Michael P. Barnes

There has been much more official involvement with the Nordic languages than with English. That is true even of the well-established Danish, Icelandic and Swedish standards. Each language exists under the watchful eye of a language ‘committee’, ‘board’ or ‘council’, for the most part state-sponsored, semi-autonomous bodies. A wide spectrum of interested parties participates, including academics, schoolteachers, writers, journalists and terminological experts.

Quick overview:

• In Denmark the principal language is Danish, with about 5,750,000 speakers (in 2018), but varieties of German are spoken in…