CURRENT MEDIA PERSPECTIVES ON THE NORWEGIAN LANGUAGE. NORWEGIAN, NORSKLISH OR BETTER ENGLISH?

Abstract

The present paper explores the current situation of the English language used in Norway, as rendered by different articles published by Aftenposten, a Norwegian newspaper of significant circulation. The countries’ English language skills are annually tested, and according to the 2022 Education First’s English Proficiency Index, Norway is ranked number four in the world, with very high skills. Nowadays, English is used in schools, at higher education institutions, at work, but English words are more and more used in Norwegian in everyday life especially by teenagers. This leads to a mixture of English and Norwegian known as norsklish. The newspaper articles present various opinions about the level of English proficiency required in different fields, the influence of norsklish on the language of youth, and even the need for Norwegians to improve their English language skills. The influence of the English language on the speech of different generations in Norway varies, as each generation has had different exposure and experiences with this language. Norwegians are moreover exposed to a wide variety of language variants given the fact that they have two official written norms (Bokmål and Nynorsk) and quite many dialects, which are used in various aspects of the public life. Fields such as research, higher education, international business may be seen as threatened by the use of English mostly because there is a clear lack of terminology in Norwegian.

Keywords

• norwegian language
• norsklish
• bilingualism
• anglicization
• media