THE STRUGGLE OVER NORWEGIAN

Abstract

THE STRUGGLE OVER NORWEGIAN3 BY EINAR HAUGEN Now the question no longer is: how shall we learn English so that we may take part in the social life of America and partake of her benefits; the big question is: how can we preserve the language of our ancestors here, in a strange environment, and pass on to our descendants the treasures which it contains?2 Throughout the history of the Norwegian- American community , the relation of English and Norwegian has involved an element of controversy. Known as Sprogspfirsmaalet, or the Language Question, this controversy raged more or less openly within family, neighborhood, and social institutions wherever Norwegian immigrants settled in sufficient numbers to create a self-contained group. We cannot hope to do more here than sketch the profile of this struggle. Some of the more spectacular episodes will be told, but it must be understood that these are only the public expression of a private tension that had its root in the steady pressure exerted on the immigrant by the dominant American environment . The public discussion was protracted and often bitter, with vigorous agitators on both sides; but the basic trend was probably not greatly affected by it. The heart of the matter was the situation within the family; this was the primary battleground. But the individual family was supported in its linguistic usage by other families, which together constituted a neighborhood. Social institutions grew up which organized the teaching and indoctrination of the language, the most important of these being the church. We shall consider the role of each of these social groupings in the language struggle - home, neighborhood, and institutions - and then 1 This essay is chapter nine of an unpublished manuscript entitled "The Norwegian Language in America: A Study in Bilingual Behavior." 2 Thrond Bothne, Kort udsigt over det lutherske Jcirfcearbeide blandt nordmoendene i Amerika , 828 (Chicago, 1898). 1 2 EINAR HAUGEN sketch some of the major developments in the campaign that the immigrant fought so gallantly but vainly to maintain the language of his ancestors. I. THE FAMILY AND THE NEIGHBORHOOD Within the family the maintenance of a foreign language depends on the desire of the parents to carry it on, the authority of the parents over their chidren, and the degree of pressure from outside. Parents who had immigrated from Norway as adults usually had little inclination to adopt English as the family language. All the lore that it is natural for parents to transmit to their children had come to them in Norwegian and was available to them only in that language. The nursery rhymes, the proverbs, the anecdotes, the family sayings, the prayers, the songs: all of these had been woven into the very process of language learning in childhood. Even if the adult could learn them in a new language, they would have no flavor; and who was available in any case to teach them to him? Only in Norwegian could the immigrant father and mother function as such, and they vigorously resisted any attempt to lessen their socio-cultural role. By living in a Norwegian-speaking community they multiplied their chances of being able to carry out this role, since their children were not then under any strong social pressure to use English. Wherever contact with English-speaking children was active, as in an urban community, the children brought home with them a keen desire to speak English. Only by the establishment of ironclad rules, by which English was banned from the home, could the parents resist this invasion. This counterpressure by the parents had to be stronger than the social pressure toward English of the environment. If the social pattern in the community was favorable to English, the parents were in a difficult position. It now became a question of parental authority, with the children often sullen and rebellious and the parents torn between a determination THE STRUGGLE OVER NORWEGIAN 3 to impose their own linguistic pattern and a desire to see their children content. American social practice in general favored a weakening of parental authority, and so the rebellion against the Norwegian linguistic pattern went hand in hand with a freeing of the children from their other social...