Recently, as my kid is learning to read and write Danish, while I've started to use English more and more, due to work. My observation is that English isn't that great a language, it's just very popular. The more English I speak, read and write, the more I appreciate my own native language.

It's really sad to see English language and words replace native ones, especially if your own language in many cases have better precision and quite frankly reads better. Recently I listened to a "Danish" podcast, about Charlie Kirk. I put Danish in " " because one of the hosts, a native Dane, struggles severely with expressing her thoughts and observation without the use of English.

English is easy to criticize. It doesn't have all the letters it needs. It doesn't have compound noun. A significant part of the vocabulary is just borrow from Norse, German or French (and pronounced wrong). It is however VERY popular, billions speak it, and that's a quality all on it's own.

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JuniperMesos 13 hours ago | parent | next [-]

There's also the asymmetry that a Danish podcaster felt it necessary to talk about the English-speaking American Charlie Kirk, whereas I struggle to think of a time I've listened to an English-language podcast about a Danish poltical figure.

The popularity of English has little or nothing to do with any facts about how its grammatical system works, and a lot to do with the geopolitical situation of the past few centuries where the UK and then the US were globally important powers.

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HeinzStuckeIt 14 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I wonder if the Nordic languages would be in a healthier state in this respect, in terms of usage and not resorting to English in mixed groups, if their television broadcasting had been shared among each other more, instead of each country looking so much to the USA for programming. The Nordic countries used to be a single linguistic space for educated people and you can still witness this practice among the elderly. Why exactly couldn't young people growing up in, for example, Sweden and Denmark watch and learn from Norway's Uti vår hage just like Americans could watch Monty Python or Fawlty Towers?

	▲	mrweasel 14 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Norwegian and Swedish seems to be healthier than Danish. I don't have the feeling that Danes generally gives a shit about the health of the language and a decent percentage would probably favour just switching to English entirely.

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marcellus23 14 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You don't think you prefer Danish because Danish is your native language and English is not?

	▲	mrweasel 14 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Possibly, but I wonder why so many Danes prefer English words, when we have Danish words that are often more descriptive. My preference have also change over the years, from more heavily favouring English previously, to now opting for Danish whenever possible (e.g. when reading books).