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TitleArticle: Icelandic Language Battles Threat of 'Digital Extinction'
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From https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/26/icelandic-language-battles-threat-of-digital-extinction

Icelandic language battles threat of 'digital extinction'
Iceland's mother tongue and cultural identity is drowning in an online ocean of English
by Jon Henley
February 26, 2018

Unlike most languages, when Icelandic needs a new word it rarely imports one. Instead, enthusiasts coin a new term rooted in the tongue's ancient Norse past: a neologism that looks, sounds and behaves like Icelandic.

...But as old, pure and inventive as it may be, as much as it is key to Icelanders' sense of national and cultural identity, Icelandic is spoken today by barely 340,000 people - and Siri and Alexa are not among them.

In an age of Facebook, YouTube and Netflix, smartphones, voice recognition and digital personal assistants, the language of the Icelandic sagas - written on calfskin between AD1200 and 1300 - is sinking in an ocean of English.

"It's called 'digital minoritisation'," said Eiríkur Rögnvaldsson, a professor of Icelandic language and linguistics at the University of Iceland. "When a majority language in the real world becomes a minority language in the digital world."

Read the full article at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/26/icelandic-language-battles-threat-of-digital-extinction

SourceThe Guardian
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