The rule of combining and separating words
I’m certainly no expert in English, and the following text probably breaks a dozen or more rules of the English language, but I do know something about my own Swedish language that many of my Swedish geology professors obviously don’t.
I’ve noticed something about people within the natural sciences that I didn’t know before. Something that makes them a little bit less intellectually impressive than what I perhaps gave them credit of before going for geology myself.
The professors and scientists are, in general, quite nonproficient with (or is that "on" or "of" 
) the rules of Swedish grammar.
I mean, it’s one thing not being a master of foreign languages, another not knowing the basic rules of one’s own language as an professor. One should think that all those years of studies and scholarly work in combination with the famous higher IQ of natural scientists (compared to scientists of the social and humanities who in general don’t make mistakes with simple grammar) should count for something. But sadly, it doesn’t
One reoccurring error, that I think not one of the professors have failed to breake, is the Swedish grammatical rule of “särskrivning” (the rule against the separation of words).
In Swedish we can combine words to make a new word. The most classical example of them all is the Swedish word for nurse: “sjuksköterska”. The word “sjuksköterska” is a combination of two words: “sjuk” (sick) and “sköterska” (nurse). I.e. a “sjuksköterska” is “a nurse of the sick”.
The problem is it means something completely different when you separate the two words in Swedish. A “sjuk sköterska” means “a sick nurse” while a “sjuksköterska” means “a nurse of the sick”. There are several more fun examples like “rökfritt” (no smoking) ->”rök fritt” (smoke freely). I think you get the picture and that it could create lots of confusion if used wrong in some contexts. It of course doesn’t always lead to great misunderstandings like the ones I’ve just mentioned, but it always looks bad.
The reason that people have a problem of not knowing when two words should be written together or separated is the increased use of English in the Swedish society (since you in general do not write words together in the same extent). Especially in the natural sciences the use of English has started to dominate completely in the last 10 years. Many people think that all science should be written in English, and they probably got a point since that increases the size of the potential group of readers internationally. But must this come with a decreased knowledge of the own language as a result? (Don’t get me wrong, I really like the English language, but I don’t want to replace the Swedish language with it.)
The rule of “särskrivning” in the Swedish language is taught to kids from a young age, so they (the professors with all their scholarly record) really should know this without having to think twice even. It’s not a difficult rule for anyone brought up with it. Everyone can make a mistake, but when you see the error repeated over and over again in different contexts of the officially written material of the professors, which they should have given some time to write probably and adjust, you know that there is something wrong in general.
As I said, this is something I never saw with my professors of archaeology and history. In a competition of IQs, they would probably lose against my geology professors, but in a competition of writing texts without simple childish grammatical errors in Swedish (and in English) they would easily win.
And I’m sorry for being so stuck up with this, but I have some big issues with taking people seriously if they cannot even use their own language properly. It affects my view on their general competence. Can I really take someone seriously as an expert if they cannot handle their own language? No I personaly cannot. I guess that eight years of studies within the humanities, where teachers don’t make these errors makes me spoiled perhaps. It’s basically the combination of "professor and expert" and not knowing preschool grammar that I cannot accept.
May 22, 2008 + Posted in Geoscience, Sweden +
This seems pretty bizarre. It almost suggests that your professors have given up thinking in Swedish. Admittedly, like most Americans, my second-language skills are very rudimentary, so I’m perhaps not qualified to speculate here. But it sure seems very, very strange.
I have noticed something interesting about writing in English. I do a lot of different types of writing. I used to be an engineer and wrote many, many technical documents. Now, studying geology, I’ve learned to write scientific papers and industry-type reports. I’ve written instruction manuals for nontechnical readers. I also write fiction just for the fun of it.
What I’ve found is that every single type of writing has a different “tone” to it, and I must employ a different “ear” to get the best result. I am referring to how the sentences flow, how paragraphs are organized, choice of words, even rhythm and cadence. For example, a hydrogeologist’s report detailing how to clean up groundwater contamination has a different tone from a scientific paper describing a new method of removing contaminants from groundwater.
I have also found that doing one sort of writing exclusively for several months totally confounds my ability to do another kind well. It’s as though my “ear” has become so narrowly calibrated that I can’t “hear” what another kind of writing should “sound” like in my head. What follows is then a painful struggle, with many drafts, before I can create a document that “sounds” right.
Perhaps something similar is happening with your professors. Maybe they’re so immersed in the English that they’ve lost their “ear” for proper Swedish.
Comment by Karen — May 25, 2008 @ 8:20 am
There’s a fairly famous structural geologist here in California, who writes the best papers of any I’ve read. His style is clean, straightforward, easy to understand, and he illustrates his text with well-crafted images. He’s also a bit of a nut, eccentric, can’t be bothered to listen to anyone, and some of his hypotheses are pretty far-out and not well-supported. On the other hand, some of his work has been ground-breaking and very well-supported by evidence.
But there’s no doubt the man can write.
Comment by Karen — May 25, 2008 @ 8:30 am
Karen: Could be. If you use the English language everyday, it probably should affect your Swedish. But still, it doesent happen to professors in non-naturalsciences as much and they dont use English much less as far as I know.
Comment by Antimonite — May 25, 2008 @ 10:36 am
“the Swedish grammatical rule of “särskrivning” (the rule against the separation of words).”
is probably the number one subject in Swedish blog entries!
One problem i have with the English in essays by students, especially Swedish ones, is that we seem to be afraid of using old English words, and instead go for the long, many-syllabled latin ones:
E.g.
‘Elevator’ instead of ‘lift’
‘Perpetrator’ instead of ‘culprit’
and many more examples
It’s no grammar mistake of course, but….boring.
Comment by simple z — May 30, 2008 @ 4:09 pm