What is your country’s relationship with the language of your previous colonizers?

20 comments

1. Well, kinda? Spanish is a romance language after all. Also, plenty of words of our vocabulary are from arab (they invaded the iberian peninsula for 800 years)

   It all depends how back in time we go and what do you define as “colonizer”, there were people with different cultures and languages in the iberian peninsula before the romans invaded it and spread the latin as the official languages, the arabs weren’t able to erase Latin but introduced plenty of new words (words like algebra, alcohol, almohada, ojala, albornoz, marfil, escabeche, mascara…) we even have some germanic and celtic words because of the influence of the visigoths that ruled the iberian peninsula for a “short” period and the celts that lived in the peninsula and they left words like yelmo, guerra, botin, cerveza, camisa, camino…

   No we don’t learn the modern versions of those languages, the words are part of the spanish vocabulary there’s no way to “clean” the language

2. I dont think r/AskEurope is the best sub to ask this since relatively few European countries have been recently colonized in any meaningful way (mostly the other way round). Some, but I’d expect you’d get more answers elsewhere. Slava Ukraini and wishing you a good decolonization

3. I’m from Scotland but live in Norway. Everyone in Scotland speaks English and old Norse is a dead language. No-one else has bothered to invade us.

   As far as Norway is concerned, people don’t usually learn German, but it isn’t discouraged or frowned upon. Danish and Swedish are mutually intelligible so there’s no need to learn them (even as a foreigner I can communicate with a Swede or a Dane without resorting to English). Everyone learns English and optionally the language of a country they’re interested in.

4. I guess the expelling of Germans after WW2 kinda counts. And well… we obviously don’t know the negative effects of not doing… but doing it had only negative effects.

   There wasn’t enough people to replace them, which led to the formely german regions to suffer. And the new population didn’t have any connection to the land, which led to ruin. Before WW2, the czech borders were full of farmland. Today it’s just trees. And today, without tourism, most of them would be completely dead.

   Not to mention the economical loss of few millions of people.

5. Swedish was the language of the elite and educated for a very long time so a small minority of Swedish speakers still exists in Finland and our state is officially bilingual, meaning service has to be provided in two languages by governmental organizations, including healthcare. Some regions are more Swedish speaking (west coast mostly) and some are basically all Finnish speakers (eastern Finland).

   To remove Swedish altogether from Finnish social sphere is now a moot point since so many Finns are either Swedish speakers or appreciate the bilingualism of the state in other ways. Swedish is an identity question for Swedish speakers, and it is no longer viewed as a foreign influence or language, just a part of Finnish culture and life, same as dialects or other diversity.

   The Finnish colonized the Sami and obviously that’s a contentious issue to this day, we have a truth and reconciliation committee happening at this moment. There are many projects to revive the Sami languages in Lapland, including Sami language daycare and school classes.

   There was a big Russianization effort when we were under their rule but it never took and I think happened around the same time as the nationalism for Finnish language and culture was starting. Kalevala was gathered and the elites suddenly wanted to learn Finnish etc.

6. Well, English is a mashup of the last three invasions, French, Norse, Anglo-Saxon.

   Welsh has many Latin loan words from when the Romans were about.

7. I think the Dutch are more to be considered colonizer than being colonized. However, we did got occupied by foreign powers during our short history. Our language is influenced by many language including English, French and German. Nowadays the English language has a large influence on Dutch and The Netherlands, unfortunately. For example, new technologies are most of the time referred to by the English word for it. For most things there isn’t even a Dutch word, like for example computer.

8. It became a national language 🙂 Italian (since it was spoken by the knights) is also pretty common

9. We’ve been colonised (still are) by so many different countries in the past so….it’s complicated.

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11. I believe that the concept of a colonisers’ language is hardly applicable to Italian history. It is true that for centuries we were a land of conquest for European powers such as Austria, France and Spain, but none tried to impose their language, and Italian always remained the main literary language and later took over from Latin as the administrative language. This does not mean, however, that borrowings did not occur, because indeed, Italian is full of words with Spanish, French and German roots.

12. English has become our dominant language, Irish is a language with little to no relevance. It’s spoken by a tiny minority in the west and is of very little social or economic use outside those areas. Everyone who speaks Irish can also speak English as it would be nearly impossible to survive without it.

    The only time I use Irish is when I go abroad and don’t want people to understand me.

13. Well, our language moved from Vulgar Latin, to something and then eventually Portuguese.

14. Well, in Romania we love our previous serious colonizers, the Romans.

    A big chunk of our language is Latin, we still learn some Latin in school. While we don’t have ads in Latin, to be honest it would be great to have an ad for McDonalds in it: “*Venire ad McDonalds, manducare optimum buger*”

    We also had Slavs colonizing the region, hence we’re the only Latin country that says “Da” instead of something derived from “Si”.

