On Faroese
Faroese Online has finally landed! It's based on Icelandic Online, which was one of my major learning resources (though I still haven't finished it). So far it's only the "survival course," which is a bit basic for me, but probably worth doing in order to grasp the pronunciation and a few basic differences in vocabulary. I don't expect to work through it in an organised way, unless/until I decide to go back to the Faroes, in which case I'll probably do it as a bit of a crash course.
Faroese is in amazingly good health given the years of Danish rule, when Danish was the language of church, school, law, politics, literature and pretty much everything else. Faroese only returned to being a written language in the mid-nineteenth century (hence the wacky orthography): the first notable novels seem to be from the 1930s, and the Bible wasn't fully translated until 1949!
But Faroese is absolutely the language of daily life in the Faroes. Apparently 5% of people have Danish as a first language but this wasn't something that I noticed. All the signs, brochures, menus, announcements are in Faroese. Everyone started off speaking to me in Faroese (which would have been great if I had any speaking/listening skills....) It has a thriving little literary scene, and a radio station, and a TV station I guess although the broadcasting hours seem to be very restricted.
You can definitely see the difference in cultural production between the Faroese and Iceland. As an independent nation with a population of 300k rather than 50k, Iceland puts out much more material in terms of books, films, TV, newspapers. You could quite happily read Icelandic literature all year, unless you were a very voracious reader, whereas the selection in Faroese was limited and dominated by translations.
Most of the books in the bookstore were Danish. Iceland's second language is clearly English whereas in the Faroes it's clearly Danish. Most of the Faroese seem to be fluent in Danish, whereas the Icelanders are required to learn it in school but never seem to manage. I found it funny that there were no Icelandic books on sale in the Faroes: the written languages are mutually intelligible, so you would think they would take advantage of the literary output there, but no.
While in the Faroes I did buy a couple of books in Faroese, one a translation and one in the original language. I plan to try reading these without too much prior study, and we'll see what sticks. There are a few key Faroese words that I've already had to look up. For instance, "but." We shall see!
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Faroese is in amazingly good health given the years of Danish rule, when Danish was the language of church, school, law, politics, literature and pretty much everything else. Faroese only returned to being a written language in the mid-nineteenth century (hence the wacky orthography): the first notable novels seem to be from the 1930s, and the Bible wasn't fully translated until 1949!
But Faroese is absolutely the language of daily life in the Faroes. Apparently 5% of people have Danish as a first language but this wasn't something that I noticed. All the signs, brochures, menus, announcements are in Faroese. Everyone started off speaking to me in Faroese (which would have been great if I had any speaking/listening skills....) It has a thriving little literary scene, and a radio station, and a TV station I guess although the broadcasting hours seem to be very restricted.
You can definitely see the difference in cultural production between the Faroese and Iceland. As an independent nation with a population of 300k rather than 50k, Iceland puts out much more material in terms of books, films, TV, newspapers. You could quite happily read Icelandic literature all year, unless you were a very voracious reader, whereas the selection in Faroese was limited and dominated by translations.
Most of the books in the bookstore were Danish. Iceland's second language is clearly English whereas in the Faroes it's clearly Danish. Most of the Faroese seem to be fluent in Danish, whereas the Icelanders are required to learn it in school but never seem to manage. I found it funny that there were no Icelandic books on sale in the Faroes: the written languages are mutually intelligible, so you would think they would take advantage of the literary output there, but no.
While in the Faroes I did buy a couple of books in Faroese, one a translation and one in the original language. I plan to try reading these without too much prior study, and we'll see what sticks. There are a few key Faroese words that I've already had to look up. For instance, "but." We shall see!
This entry was originally posted at http://naraht.dreamwidth.org/630105.html. Please comment there using OpenID.