PeterMollenburg wrote:It's great to see new resources for learning minority languages. I hope it's a sign of the health status of such languages. You've been to the Faroe Islands... How was it? Is all the population fluent in the local tongue from your observations/understandings? Or is it a minority language which has been persecuted and thus still trying revive it's status?
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.
Having said that, Iceland's second language is clearly English whereas in the Faroes it's clearly Danish, so this may make some difference in the long run. 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.
So Faroese is technically a minority language – and likely to remain so, I'd imagine, as the islands are just too small to go it alone – but it doesn't feel like one when you're in the Faroes.