The minister of education, Thorgerdur Katrín Gunnarsdóttir, welcomes the discussion underway on the Icelandic language, reports the Morgunbladid.
Earlier this week at a conference on the status of the Icelandic language, Páll Valsson, the director of fiction and academic publishing at Edda Publishing said that the foundation of the language was “cracking”. He said that too much time was being spent on details such as the wrong use of the genitive case. The entire language was undergoing a mutation, both declinations and sentence structure. Páll said that in one hundred years the Icelandic language would be extinct if nothing was done. He said that in Iceland there was increased awareness about the environment, but that no one was standing guard about the language.
The director of the University Dictionary, Gudrún Kvaran, also believes that Icelanders have “had their guard down” in issues relating to the language, reports the Icelandic National Broadcasting Service. She said that young people were inundated by foreign content via television and computers, and there was not much time to read book in Icelandic.
The minister of education said yesterday that it was necessary to guard the Icelandic language and cited a bill on establishing an institution on Icelandic studies.
