Le Nord : revue internationale des Pays de Nord - 01.06.1941, Page 237

THE SCAND. COMMUNITY OF LANGUAGE 2 31
— hembitrade; Kino cinema — bio; (Sw. and Da.) Radio broad-
casting — (Norw.) kringkasting, etc.
The language of practically every technical subject bristles
with pitfalls of its own. What the Danes call Retssag (trial, action
at law) is mal in Sweden. Danish Citant and Indstœvnte (plain-
tiff and defendant) are karande and svarande in Swedish. Danish
Vedtœgt (by-law, regulations) is Swedish stadga, Danish Ken-
delse (verdict, findings) is Swedish utslag, etc.
These errors of the past are very difficult to retrieve, and it
would certainly present very great difficulties at this time to
bring about anything like a unification of the existing vocabularies
of the three languages. But, however that may be, there is no
reason why the mistakes of the past should be repeated. We can
at any rate prevent the introduction of f r e s h differences, with
their attendant confusion, needless waste of time, and needless
misunderstandings. The main thing is the d e s i r e to do this.
Once that desire is there, it will be up to the press and the wire-
less to spread the knowledge of good common Scandinavian
words for such new phenomena as may turn up. We owe to the
Danish press the excellent word bil (motor car), a specifically
Scandinavian word, which has been adopted even in Icelandic.
The adoption of the word bil was a piece of sheer good luck,
but a planned co-operation will no doubt result in many similar
useful services to our languages.
Furthermore, we must stop being too afraid of borrowing
from each other. Hitherto we have borrowed very freely from
the great world languages, but in comparison very little from
each others. Danisms and Norwegianisms have hitherto been
looked askance at in Sweden, and have been regarded as the
marks of a poor stylist. All the same, we seem to have been less
reluctant to borrow from Danish than the Danes have been to
borrow from us. Among the words which Swedish has borrowed
from Danish are: förstaelse sympathetic appreciation, föralskelse
falling in love, upplevelse experience, besvikelse disappointment,
sjalvövervinnelse self-overcoming, hdnsyn consideration, genom-
brott breaking through, sjalvsyn an observation of one’s own,
levebröd subsistence, sedlighet morality, skötesynd besetting sin,
ensartad uniform, storartad magnificent, saregen peculiar, spydig
sarcastic, spröd brittle, rank erect, slank slim, rundhdnt generous,
spranglard profoundly learned, nedarvd inherited, berika enrich,
tillnarmelsesvis approximate(ly), and obönhörligen inexorably.