Recent research shows an alarming rise in students under 15 struggling to read their own language. And they are picking up English at a much faster pace than before – it is not strange to hear them speaking it in the playground.From the Guardian.
This is particularly notable against the backdrop that Iceland is somewhat famous in education circles for revolutionizing how it raises its children, going from a typical experience for children similar to that of working class kids in an Northern English industrial city (booze, drugs, unsupervised time and anomie) to the life of kids in shiny upper middle class American suburbs in less than a generation.
Kids in Iceland get in less trouble, have after school time filled with extra-curricular activities and family time, and are also losing a language that persisted for a thousand years before them.
3 comments:
I understand this is sad, but I don't see it as bad.
It is also notable that the language bringing about its death is English, rather than more closely related Nordic languages or German, in the absence of any mass migration from English speaking peoples to Iceland.
50% of the tourists are from USA, UK, Canada.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourism_in_Iceland#Tourist_demographics
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