Background

During the last 50 years the popularity of the English language in Western and Northern Europe has secured it a position as a lingua franca in Europe. Due to its widespread use more and more people can communicate with each other regardless of nationality and mother tongue. A consequence of this development has been that the other European languages (especially German and French) have become much less widespread as second or third languages. The Germanic languages in Europe, like German, Dutch and the Scandinavian languages are still healthy languages, which, due to immigration and other factors, continue their expansion in certain groups. However, we see that fewer and fewer native speakers of Germanic languages go through the trouble of learning another Germanic language beside English. The third language for many younger Scandinavian people is to an increasing degree Spanish.

The easy access to English is in this respect a blessing in disguise, since more and more students seem to favor English even in countries where the national language is much more linguistically similar to their own language than English. Examples of this can be Swedes in Denmark and Germans in the Netherlands, who often avoid the adaptations necessary between their respective languages and resort to English instead. It is essential for European people to master English as a second language, but we also identify an inherent value in the ability to put to use one’s knowledge about one’s own language in such a way as to expand one’s linguistic skills with regard to other languages within the same linguistic group.

There are many reasons for this development. We believe that there is a lack of a Germanic heritage focus in the teaching of the mother tongues in the Germanic language region, which leads to a lack of awareness of Germanic history and linguistic similarities. We can observe this lack of awareness and ability in the refusal of openness towards neighboring countries’ literature and literary texts. The common student seems to lack strategies on how to acquire a general competence in adapting to a language (other than mother tongue and English) by use of association methods and awareness of general linguistics. We can not identify any coherent study module or guide that address these problems within secondary education and adult education in the participating countries.

The SIGURD project has created a network between partners in Germanic countries and collected texts to be used as examples of the common Germanic heritage. 

The SIGURD portal is a forum for the presentation of these texts. 

The partners have provided Germanic fairy-tales and other common texts, historical texts, and texts describing linguistic aspects of their Germanic countries. Hypertexted versions of the texts serve as the basis for the student activities, and we will encourage students to read the texts in other Germanic languages and make use of the hypertextual features in order to comprehend them. 

In the handbook, we discuss briefly how language learning by means of association, guesswork, word play, and an expanded awareness of the linguistics and history and etymology of one’s own mother tongue can help training the learner’s general linguistic abilities. 

The students involved in the SIGURD project range from 15-year old Swedes to Dutch people in their 50s, and the educators are from five countries with Germanic national languages. 

The ultimate target groups the SIGURD project addresses are however students on secondary school level of all age groups and in all areas. The SIGURD portal will in addition be specifically well suited to hard to reach student groups like disabled people, adults, and learners in underdeveloped regions who have access to the Internet either at home or through a library or other free providers.

Another essential target group is teachers and educational providers in the Germanic countries.

SIGURD is a project aimed at increasing the awareness of the linguistic similarities between the various Germanic languages in Europe. 

The main target groups are students and teachers in secondary education. The main activities of the project have been to collect texts in the form of common Germanic fairy-tales and other linguistic and historical texts, provide information on Germanic linguistics, and discuss methodology on how to help students become aware and positive towards the linguistic similarities between their mother tongues and other Germanic languages for ultimately to become aware of the possibility to expand one’s linguistic capacities to include other Germanic languages. 

The activities have taken place by the use of the SIGURD web portal, which functions as a resource base as well as a presentation of the project. 

The output of the project is a web-based guide (in the following languages: NO, NL, DE, SE and EN) which provides suggestions on how to teach Germanic linguistics based on the experiences from the SIGURD project. 

The portal will continue being operative after the project is ended in order to disseminate the texts, information and experiences embedded in the resource base and communication area.