this post was submitted on 15 Nov 2025
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146
Icelandic is in danger of dying out because of AI and English-language media, says former PM (www.theguardian.com)
submitted 4 days ago by fraeli@lemmy.world to c/europe@feddit.org
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[–] ThePantser@sh.itjust.works 50 points 4 days ago (4 children)

I am against killing languages but this just seems like the likely outcome of a global economy. Eventually the planet will be cohesive if we don't kill ourselves first. English isn't my first choice in what language should be dominant though, it's too fucking confusing and breaks its own rules too often.

[–] TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip 14 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (2 children)

I’m OK with the grammar, but the spelling is a total train wreck.

I wish we could just ignore that bit of history and start from scratch, because carrying a thousand years of historical baggage has gotten completely ridiculous at this point. There are also so many borrowed words from so many different languages that you can’t spell anything correctly without knowing the language of origin.

Just look at spelling bees, for example. English-speaking people seem to be okay with that, but people from other countries are like, “WTF are you doing? Just listen and write. What’s wrong with you?” Thanks to history, the sound has pretty much nothing to do with the letters. Forget about the rules. Just memorise each word individually.

That’s not OK. Someone needs to fix that mess, and many people have tried already. It looks unfixable to me. Maybe we should just abandon English and switch to any other language.

I wonder if Icelandic would be nicer.

[–] The_Decryptor@aussie.zone 9 points 4 days ago (4 children)

I feel like English needs a spelling reform, but that's never going to happen.

I like what Americans did with -ise/-ize, but they can take the 'u' from colour from my cold dead hands.

[–] KSPAtlas@sopuli.xyz 4 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Þing iz, geting pēpel tú axept a speling rēform lyk ðis wöd bē véri difficult, & ēven if it woz, it haz a hy cans ov ōnli bēing parshali adópted

[–] Natanael 1 points 3 days ago

Why not just go full fonetic

[–] HereIAm@lemmy.world 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

English is still evolving though. For example it's not too uncommon to we "through" spelt as "thru". How long these changes will take to become popular enough to make it into a dictionary is anyone's guess, but i believe we are slowly making our way there.

[–] webp@mander.xyz 1 points 4 days ago

Is mcdonalds the environmental stressor? 🤣

[–] TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip 4 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Countless reforms have already been attempted over the centuries, but here we are with this mess anyway. Yeah, that didn’t go as planned.

I think our best bet would be to switch to a more sensible language altogether. If USA loses its position in tech and entertainment, we’re probably going to switch to Chinese where writing is even more complicated.

[–] Tryenjer@lemmy.world 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Perhaps the Chinese will one day switch to an alphabet like Hangul or something similar. 🤣

[–] TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Oh that one. The Korean alphabet is pretty neat and sensible.

[–] Tryenjer@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

To be honest, I don't really know how it works, but I really like the aesthetic.

[–] TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Don’t know much, but what I do know is that each symbol corresponds to a sound… for the most part.

If you hear a new word, you just listen to the sounds and convert them to a sequence of symbols. That way dictionaries are actually quite helpful and easy to use. Try that with English and you’ll see what I mean.

It works the other way too. If you read a new word somewhere, you can pronounce just like everyone else. Try that with English…

[–] webp@mander.xyz 2 points 4 days ago

The west switching to chinese would be interesting to see, but I am doubtful.

[–] bob_lemon@feddit.org 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

The Problem with that is that English lacks uniformity. There is simply no possible spelling that works for Oxford, Houston, Vancouver, Perth, Lagos and Johannesburg at the same time. Heck, it doesn't even work between London, Manchester and Edinburgh.

So which pronunciation do you match the spelling to? What is "High English"?

[–] chramies@europe.pub 1 points 3 days ago

English could be mostly a written language for many people - they read it rather than hearing or speaking it. So changing the spelling, if that is true, would be just the wrong thing to do.

[–] plyth@feddit.org 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

but the spelling is a total train wreck.

With AI and videos, spelling will be irrelevant soon.

[–] TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip 2 points 3 days ago

I really hope so.

[–] I_Has_A_Hat@lemmy.world 7 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

The alternative global language is Mandarin which is even more of a mess

[–] plyth@feddit.org 0 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Arabic would also be an option, or an entirely new language.

