The Danish language is not merely evolving – it is also losing its vocabulary. There was a time when language revealed who you were. Not how much money you had, but whether you had taken the trouble to think, to read, and to choose your words with care.
Today, the ideal seems to be precisely the opposite.
The Danish language grows poorer with each passing year. Words and expressions that once belonged in the rougher corners of the school playground or among people who had never had much of a relationship with books have found their way into newspapers, radio, television and social media.
Danes worry about too many things. The climate. Inflation. Artificial intelligence. Wolves in Jutland.
Personally, I have begun to worry about vocabulary.
Not because the language is evolving. It always has. Shakespeare invented words. H.C. Andersen invented words. Even Piet Hein coined new expressions. But they enriched the language.
We, apparently, have chosen the opposite strategy.
If you turn on the television, listen to the radio or overhear a conversation in the corner of a café, you quickly get the impression that the Danish language is in the middle of a clearance sale, where half the words have been thrown out.
Everything is “mega”.
Everything is “insanely”.
Everything is “wicked”.
These are just a few of the verbal superlatives with which we are bombarded every day.
If something is truly impressive, it is obviously “fucking insane”.
It is difficult not to be impressed by how few words a modern person manages with.
A couple of generations ago, a nuanced command of language was regarded as a mark of cultivation. Today, you risk being suspected of being an academic if you use a semicolon or a word with more than three syllables.
We have acquired the curious notion that an impoverished language is somehow more honest than a rich one. It is rather like claiming that a violin becomes a better instrument by losing three of its strings.
The most fascinating aspect is that many of the words once regarded as vulgar are now used with such casualness that one might think they had been included in the hymnbook. You hear them from politicians, company directors, sports commentators and schoolteachers alike.
If linguistic cultivation were a building, the Ministry of Culture would long ago have declared it a protected heritage site.
Instead, it has been demolished to make way for a car park.
There will, of course, be those who object that language merely reflects its age. That is true.
But that does not mean that every change is an improvement.
A Ferrari does not become a better car if you replace its engine with a lawnmower.
We ought to begin treating language with the same respect that we accord our old churches, castles and manor houses. No one would dream of spray-painting Kronborg Castle to make it “more contemporary”.
Yet that is exactly what we are doing to our language.
Words are the building blocks of civilisation.
The fewer we have, the lower we build.
And if this development continues, the dictionary of the future may well be small enough to print on the back of a pizza box.