by Dr. Helgi Skúli Kjartansson

Margaret and Richard Beck Lectures
Icelandic Symposium
University of Victoria
November 20, 2004

Each of us is an example of that enigmatic concept: native speaker.

At least most of us surely are:

• native speakers of one language,
• non-native speakers or users of some other languages,
• and, while using the latter, painfully aware of the distinction.

In linguistics, there may be less than perfect agreement on the exact nature of native vs. non-native command of languages. Generally, however, the distinction is considered highly relevant, giving the native speaker, or native informant of a non-native scholar, a unique authority in linguistic matters.

Like most worthwhile concepts, that of a native speaker is surrounded by formidable grey areas. In this case mainly in three directions.

• Firstly, there is the question of bilingualism, or near-native command of secondary languages. Among us, some few may have been raised in bilingual families, or subsequently acquired an additional native language.
• Second, there is the question of the scope and varieties of any one language. Or two questions, rather.

One is easy: A modern language has got technical and specialised vocabulary far beyond the reach of any one person. Here the authority of the native speaker gives way to that of the specialist. Even in ancient societies there must have been linguistic specialisation: only the shepherd would fully know the vocabulary of sheep raising; only the priesthood that of the gods; only the bards that of poetics.

The other question is a tricky one: What of the varieties of a language, geographical dialects, different levels of formality, the special language of childhood, gender variation etc. etc.? Are we native speakers of entire languages, or rather of the language varieties which we happen to be using?
The native informant, ticking off the expressions he or she feels “acceptable” may have to respond to expressions which he or she would never-ever actually use, while knowing or thinking or suspecting that other native speakers do indeed express themselves in such a way.
This is a question of the passive knowledge by a native speaker of language varieties other than his or her own. Such knowledge can be severely limited, and it need not be all that different between a native speaker and a non-native one. Some aspects of Australian English, for instance, are probably better known to an immigrant, who speaks just Australian English as a second language, than to a native Scotsman.

While English has got fairly distinct national standards, or maybe continental standards, another typical situation is for a person to speak the standard variety of his or her native language plus, in more informal situations, one regional dialect which may deviate quite drastically, both from the national standard and from other dialects. Only in a watered-down sense can such a person be called a native speaker when there is a question of a dialect other than his or her own. More generally, the native/non-native distinction applies most directly to the production of language, only to become more problematic in the field of reception, i.e. understanding.

• The third grey area of a native language lies in the direction of the past. Just as men and women and different social groups tend to use language in slightly different ways, so each generation has its own variety of language. And in the long run a language can exhibit temporal variations no less drastic than those between the most distant geographical dialects. With both types, synchronic dialects and diachronic ones if you like, the concept of a native speaker becomes similarly blurred. The language of the past is not the language that we actually use, even if we may relate to it as a variety of our own native language and develop passive command of it.
  There is a difference, though, in that the language of the past has no active speakers left, unlike the contemporary dialects, each with their own fully native speakers.
  Going from dialects or varieties to distinct languages, we have the same situation: Past languages which by definition have no native speakers. Sometimes we talk about extinct languages, which I would rather restrict to those that have disappeared without progeny. Or dead languages, which mainly refers to past languages still taught in schools and used in some contexts, like Latin or classical Greek.
  Granting, however, that there is no easy way of defining where one language ends and another begins. Is Arabic, for instance, a language or a group of languages? Or, going back in time, is Modern English the same language as Chaucer’s English?

This brings me round, at long last, to the rather egocentric theme of my talk. Which is the question if I can claim Old Norse, or Old Icelandic at any rate, as part of my preserve as a native speaker. A positive answer would be welcome, partly as a justification of my appointment to teach a course in Old Icelandic at the University of Victoria in the spring term. As I only ever studied the subject at the undergraduate level, the justification of being a native speaker would come in handy.

I was certainly brought up with that assumption.

I grew up in a strictly monolingual and monocultural Icelandic environment. The Icelandic language was a major source of identity. Other languages were absolutely foreign, and transplantation into another linguistic culture would seem almost like a sex change operation.

My reading, both at home and at school, soon included an element of texts in Old Icelandic, certainly not as a new language to be learned but as a different literary standard. In terms of either vocabulary or linguistic structures those saga texts were no more distant from contemporary newspaper prose than was much of the modern Icelandic poetry I grew up with.

I would never expect to speak or write in Old Icelandic, of course. Nothing like a schoolboy in Morocco being trained to use Classical Arabic as his normal written and formal language, or a medieval Italian schoolboy being trained to use Latin as the respectable counterpart of his vernacular dialect. I would grow up as, at most, a native reader, not speaker, of the medieval language. Like most of us to some extent do with some formal or specialised varieties of our native languages, poetic language for instance.

The common assumption then, and with some people even today, was that our native access to the old language was entirely different, and much superior, to the approach of foreigners who only had studied Old Icelandic as a subject.

Such foreigners I first met in London where I spent some time after my undergraduate studies. There, Professor Peter Foote and his younger colleagues offered an ambitious program in Old Norse and were themselves active scholars. Among other things, they were preparing the English translation of Old Icelandic law eventually published in Winnipeg. Somehow, I came to attend a couple of their working sessions, and, to my naive surprise, discovered how much, much better those foreigners understood the Old Icelandic legal texts than I did.

My surprise soon gave way to the realization that they were not only ahead of me in age, wisdom, and experience, they also enjoyed the benefit of having expressly studied Old Norse as a language in its own right, not only as a variant of modern Icelandic. Which, however, all of them read fluently and readily used for comparison. My native-speaker-approach had been a shortcut, saving immensely on study time, but enticing me to rely dangerously much on analogy with the modern language. Almost a cheap imitation of the real thing.

This was thirty-three years ago. Ever since I have been active, in a small scale and as a sideline, in Old Norse studies. In recent years I have been one of the consultants of a Copenhagen-based dictionary project, the Dictionary of Old Norse Prose, now busy with volume four of God-knows-how-many. We get each volume or half-volume at the manuscript stage for any comments or corrections we may like to suggest. I enjoy this immensely and often feel that my native sense for the text examples enables me to spot details that have escaped the editors. When followed up, however, quite a number of my hunches turn out to be wrong, prompted by too much reliance on the modern language. Other suggestions stand up to scrutiny, and on the whole I think I make a worthwhile contribution.

The star consultant of the project, however, is not me. It is old ex-Professor Peter Foote. Partly, I am told, because of his thorough knowledge of the Latin texts which in so many ways inspired Old Norse culture and language. That is another important source of insight, besides knowledge of modern Icelandic. Knowledge of other medieval languages also helps. Even different modern languages may, by analogy, suggest possible interpretations of Old Norse texts.

To sum up: I have certainly not given a theoretical answer to the question of myself as a native speaker of Old Icelandic or not. Rather, my theorizing clouded the issue to the point of no hope a direct yes-or-no answer.

On a more practical level it seems reasonable that the infantry of Old Icelandic or Old Norse studies be largely recruited among native speaker of modern Icelandic, simply because we reach a certain level with so much less training. (That may or may not cover my appointment to teach the subject at UVic.)

The elite forces of Old Icelandic studies, however, the forces of creative research, collectively need all the possible sources of insight. Not only the convenient and often very useful shortcut offered by a modern Icelandic native language.