Brazil

Languages in Angola

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First, I would like to apologize for my co-responsibility for the killing of 1000 penguins in Antarctica. I flew to Angola, and with my CO2 emissions I caused the ice to melt far too quickly. And then cute baby penguins drowned. Sorry, sorry.

I thought that you could not travel overland from Denmark to Angola. But along the way, in the Basque country, I actually met a beekeeper who had driven all the way through Africa to South Africa. In a car. But I flew, sorry. Flying is also considerably faster, I’m sure, than driving a car.

I was invited to a language conference in Angola. At first I was hesitant on whether I should go there, it was far … ↪

A language without a nation

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”Now that I am dating an Italian, I will have to start learning Italian”… “I am going to Portugal during my summer vacation, can I borrow your dictionary?” … In Europe we are used to countries having each their language – Denmark has Danish, Sweden has Swedish, Germany has German and so on. But this is a truth with modifications. First of all, countries can contain more than one language, either minority languages such as German in Southern Jutland and Danish in the Flensburg area, or like entire language areas such as Greenlandic and Faroese in Denmark or Sorbian in Germany. Not to mention countries like India or China, which each contain hundreds of languages. Second, several countries can “share” … ↪

Indigenous languages ​​in Brazil and the Corona epidemic.

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Soon after the start of the corona pandemic, the Associação Brasileira de Linguística (ABRALIN) initiated a virtual lecture and workshop series entitled Abralin ao Vivo: Linguists Online. The many wonderful contributions, from budding local talents to international celebrities (including Peter Bakker from Denmark), have been recorded on the website and can be watched again. Brazil is of course well represented in the program, and the indigenous languages ​​are often featured. Brazil has up to 160 different Amerindian languages, of which around 120 are spoken in the Amazon. Virtually all of Brazil’s indigenous languages ​​are in danger of extinction due to factors such as the small size population groups, the appeal of the Portuguese language, and the physical … ↪