Some thoughts on book prices..

Every month, I get an email from a book club that I joined some years ago, telling me which book is this month's title. The reason I joined the book club was pure and simple to get the "welcome present" of five free books, which I thought was a pretty good deal. The only drawback is that every month, I have to go through the hassle of canceling the book of the month. That I invariably do. Most often I don't find their monthly "recommendation" very recommendable, and besides I always have a sizable stack of books waiting to be read anyway.

But from time to time, there will be a title worth adding to my growing pile. That happened to be the case this month, with Geert Mak's In Europe: Travels Through the Twentieth Century (hardcover) to the respectable price of NOK 375 (roughly 33 GBP or 42 Euros). But even though I find the title interesting, I would not consider for a second to buy it from the book club. Instead I head off to Amazon to find the same title for the much more appealing price of 6.54 GBP or NOK 74. (That is the paperback edition, but for the time being the title is not available in paperback in Norwegian.)

I do not think that I am alone doing this. A lot of people who, like me, are not too hindered by the (lack of) fluency in English, will opt for the English alternative even though they might have preferred to read it in Norwegian. That can not be good for our language, which some already perceive to be under pressure from English.

Another point is that it is not everyone who have a high enough competency in English to be able to go for the cheaper alternative. I would assume that for the "educated classes," the proportion of people having a high enough English skill is far higher than among the "less educated." To me, to keep the book prices in Norway so high does not seem to be good social policies. If we are so egalitarian as we claim to be, would it not be fair to make knowledge equally available to all?

The reason that book prices in Norway are so high is because there is a minimum price for books imposed. This is done to prevent online booksellers etc. from using their advantage to squeeze more provincial bookstores out of the market. If customers can get the same books cheaper from the online bookseller, they will not buy it dearer from their local bookstore. I do see the argument. But with international online booksellers available, this only serves to prevent Norwegian books from being sold at reasonable prices, one effect being that people buy English books instead. Isn't there a better way of promoting Norwegian books (both in original and translation) than pricing them so high that people can't afford to buy them?

Norwegian "politeness"

One thing you would notice very quickly about Norwegians is that we are not overly polite or correct. We may forget to say please after every single thing we say, and we don't even say "enjoy" to our fellow diners before we dig into our plates. We do not always hold the door open for the next person, and the use of the polite form of "you" (Sie in German or vous in French), is a definite no-no, even though it does exist.

The thing with Norwegians and manners is not that we do not have any - which you might be forgiven for thinking sometimes - but that they are somewhat different than outside of Norway or Scandinavia.

To me, it seems as we do not care too much about correctness in our ways (like using the correct title or the polite forms) when we interact with people. The Norwegian "politeness" lies more in being friendly with people than in correctness. To me, there is nothing ruder than people being very correct and at the same time very unfriendly, like Germans telling you off in very correct language, or a Frenchman telling you to kiss his ass and at the same time being sure to use the polite vous-form (although I admit there is a certain elegance to that last one).

My girlfriend is learning some Norwegian at the time, and the other day she wanted to ask me in Norwegian to bring her an apple from the kitchen. But she could figure out how to say "please" at the end, so she asked me; "how do you say 'please' in Norwegian?" "You don't!", I said, without really thinking much about what I said, and she broke out in laughter. The way I said it might have sounded as if "please" was the worst you could have said. But it is true - we don't really say please that much. When you ask somebody something in the form of "can you...", that is already polite enough, and the "please" wouldn't be necessary. It would just sound ridiculous. The next day we went over to a couple we know (the girl is Norwegian). Just to check out if it is just me being particularly unmannered or not, we asked her what she would say in that situation. My girlfriend asked her, "wouldn't you say 'please' then?" "No! Do you want me to beg, or what?", she said..

Actually, in that situation, it would be less polite to say "bring me an apple, please" than just "can you bring me an apple?" I think it's got something to do with the phrase being formed as a question that gives you a choice, and not as a command. If someone were telling me to do something in Norwegian, I would be far less tempted to do that than if they had asked me to do it. And with a smile on top of that again, how could I not?

Linguistic whores..

The great thing about living abroad is that it can give you some perspectives on your own home country. A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about the Norwegian language being some kind of sponge, sucking up words from other languages, and thus dilluting itself. Of course, Norway is not the only place where this happens. It is not even the worst case, as I become more aware of now that I am living in the UK.

In his new book, The Secret Life of Words (reviewed by Kate Colquhoun in the Sunday Telegraph on April 12), Henry Hitchings shows how English has been a far worse delinquent. "Invaded and as invaders, [the English] have "borrowed" copiously from old and new languages - more than 350 of them, according to Hitchings. So English is the great whore of all languages, a hybrid hotchpotch of words accumulated like treasures each time a new thing, concept or technology cries out for a word to give it definition." (Quoted from the Telegraph)

So, the English have knicked almost entire sub-vocabularies from other languages, also from Norwegian or old Norse. For instance, seafaring terms like storm, oar, sail, and mast all come from Norwegian Vikings.

Languages are, after all, organic and evolves to fit peoples' linguistic and communicative needs. When new communicative settings arise (e.g with the introduction of new technology), new vocabularies are needed. Nowadays, we get them mostly from English. It is certainly interesting to see that Hitchings enlightens us about how English has in fact also been a great linguistic sponge..

