“Hen” said, “hen” said

Apr 15, 2012 by

“Hen” said, “hen” said

In many Western countries concerns are raised about gender-specific language. The French hurry to get rid of mademoiselle. The Swedes are not far behind in wanting to get rid of ‘him’ and ‘her’. It has been...

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Eastern Romance

Sep 9, 2010 by

In the previous several postings we examined in great detail languages and dialects of the Western Romance dialect continuum and touched on languages of the Southern Romance branch (e.g., Corsican). Today, we will look at the...

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Language or dialect?

Jun 25, 2010 by

In his comment to an earlier posting, Joel Hoffman said that “what seems like a dialect to one person might seem like a completely different language to another”. And this goes right to the core of why it’s so...

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Faroese

Jun 1, 2010 by

To continue with our Scandinavian theme, let’s look at another Scandinavian language today: Faroese. It is spoken by 48,000 people on Faroe Islands (formally, part of Denmark, but self-governing in most matters). Faroese is an...

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Languages of Sweden

May 24, 2010 by

As promised, this week’s postings will deal with languages of Scandinavia, where I’ve recently travelled. Today I will review the linguistic situation in Sweden, the first country I’ve visited. The official language...

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