Latgalistikys kongresu materiali, III. 2011. - Latvijas Universitāte

search I obtained information from 53 pupils from the secondary school
Älvdalsskolan (7 th and 8 th grade), 18 parents of those children and 18 employees
of the Municipal Council in Älvdalen.
Övdalian as an endangered language
As the number of users of Övdalian and its domains of usage are
constantly diminishing the dialect can be nowadays regarded as an endangered
language. Sven O. Hultgren (1983) states that in 1978 82% of pupils
and 87% of parents were using Övdalian in daily conversation, while my
research has shown a considerable decrease to 34% among pupils and 50%
among parents. The average number for pupils, parents and municipal
workers speaking the dialect is accordingly 45% of the whole population.
In studies published in 2008, conducted by the organisation Ulum Dalska
‘Let us speak Dalecarlian’, it is estimated that only 34% of the population
speak the local vernacular 47 . What is more worrying is the fact that among
children younger than 15 years old only 5% (45 people) can speak Övdalian
today (Larsson et al. 2008).
The intergenerational transmission of Övdalian is impeded as most of
the speakers are beyond child-bearing age. The most visible decrease in
the number of its speakers is in the group of 30-year old people who bear
the main responsibility for language transmission to the next generation.
Övdalian does not function as the only mother tongue of pupils, which can
be partly a result of the fact that not a single parent states in my survey that
he or she always uses Övdalian while speaking to the children, whereas
33% claim that they never use the dialect in such a situation. Only 17% of
the pupils claim that their mother tongues are both Swedish and Övdalian,
whereas the majority (83%) says that it is Swedish.
Since the dialect apparently is not being passed from one generation
to another in a natural way, special measures are needed to preserve it
from disappearance. Since 1984, when the organisation for the presservation
of Övdalian Ulum Dalska was established, the interest in Övdalian
problems has been gradually rising. Övdalians in cooperation with some
language enthusiasts have proved that they are aware of their local heritage
and that they care for the future of their vernacular. Therefore there have
been made many attempts to revitalize Övdalian, irrespective of it being a
language or merely a dialect in the light of politics.
47 The difference in numbers between both studies can be explained by the fact that
Ulum Dalska’s research has not been conducted directly among Älvdalen’s inhabitants.
The data has been obtained from the representatives of each village in the municipality.
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