More on language - sub-standard Norwegian non-fiction..

I read an article in Dagsavisen the other day that digs right into the subject of my post about erosion of the Norwegian language a few days ago.

The Norwegian Society of Non-fiction Writers would like the State Library to increase the number of non-fiction titles bought to their book collections each year. The libraries disagree, for the simple reason that the quality of those works is too low. There are simply not enough Norwegian non-fiction works of decent quality written every year.

I do remember from my own university studies that it was a problem to find books about my subject written in Norwegian. Thus, I had to resort to English books. I am not sure I had one single book written in Norwegian on my list of sources used for my thesis. This is the reality for a lot of students and people in academia. There are simply no books, or at least too few books, written on specific subjects.

This, of course, contributes to creating, what the Minister of Culture, Trond Giske, calls a "gap" in our Norwegian language. For many parts of academia, we rely heavily, in some cases almost exclusively, on English literature. Naturally, the vocabulary for those subjects is very influenced by English, and in some cases the English terms are being used. Again, from my own studies, I sometimes had slight problems finding the correct Norwegian translation of specific terms, and was tempted to use the English term.

The State Libraries do have some solutions to this problem, though, that might interest mr Giske. One of these ideas is more grants and scholarships, to enable non-fiction writers to actually get the time necessary to write good non-fiction. Also, they suggest better training and more courses for aspiring non-fiction writers, as well as more focus on advisory to the writers in the writing process from the publishing houses.

Scandinavian Babel - some more thoughts on language

My last post was about language, and I'll stay on that topic on this one as well.

Generally speaking, Scandinavians - that is Norwegians, Swedes, and Danes at least - have little trouble understanding each other. Applying a little goodwill, we can communicate with each other, speaking our own language with people from the other Scandinavian countries. Still, it is a little harder than when communcating with fellow countrymen. And it seems that not everybody are able to understand the other Scandinavian languages equally well. For me, I always thought that it seems as if we Norwegians understand the other ones better than they understand us.

I have thought that instead of there really being a difference, it might simply be us Norwegians perceiving ourselves as better than them - as we often do. But there is actually a scientific study from 2004 confirming that Norweigans tend to understand the other Scandinavian languages better than what our neighbours do.

According to the study, there are several reasons for this.

For one, the Norwegian language is based upon the Danish language, and thus has a lot of the same words as Danish, but the pronounciation is closer to Swedish. Thus we have an advantage understanding both of these languages.

A second reason can be found in the strong standing of local dialects in Norway. We have a tradition for speaking our local dialects no matter who we speak with, and as Norwegian dialects can differ dignificantly from each other, we are used to understanding people who speak differently than ourselves.

A third reason for us Norwegians understanding especially Swedish quite well, is that we have easier access to Swedish television than vice versa. Even from young age we watch Swedish films and televison like Pippi Longstocking and Emil i Lönnberga with the original Swedish soundtrack/voices.

As for Danish, that can be a challenge to understand, even among the Danes themselves. Check out this sketch on YouTube from the Norwegian comedy show, Ut i Vår Hage: The Danish Language.

Norwegian Language Under Threat..

The Norwegian government has drawn up a strategic policy to try to preserve the Norwegian language. Applaudable.

Anyone who has ever visited Norway would have noticed the strong standing of the English language. If you turn on your television, there's a large chance that the language being spoken will be English, even in Norwegian channels, not to mention the large amount of English-language channels available on cable or satelite. If you walk into any bookstore or kiosk, you will find heaps of books and magazines in English. And of course, the prevalent language in many areas of academia is English.

Norwegians, alongside the Dutch, got a reputation for being well versed in foreign languages. Almost everyone speaks English at a fairly decent level, and a great deal speak a third and maybe a fourth language. A lot of the reasons for that can be attributed to the strong standing of English and other languages, and the tradition for not dubbing films and tv. The only movies and tv being dubbed into Norwegian are childrens' tv and films. Otherwise it will be subtitled, with the original language being spoken.

Especially within academia and business, the pressures on the Norwegian language is great, and if the ongoing trends continue, the Norwegian vocabulary in these areas will erode. The government, and the Minister of Culture, Trond Giske, has recognized the need to do something about this. While there is nothing wrong with being open to other languages, the Minister of Culture is certainly right that there is a danger of the Norwegian language eroding, at least in certain areas. And preserving a Norwegian vocabulary is important, even in very internationally oriented areas of society, such as business and academia.

Erosion of a language is something that happens over time. From day to day it is not noticable. But you would not have to go back very long to notice some significant differences in the way we speak. English has slowly crept into our everyday language, and English phrases and words have become so commonplace that we do not even think of them as English anymore. Words like chips, coaching, teamwork, carpark, dating, computer, and so on are used so often that they have become "Norwegian".

As language is culture, it is part of our culture that is eroding. That should be taken seriously. If you go even further, and accept the romantic notion that language is the soul and identity of a nation, it is our Norwegian soul and identity that is eroding.

I do think it is a good thing that we are open to other languages, and I do not want Norwegian television to start dubbing movies and other tv-shows into Norwegian. And I would not like to see the strong standing of English or other languages in Norway diminished. Still, a greater awareness and appreciation of our Norwegian language would be a good thing.

Anyone to notice the irony of me writing this post? A Norwegian blogger asking for more appreciation of the Norwegian language - in English...