15. Too much time has passed since the “colonization” to talk about colonizers’ language, but Mongols heavily affected Russian language (and culture). Of all Slavic languages it probably has the most words of Turkic origin, even though some of them changed their meaning unexpectedly from what they originally meant. Even closest languages to ours, such as Belarusian and Ukrainian, retained significantly more roots from old Slavic than our language did.

    Though it was so long ago that even the 19th century “de-westernization” movement didn’t care about it when they spoke about language reforms.

16. In Latvia, you could say German and Russian sort of count. German arrived with the 13th century crusaders and would remain the dominant foreign language for some seven centuries. Russian has been spoken in Latvia for centuries due to proximity and trade with Russia, but even during the Russian Empire period, German remained the main language of the elite. Russian became more like a colonial language after WW2, with the Soviets pursuing aggressive russification policies, so by 1990 Russian was the most spoken language.

    German is gone from Latvia as a native language. Baltic Germans who were the elite class of Latvia and Estonia disappeared during WW2, first through resettlement to Nazi Germany and most of the remaining ones due to fleeing the Soviets. Many Jews spoke German as well (in addition to Yiddish) but most were killed by the Nazis, so together these events ended the presence of native German speakers.

    Even without native speakers, German remained significant in Latvia and was commonly taught. Older Latvians are very unlikely to know any English but many know some German. Young people often learn German in school (aside from English, German and Russian are the only two languages commonly taught) and it’s seen as a good thing for your career because economic ties between Latvia and Germany are very strong.

    Russian has remained a political and social issue for the last 30 years. About one third of the population are native Russian speakers, while among native Latvian speakers Russian skill varies dramatically by age. Anyone 40+ is likely fluent, while 20 year olds are often limited to the very basics. Russian speakers are geographically concentrated, so in the two largest cities you’ll hear a lot of Russian in the streets, in rural areas it’s mostly non-existent aside from a few counties that have had their own Russian community since the 18th century.

    The particular thing about Russian is, of course, that it comes with a much larger “language sphere” than Latvian. That naturally means native Russian speakers gravitate towards Russian-language media, which is not a problem in itself but becomes a problem once that media begins to include political things. Russian-language content is of course dominated by Russia and, by my estimates, around 10% of the population lives entirely in the Russian media space – watching Russian news and entertainment, using Russian social networks, etc.

    Let’s just say that every issue concerning language policy in general or the use of Russian specifically remains politically divisive. Party politics are also mainly split between Russian and Latvian. There’s not such an important progressive-conservative or liberal-authoritarian split in politics, the main axis is Russian-Latvian.

17. In Ireland, most people speak English as their first language.

    We took their language and made it our own, we made it more lyrical and expressive, and infused it with the poetry in the Irish language.

    You’re welcome, England.

18. Ik weet überhaupt niet of het bon ton is om zo macho te doen.

    No, we don’t ‘clean up’ our language. It’s a mut language and we like it that way.

    We would also need a completely different vocabulary for the military, like most of the world. That’s awkward.

19. Having 9 neighbors one would think Germany would have experienced quite a bit of conquering but that’s just not the case. Although Latin and French had the biggest impact on German this is mostly due to long lasting cultural influence from both not so much due to Roman expeditions or Napoleon. Many of the Romanic and Germanic languages brought a few words, also Yiddish. The only main term from Poland I can think of is Grenze (border) from granica, which is a bit ironic.

    The US and their big influence after WW2 in terms of general orientation led to the west learning a lot of English actively.

    The east had obligatory Russian in school but from my personal experience my parents lost those skills mostly due to lack of practice. Russia is nowadays for the whole of Germany far beyond English, French and Spain in regard to what students pick.

20. You can still find plenty of old people who use Hungarian as first language in deep south, especially southwest. Generally anyone south of Nové Zámky tend to have Hungarian accent when speaking Slovak.

    Hungarian is taught in elementary schools(year 1-9) in areas with high presence of Hungarian minority(I think 20%+) and there are also some Hungarian High Schools.

    Well if you travel south, especially near the Hungarian border, all the radios you will catch in your car will be Hungarian lol. Especially true in southern parts of Central and Eastern Slovakia.

    Slovak language uses many words borrowed from Hungarian/German, courtesy of AH empire. Likewise Hungarian uses many borrowed Slovak/Slavic words as well. Also our dialects use many Czech/German/Hungarian words as well. Although yeah many words are dying with old people.