[–] Teppichbrand@feddit.org 4 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Esperanto, sunken into it's chair, slumbering, raises it's head

[–] booly@sh.itjust.works 3 points 2 days ago

The simple claim of calling Arabic a single language is inherently a political one, in the same way calling Cantonese and Mandarin the same Chinese language is. Or would be like trying to reduce the Slavic languages into one or two.

[–] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 10 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

we should standardize on Lojban.

that way, nobody's happy.

[–] HaraldvonBlauzahn@feddit.org 1 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

By that argument, you should already be learning Mandarin, the world language spoken by the largest number of people, and in what in future will be very, very likely the biggest industrial economy.

Fun fact, I was last summer in Ljubljana / Slowenia, and some shops already have signs in Chinese writing.

[–] jjpamsterdam@feddit.org 19 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Even with my own language, Dutch, spoken by millions of people, I feel as if we're gradually losing ground and nuance in favour of bad English among the younger generations.

[–] Tryenjer@lemmy.world 7 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

As a Portuguese, I see the same thing. It's funny that older people were so concerned about the possible "negative" influence of Brazilian Portuguese on Portuguese spoken in Portugal among young people, while nowadays the younger generations can't actually speak a sentence without introducing a few English words. If there was any Brazilian influence, it was minimal.

[–] BigDanishGuy@sh.itjust.works 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I found myself writing an email to a Norwegian recipient the other day. I wrote in English, despite Danish and Norwegian bokmål being >95% the same.

It waters out our native languages when we do this, and it is, as you say, in favour of bad English. I find even the most English proficient Danish teens lacking in their vocabulary. Pronunciation is good, but they can express themselves.

I've given it a fair bit of thought. I think that the kids choose English, because it's emotionally distancing. Saying something in English doesn't carry the same weight, as using their mother's tongue. Simply because they don't feel the words the same. Occasionally I will catch myself using English for my internal dialogue, especially when I'm thinking about something that causes me emotional distress.

[–] plyth@feddit.org 2 points 3 days ago (2 children)

emotionally distancing

when I’m thinking about something that causes me emotional distress.

Or is English better at expressing emotions?

[–] BigDanishGuy@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 days ago

I don't think that any language is generally worse for emotions than others.

Ruling something out though, without having anything but your own opinions to justify it, seems like scientific misconduct.

But in writing that, I had to search my vocabulary for 15 seconds for "opinion", and I spend considerably longer to translate "scientific misconduct" without being satisfied.

So I will maintain my hypothesis that speaking a second language, adds an emotional shield by distancing the speaker.

[–] Natanael 2 points 3 days ago

Lol no, at least not compared to Scandinavian languages. OTOH plenty of us might only be experienced in emotions expressed in older poems and songs, not a natural style to copy for most (you know, this whole Scandinavians being introverted bit)

[–] nuscheltier@feddit.org 6 points 4 days ago (1 children)

And I always wanted to learn Icelandic but haven't found an online source to do so.

[–] Blackmist@feddit.uk 6 points 4 days ago

Whatever you do, don't get your pronunciation from the God of War games...

[–] Pamasich@kbin.earth 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I fail to understand how AI is relevant here. Isn't it just being used as a boogeyman to blame the problem on?

I mean, you're not forced to use English with AI. They even know obscure languages like Swiss German (which doesn't have any formal literature), surely they know Icelandic too. People talking to it in English is more of a people problem than an AI problem.

[–] JensSpahnpasta@feddit.org 1 points 2 days ago

AI needs huge amounts of text to train on. Icelandic is a language with few speakers and and if there is not enough training material around, you can't train a usable AI. If you suspect that people in the future will use more and more AI to create texts, that is a problem for those languages.

[–] BigDanishGuy@sh.itjust.works 4 points 3 days ago

Is this officially the first bad thing to happen to Iceland that isn't attributed to Denmark? I knew AI was coming to takes all of our jobs, but this is some black mirror level stuff.

[–] Goodlucksil@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 4 days ago

Supongo que es verdad, pero para eso se inventaron las lenguas auxiliares, como el esperanto (muchos diacríticos) o la interlingua

[–] TheFrirish@jlai.lu -1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Et avant ça, ça chiait sur les français qui ne veulent pas parler anglais. :)

[–] carotte@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 4 days ago (1 children)

même si on va pas se mentir, le français a déjà eu les mêmes ambitions impérialistes que l’anglais (et reste une langue coloniale dans bien des parties du monde, incluant là où je vis)

on a pas les mains propres non plus…

[–] AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago

D'accord, mais au moins c'est une belle langue!