Life under lockdown, to contain the pandemic, has started to normalize. The newsworthy part is that now countries like Austria, Norway and New Zealand are planning to ease up their restrictions. The aim is to make a gradual recovery back…
Author: Viljami Kaskiluoto
Viljami Kaskiluoto studies Scandinavian linguistics at Tampere University. He’s a member in Svensk Ungdom. Viljami’s interests include language policies and the relationship between societies and languages in general. Twitter: @kaskiluoto, Facebook: @ViljamiRKP
What to Do when in Quarantine?
As the Corona virus closes in and every country on the planet, with just a few exceptions, have reported contagions, we are either self-quarantined or ordered to quarantine. Many businesses and public services have been reduced to the minimum or…
Can Liberals Also Be Nationalists?
Last year, in November, I wrote about potential changes on the world map where e.g. referenda will unify or divide countries that we now see as permanent. In that text I failed to mention the East African Federation, which has…
Science and Society
We like to think that in a liberal democracy, decisions should be based on well-informed arguments and debate results, not on someone’s popularity, status or gut feelings. To enforce this ideal, and for some practical reasons as well, people ‘invented’…
(In)dependence on the World Map in the 2020s
Nation states are a thing of stability for many: something that’s existed for decades, even centuries, and there are no way maps change. However, the current world map is fairly young, as for example South Sudan became independent in 2011.…
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One Three-Character-Long Word Describing Us All
In Finnish we have this thing called hän, IPA pronunciation [ˈhæn], which translates as both ’he’ and ’she’. Obviously, Finnish is spoken by Finns – a people whose idea of a sport is to carry the love of your life…
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