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Brit Mæhlum

Academia
In 1986, Mæhlum started field research on the local dialect of Norwegian spoken in Svalbard, which wasa part of a three year study funded by the Norwegian Research Council for Science and the Humanities. Early in her research, she claimed that there wasn't a unique dialect present on Svalbard due to the instability of population. She presented her work in 1989 at a conference held by the research council in Svalbard, in which she stated that the conditions were not present for being a unique dialect, comparing the speech of locals to that of emigrants to the United States and Madagascar. She also stated that the speech people used depended on the situation, often speaking with a Southern dialect at home, but with a Northern dialect in public.