The Faroese language conflict is a phase in the history of the Faroe Islands in the first half of the 20th century (approx.
It was a political and cultural argument between advocates of Faroese and Danish to serve as the official language of the Faroe Islands.
They had a consistency argument for Faroese as the language of instruction: in the other parts of the Danish kingdom education was conducted in the native language: Icelandic in Iceland, Greenlandic or Kalaallisut in Greenland, and English in the Danish West Indies (from 1917 the United States Virgin Islands).
Jákup Dahl, who later became the Provost, was opposed to the administration's ruling and refused to teach in Danish; from then on he taught in Faroese.
The Sjálvstyri maintained their previous position, that it was natural and understandable that a people should be taught in their native language.
Although it could be rated as a partial success of Sjálvstyri, their demands remained on the agenda of the party after passage of the §7 regulation.
Louis Zachariasen in Velbastaður was the first teacher to oppose the regulation openly, and he refused to teach further in Danish.
The language conflict entered a new phase in 1918, when the question was raised of why Faroese spelling was still not a compulsory subject in the schools.
In the above-mentioned school regulations of 1912, this question had been deliberately ignored, since many Faroese teachers did not have sufficient knowledge of the orthography of their native language.
As the time seemed ripe, the Løgting requested the Danish government to introduce Faroese spelling as a compulsory subject.
Efforts were made to find a good way to teach Faroese, while still guaranteeing that the students would have an appropriate knowledge of Danish to further their higher education.
[citation needed] Nevertheless, the question was discussed several times in the Løgting, and some Union Party politicians argued pragmatically for the retention of Danish: many of the priests were Danes, and if each priest could choose in which language he preaches, this would lead to general confusion, e.g., if a community was accustomed to a church service in Faroese but then got a Danish pastor.
As with education, the penetration of the native language into the church was only a matter of time and depended on the availability of literature.
When the pastor could not be present the services in the churches were conducted by laymen, who used sermons from Dahl's printed collection.
The legal documents could also be drawn up in Faroese, providing that a certified translation into Danish was also made, if prescribed by law, or required by the defence.
That happened because of the special situation of the Faroe Islands in World War II, when Denmark was occupied by Germany and all connections with the government in Copenhagen were severed.
With the autonomy (home-rule) law of 1948, Faroese was finally the language used in all affairs, with the proviso that Danish should be taught in school.