The English language in Iceland
92% of PhD theses are in English, most university textbooks are in English, all lecturers must think about doing their classes in English if someone asks them to, and they use English more than any other Scandinavian country. All that, and yet there are also fewer borrowed words in Icelandic than in Danish, Norwegian or Swedish.
Sounds like the complete opposite of here in Japan, where nothing is done in English but the language is being taken over! As I’ve said before, the Japanese really should import teachers and policy makers from countries that are doing things right, rather than native speakers from some of the world’s least bilingual countries…
