ICELANDIC LANGUAGE AT RISK; ROBOTS, COMPUTERS CAN'T GRASP IT
ICELANDIC LANGUAGE AT RISK; ROBOTS, COMPUTERS CAN'T GRASP
IT
BY EGILL BJARNASON Apr 22, 11:48 AM EDT
REYKJAVIK, Iceland (AP) -- When an Icelander arrives at
an office building and sees "Solarfri" posted, they need no further
explanation for the empty premises: The word means "when staff get an
unexpected afternoon off to enjoy good weather."
The people of this rugged North Atlantic island settled
by Norsemen some 1,100 years ago have a unique dialect of Old Norse that has
adapted to life at the edge of the Artic.
Hundslappadrifa, for example, means "heavy snowfall
with large flakes occurring in calm wind."
But the revered Icelandic language, seen by many as a
source of identity and pride, is being undermined by the widespread use of
English, both for mass tourism and in the voice-controlled artificial
intelligence devices coming into vogue.
Linguistics experts, studying the future of a language
spoken by fewer than 400,000 people in an increasingly globalized world, wonder
if this is the beginning of the end for the Icelandic tongue.
Former President Vigdis Finnbogadottir told The
Associated Press that Iceland must take steps to protect its language. She is
particularly concerned that programs be developed so the language can be easily
used in digital technology.
"Otherwise, Icelandic will end in the Latin
bin," she warned.
Teachers are already sensing a change among students in
the scope of their Icelandic vocabulary and reading comprehension.
Anna Jonsdottir, a teaching consultant, said she often
hears teenagers speak English among themselves when she visits schools in
Reykjavik, the capital.
She said 15-year-old students are no longer assigned a
volume from the Sagas of Icelanders, the medieval literature chronicling the
early settlers of Iceland. Icelanders have long prided themselves of being able
to fluently read the epic tales originally penned on calfskin.
Most high schools are also waiting until senior year to
read author Halldor Laxness, the 1955 winner of the Nobel Prize in literature,
who rests in a small cemetery near his farm in West Iceland.
A number of factors combine to make the future of the
Icelandic language uncertain. Tourism has exploded in recent years, becoming
the country's single biggest employer, and analysts at Arion Bank say one in
two new jobs is being filled by foreign labor.
That is increasing the use of English as a universal
communicator and diminishing the role of Icelandic, experts say.
"The less useful Icelandic becomes in people's daily
life, the closer we as a nation get to the threshold of giving up its
use," said Eirikur Rognvaldsson, a language professor at the University of
Iceland.
He has embarked on a three-year study of 5,000 people
that will be the largest inquiry ever into the use of the language.
"Preliminary studies suggest children at their
first-language acquisition are increasingly not exposed to enough Icelandic to
foster a strong base for later years," he said.
Concerns for the Icelandic language are by no means new.
In the 19th century, when its vocabulary and syntax were heavily influenced by
Danish, independence movements fought to revive Icelandic as the common tongue,
central to the claim that Icelanders were a nation.
Since Iceland became fully independent from Denmark in
1944, its presidents have long championed the need to protect the language.
Asgeir Jonsson, an economics professor at the University
of Iceland, said without a unique language Iceland could experience a brain
drain, particularly among certain professions.
"A British town with a population the size of
Iceland has far fewer scientists and artists, for example," he said.
"They've simply moved to the metropolis."
The problem is compounded because many new computer
devices are designed to recognize English but they do not understand Icelandic.
"Not being able to speak Icelandic to voice-activated
fridges, interactive robots and similar devices would be yet another lost
field," Jonsson said.
Icelandic ranks among the weakest and least-supported
language in terms of digital technology - along with Irish Gaelic, Latvian,
Maltese and Lithuanian - according to a report by the Multilingual Europe
Technology Alliance assessing 30 European languages.
Iceland's Ministry of Education estimates about 1 billion
Icelandic krona, or $8.8 million, is needed for seed funding for an open-access
database to help tech developers adapt Icelandic as a language option.
Svandis Svavarsdottir, a member of Iceland's parliament
for the Left-Green Movement, said the government should not be weighing costs
when the nation's cultural heritage is at stake.
"If we wait, it may already be too late," she
said.
© 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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