[translation added 2010-01-13]

About a month ago, 25 October, I wrote about my experience of discarding a few old machines and of an encouraging advertisement for “made to last” furniture. I realised that the same idea was applicable not only to technology and furniture but also to languages. So I set to, scribbling a few lines in my midnight notebook. Now I’ve typed it all in on the blog. Those of you who can understand Swedish, here it is, read on.

I’ve lived and worked in Sweden for some time now and it was through my work that I first learned Swedish. Among the first words I learned were the following:

Just as when I first learned to sail or to play the guitar, I found that my initiation into the language was central to my comprehension of the art.

One thing that struck me when I first started working here was that the [Swedish] language was of enormous significance for the nation’s industry. I had always been amazed at how Sweden, a small and sparsely-populated country in the far north of Europe, had independently developed some of the most advanced military aircraft in the world. Likewise the cameras that captured the very first pictures of the Earth viewed from the Moon. Yet it was when I first worked here at Saab AB in Linköping, that I realised that this was to a large extent due to the language itself. In the Swedish language I found something cold, sharp, direct, amazingly convenient and adaptable. It was for me an entirely new way of thinking.

I moved to Sweden in 2001 and until April 2009 I was employed as research scientist at The Swedish Defence Research Agency FOI. Many of FOI’s highly-qualified research staff are of foreign origin, coming from countries such as France and Germany, Iran and Chile. All of them read and write scientific articles in international English, the Latin of our time. Yet in their day to day work almost all of them speak Swedish. The Swedish language is used for pretty well all internal communications, both written and verbal. That applies not least of all for the many detailed technical discussions at the whiteboard or the computer screen.

Swedish is a language exceptionally well-suited for science and technology. One reason for that is it’s rich scientific vocabulary and its history. Many of the greatest foundation stones of contemporary science and technology comprise thought structures that were originally formulated in Swedish. Some of the famous names who formulated their thoughts in Swedish are: Linnaeus, Arrhenius, Berzelius, Celcius, and Ångström and pioneering engineers and entrepenneurs like Enoch Thulin and Alfred Nobel.

Many Swedish politicians and many of the decision-makers in business and in the educational appear often to be eager to cast their native language into disuse. They act as if the language was something irrelevant, or merely decorative. Many of Sweden’s great, world-famous companies are now at breakneck pace being transformed into rootless, global “brands” with a hastily-added cloak of English. I see such action as being in the same class as treason, a kind of national suicide initiated from the highest levels of Swedish society.

I believe that of all Sweden’s natural resources it is the Swedish language that is the most fundamental and the one which is of the greatest economic value. I am thinking here of the words of J.M.G. le Clezio in his 2008 Nobel lecture, “Dans la forêt des paradoxes”, “In the forest of the paradoxes”.

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“Le langage est l’invention la plus extraordinaire de l’humanité, celle qui précède tout, partage tout. Sans le langage, pas de sciences, pas de technique, pas de lois, pas d’art, pas d’amour. Mais cette invention,
sans l’apport des locuteurs, devient virtuelle. Elle peut s’anémier, se réduire, disparaître.”

“… Language is the most extraordinary invention in the history of humanity, the one which came before everything, and which makes it possible to share everything. Without language there would be no science, no technology, no law, no art, no love. But without another person with whom to interact, the invention becomes virtual. It may atrophy, diminish, disappear. …”

The Swedish language is not just for fairy-tales, poetry and bit of loose chat over a coffee-break. The laws and statutes of Sweden are written in Swedish. Everything that happens within the Swedish judiciary system is carried out in Swedish. The same is also true of our cultural dialogue, both in high culture and popular culture. Everything from Strindberg and Stagnelius to Kvarteret Skatan and På spåret, and the lyrics of artists such as Feven, Timbuktu and Lars Winnerbäck, and more of course, are all in Swedish. The language is the foundation of law, society, culture and of life itself. Everyone knows that.

Yet there is one thing that seems to be neglected in all that’s written about the Swedish language and language-politics and that is that the language is for the Swedish national economy what the land and the rivers are for the forests. The foundation of all our major industries consists of living knowledge which was created, written and applied in the Swedish language. Feel free to examine the history of Ericsson, Saab, Volvo, Vattenfall, SKF, ABB, Sandvik and even H&M (Hennes & Mauritz). Until well into the 1990s the technical and economic base of these companies was almost entirely defined in Swedish. Without the Swedish language the modern, industrial Sweden as we know it would never have come into being.

Everyone for whom Swedish is their native language, and almost all who have adopted Swedish as the language of their everyday life, finds it easiest to work and negotiate in Swedish. For most of these people it is a significant hindrance to deal with English. It is the Swedish language that keeps this country going and holds it together. The significance of the language for the people and its value for the economy can not be overstated. Without the Swedish language, Sweden stops, laid waste, with no hope of return. But that must never happen.

One hears continually the mantra of those blind to their homeland, that we must “globalise” to survive and that therefore we must all get used to communicating in some approximation to English. But that is a lie that I refuse to comprehend. Like a rotten, poisoned fruit it is a danger that shall never even touch my lips.(*)

With all of today’s media-technology it is more obvious than ever before that the world has a vast diversity of languages. The domain of human languages has the same breadth and complexity as that of the flowers and the trees. Within each language there is a complete world of thought, a universe of imagination of and creative power. Languages are no more interchangeable or negligible than are the world’s plant and animal species. With every language that dies out, there disappears not only all it’s songs and stories but all of it’s specialised structures of thought and memory, patterns of living knowledge that can lead us to new wisdom and understanding. In certain languages there may be unique paths of thought that can lead us to a sustainable future here on earth, or can reveal our future paths out among the stars. The diversity of human languages is not some mere inconvenience, to be erased by pulling in some single arbitrary direction. Linguistic diversity has arisen from the laws of nature, so it is more profitable to study how it might be exploited.

Since antiquity languages have been a decisive means in international trade. Thanks to Sweden’s open immigration policies, all companies here have access to a resource of highly-qualified Swedish-speaking citizens who have some other language as their mother-tongue, for example, Arabic, Bengali, Hindi, Mandarin, Korean, Japanese, Farsi, French, Spanish, Thai … even English. And it is not just the highly educated who are of value here. The economy can be strengthened with the help of all those who have contact with their native language, culture and country of origin. With this, Sweden has a unique advantage.

It is perhaps Sweden’s immigrant communities that will ensure that the Swedish language is not erased from this country. Sometimes I get the feeling that we are the only ones who truly appreciate the value and utility of the language. I am sure that if students huere could choose the language of their university courses most of them would choose Swedish. Likewise those working in Swedish companies would prefer to read and write in Swedish. That so many are forced to communicate in some faltering English is probably one of the greatest and least recognised factors working against the national economy. That is an error that could be quickly and easily corrected.

Swedish is truly a most wonderful language: a language to own, love and inherit. Let us do that.

Photo August 2008: Saab J35 Draken ca 1970, at the museum Manaminne in Nordingrå on Höga kusten (the high coast).
Rock etchings Hällristningar from ca 2000 BC at Näsåker.

(*) This is a playful allusion to the poem Violetta skymningar (Violet twlilights) by Edith Södergran. There are a few English translations of the poem but I have yet to find one that comes anywhere near the brilliance and musicality of the original text.

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