Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.2010, Page 121

ii9
Two Changes in Faroese
guage relatively weak in several respects. This might explain why we find
Such rapid change in Faroese for the constructions under consideration,
while this does not appear to be the case in Icelandic. Danish does not
have the same status or presence in Iceland as it does on the Faroe Is-
lands. In addition, Icelandic has been used in writing for a long time
whereas Faroese has existed as a written language for a relatively short
Period of time (no books were published in Faroese until the i9th centu-
'T and book production was rather limited on the Faroe Islands until the
D80S, when printing became easier and less expensive).
Various figures can be presented to illustrate the use of Danish on the
Paroe Islands. First, many school books on the Faroe Islands are still in
hkinish, and according to the report Málm0rk,4 20% of all lessons are
conducted in a language other than Faroese (mostly Danish) and 80% of
fhe teaching materials are in another language (preferably Danish, cf.
álm0rk, p. 45). A survey from 1990 showed that approximately 45% of
the teachers in upper secondary schools were Danish, 49% were Faroese,
and 5% were foreigners who taught in Faroese. There were no books in
haroese on the subject of history and only a portion of the teaching mate-
tials in social studies was in Faroese (26.7%). The situation was similar
f°r religion: only 20.3% of the materials were in Faroese. In geography it
Was °nly 14.3% (Hansen et al. 2001).
The position of Faroese in the media is also relatively weak. Hansen
et- ah (2001, section 3.3) counted the number of minutes in which Far-
nese was actually spoken on Faroese television in 1995, 2000 and 2001.
heir results are summarized in Table 1:
1995
2000
2001
32.6
13-3
22.6
Table 1: Spoken Faroese in Faroese television.
Th
. ne nutnbers in Table 1 refer to a percentage of the total broadcast time
ln Faroese television. In addition, Danish is used in television subtitles.
s these figures suggest, Faroese is not gaining ground in the media.
esides, figures from Hagstova F0roya (Bureau of Statistics of the Faroe
The report Málm0rk — Álit um almennan málpolitikk ‘Language limits
n °fficial language policy’ i
Report on
. — *-i5uaSc is the result (2007) of the work of a committee assembled to
nbe the state of language on the Faroe Islands and come up with suggestions for
'bproving the situation.