I attended the University of Oslo spring semester of my junior year of college in 2006. Fortunately for me, I was proficient enough in the Norwegian language that I could choose to take classes beyond those designed for international students. There were only a couple dozen classes taught in English that were offered to international students. None of them particularly interested me so I decided to take a history class in Norwegian about the Holocaust. By the way, the class only met once a week for 2 hours. It was a good choice…especially since I still learned a lot and I got to test my language skills and pick up some new ones!
One of my classmates studied at the same university the next year and apparently there were many more classes in English to choose from. This is nice for international students of course, but if there are more classes taught in English, there are fewer classes taught in Norwegian. There is actually a huge movement in Norwegian higher education (as well as European higher education in general) to reward publication and instruction in English.
In fact, in 2004 the Norwegian Association for Higher Education Institutions instituted a reward system that financially encouraged academicians to publish in Norwegian. Sometimes the same product published in Norwegian earned a reward 3 times higher than the same product published in English. This kind of system adversely affects Norwegian as an academic language. If academicians are discouraged from publishing literature in Norwegian and developing the language, it will become stagnant and perhaps eventually head into decline.
This bothers a lot of Norwegians, and quite frankly, bothers me as well. Norwegian is clearly not an extensively spoken language outside of Norway. In my opinion, this is something they should not be ashamed of, but rather, proud of. It should be something that they cherish forever and continue to develop.
I rarely encountered an individual, even over age 40, that didn’t know at least some English. Absolutely every person under age 25 or 30 was nearly fluent, if not exceptional with their English speaking skills. So, if it ever comes to the point that Norwegian universities offer all classes in English, I’m not really sure how much this is going to benefit Norwegian students. I know that Norwegian universities would like for more international students to attend, but I’m not sure that jeopardizing the Norwegian language is the way to do it.
So spread the word about how awesome the Norwegian language is! I think it’s great how many people just decide to learn it on their own for whatever reason. It would be fun to hear about all the different reasons you all are learning Norwegian!!
