more new words for people to translate, it becomes apparent that the rebelshave not managed to disrupt and derail the discussion in the way they had perhaps hoped, so the percentage of rebelresponses drops even lower. As for words introduced at a relatively late stage, we get hardly any rebel responses atall, something which further emphasizes the minority status of this group.215
2000:243ff). Among other things, it is not quite true to fact, since it implies that the trousers arenot suitable for summer use. At least with the summers we have in certain parts of Norway, onewould normally be grateful for an extra length of leg to zip on when needed.Proposal: Todelsbukse‘Two-part trousers’Justification: Eller var det tredels?‘Or was it three-part?’Again, the contributor tries, and manages, to make a decent go of it. This example demonstrates,however, the typical trend of using the justification-field in a slightly ‘naughty’ way, i.e. notstrictly in order to justify the choice of Norwegian equivalent, but rather to try to create anamusing, entertaining effect.Proposal: “wannabeshorts” bukse‘“wannabeshorts” trousers’Justification: Her har du ei bukse som ikke helt vet hva den vil være . . . Lang eller kort, så dener delt på midten!‘Here you have some trousers which don’t really know what they want to be . . . Long or short,so they’re split in the middle!’Sometimes it is hard to tell whether a proposal belongs to the serious or non-serious category.This is an example of such a case. Here, like in quite a few other places in the material, therespondent replaces one English loanword with another, which is patently not what the listorganizers intended. However, because the use of English in creating neologisms in Norwegianis so common, it is difficult to know for certain whether the respondent is actually aware that heor she is doing this, and that it is 'wrong'in relation to the list managers’ intentions. After all, thejustification of the choice seems serious enough.Non-serious contributionsProposal: Bukse for dverger og normale‘Trousers for dwarves and normal people’Justification: Og visste du at . . . Hei, visste du at det er større sannsynlighet for å bli slått av lynenn å bli spist av hai?‘And did you know that . . . Hey, did you know that there is a greater probability that you will getstruck by lightning than get eaten by sharks?’Rather than a borderline case, there are several traits that single this proposal out as a clear-cutnon-serious one. The translation is for a start unnecessarily cumbersome, a rather heavy nounphrase rather than the expected word. Then there is the use of the slightly derogatory worddwarf; and, finally, the justification for the translation constitutes, of course, a completeirrelevancy. This respondent is clearly not trying to contribute to Norwegianization, but on theother hand, he or she cannot really be said to be trying to cause any serious disruption, either.Rebel contributionsThe following responses to zipoffbukse, however, clearly are. The opinions of the representativesof the rebel group are – for the most part – crystal clear: keep the word as it is, don't try to216
Page 1 and 2: !" # $ %&'()$#$#*+ ),- '.%/0/1//23
Page 3: It is a reasonable hypothesis that
Page 7 and 8: uinformerte bygdegrisen du er da du
Page 9 and 10: would be a simpler place. Go fast e
Page 11 and 12: It is quite clear that this way of
Page 13 and 14: local levels. In addition, there ha
Page 15: Niedzielski, Nancy A. and Dennis R.

Attitudes to English loanwords in Norwegian

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?