Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 62, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 March 1914 — WANTED—A LANGUAGE. [ARTICLE]

WANTED—A LANGUAGE.

Norway Is Tired of Speaking MadeOver Danish. Norway has a new King. That he is comparatively new. Some of the varnish may have rubbed off by this time, but to all Intents and purposes the King is new. Norway now wants a new language. The national Parliament passed a bill authorizing the change, though it has not yet advertised for bids or let the contract. Indeed, there seems to be a disposition to make the new language out of old materials. This will be a great saving, which means some little to a country with the slender purse of Norway. It seems that the present written and spoken tongue of the country is a made-over Danish. There have been some very slight modifications in the pronunciation and the grammar, but Danish and Norwegians understand each other at once and the literatures of the two countries are really a unit. But from time immemorial there have lurked in Norway many peasant dialects, dialects that vary so much that peasants from one end of the country talk Greek to peasants in another end. These tongues are rich and racy, they are alive they smell of the soil and they throb with the heart. Fifty years or more ago there came into* fashion an effort. to preserve these tongues in the country’s literature. The wrlttem language began to gather up qualities of these expressive spoken terms. Bjornson headed the movement and started the fashion, and his books borrow some of their remarkable qualities from this broadening of his vocabulary. That broadening carried with it a broadening in interests and sympathies. Fron these healthy beginnings there grew up a widespread endeavor that soon overshot itself, become an exaggeration and received its proper epithet in “maalstraveri.” From innocent enrichment of the language the enthusiasts passed to the point es attempting an entire upheaval of the language. Bjornson suddenly became a purist and set himself against this tide of wholesale lconoclasm. Now it is quite possible that some change may actually appear In the Norwegian tongue. Parliment has voted that examinations in the Norwegian vernacular shall be imposed upon pupils in the schools, along with study of the existing forms of speech. The peasants really forced this measure through. They hold a large hand in the national assembly, and their vanity had been reached when it seemed that they had been called upon to supply their land with a language. First, the “Landsmaal” was “recommended” as a study. Then it was made optional. Soon teachers were required to possess a very good knowledge of it. Now the last step is this act which compels the pupils In the secondary schools to learn two Norwegian languages, one with a literature good for everyday use, the other one a product of pedantic philologists—for by now the so-called “Landsmaal” has dwindled into an artificial effort of the linguists, who in their passion, for order and exactness, have robbed the poor thing of its original life and vigor. There is in Norway an exaggeration of the nationalistic idea. There is a tendency to exclude foreign capital and foreign enterprise. This language deal seems another ultra-nat-ionallstle extravagance. Fortunately for the present is appears to be nothing but a temporary ecstasy of temporarily predominant peasants. The-whole future of Norway consists in its Europeanisation.—Boston Transcript.