David Håkansson new Swedish Academy member
David Håkansson succeeds the renowned linguist Sture Allén in chair number three of the Swedish Academy. Photo: Samuel Uneus.
“Swedish is a large and unusually well-described language,” notes David Håkansson, Professor of Swedish Language and Linguistics at Uppsala University. After many years of research, he has now joined the Swedish Academy and is looking forward to following the development of Swedish from a new perspective.
In December, Håkansson succeeded the renowned linguist Sture Allén in Seat 3 of the Swedish Academy. In keeping with tradition, he gave a speech on Allén, after reading up on his work and visiting his widow Solveig in Gothenburg.
“It felt great to succeed him. We don’t have quite the same interest in linguistics – he worked in lexicography and did a lot of work on dictionaries – but we share an interest in the structure of the language. That gave us a common denominator.”
Håkansson’s appointment coincided with the publication of the latest volume of the Swedish Academy’s dictionary. The dictionary is an immense project that has been maintained since the 19th century, in which all Swedish words have been thoroughly explained alongside evidence of when they were first used.
The work is now starting up once more, with several other funding bodies in addition to the Swedish Academy.
“Yes, we revisit, revise and update, because a large number of words are obviously not in the dictionaries. However, it will not be printed this time, instead becoming a purely digital product.”
Important Swedish language infrastructure
The Swedish Academy is often associated with the awarding of the Nobel Prize in Literature, formal events and celebrations. Its importance for the Swedish language is often less emphasised.
“There is a lot of work going on behind the scenes on important infrastructure for the Swedish language. For example, the dictionary is a fantastic project that we were now able to finalise. Few languages are as well described as Swedish. In addition to the dictionary, the glossary is published regularly, we have the Swedish Academy’s grammar which was published in 1999 and we are working on the website svenska.se.”
Håkansson will now contribute to this area of the Academy’s activities. At the same time, he will continue full-time as a researcher in Scandinavian languages and Dean of the Faculty of Languages at Uppsala University.
Changes in 19th-century Swedish
His research takes a particular interest in language changes, both in the present and in the past. He is currently completing a research project on 19th-century Swedish and how it changed both then and over the longer term.
In his new role, he will monitor changes in the language in real time, for example each time a new edition of the Swedish Academy’s glossary is published. Language issues are of interest and concern to many, and it is often perceived as a deterioration when the language changes. It doesn’t have to be that way, according to Håkansson.
“Swedish has always been subject to change and it is quite natural for a language to undergo changes in vocabulary and grammar. What I find more worrying is the loss of domains that we can see today, where Swedish is not being used at all in certain areas. This has been widely recognised in higher education, for example.”
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Annica Hulth