Talk:Swedish language/Archive 3

message: Is it really correct to translate "du-reformen" as "the-you-reform"? Contrary to English, where the more reverential plural form (you) became the norm, Swedish went with the more familiar singular which corresponds more to the (archaic) "thou". Therefore, it would be more correct to translate the "du-reform" as "the-thou-reform" rather than "the-you-reform". /probell (Talk) 20:43, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think I would leave it untranslated, the "du-reform", because one'd need to learn distinctions different from English to understand it, anyway. I'd rather keep a small clause explaing what "du" means in Swedish. (where "du" is the standard second person singular pronoun) Comments? 惑乱 分からん 16:14, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I tried to amend this by adding some more information. Please feel free to tweak it s'more if you still feel that anything is unclear. Peter Isotalo 08:54, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  You/thou-reform 

message: (Also see the archived discussion.)
I'd like to
:(1) add a comment in the beginning of the historic section, stating that seemingly the (North Germanic speaking) inhabitants of Scandinavia considered themselves as speaking the same language, up to the sixteenth century;
:(2) add a note on seemingly rather early signs of distinctions in the pronounciation of explosives between (rougly) what evolved into Danish on the one hand, and the other mainland vernaculars on the other.
In both cases, I won't do anything until when (and if) I've succeeded to find the sources where I read about these things (unless no other may provide them).  My question is: Would you find such additions valuable, if they are properly verified? JoergenB 21:38, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: They seem very valuable to me. I'm looking forward to the additions. Peter Isotalo 10:26, 24 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Old Norse vs Runic Swedish 

message: 1. Regarding the statement: "It is currently expected that the bill will be successfully passed if it is put up for a second vote." 
Who is "it"? In other words, who is expecting this? Seems like introduction of unnecessary POV. If you want to call it a majority viewpoint, please introduce sources to verify this claim.
2. Regarding the statement: "The linguistic definition of a Swedish dialect is a local variant that has not been heavily influenced by the standard language and that can trace a separate development all the way back to Old Norse."
This statement is too simplistic, if not incorrect. If "linguistics" is referring to old-fashioned "traditional  dialectology", this needs to be stated because this is no longer a definition used in modern linguistic research into dialects, and has hardly been in use in practice at all since the early 1980s. "Separate development" is generally not used as a definition for dialects as they are the spoken language of a living, breathing speech community and few modern societies have enclaves of humans without influences from the surrounding world. See for example a more modern approach to dialects in linguistic research, as applied in the SweDia 2000 project, as explained in a statement by Anders Eriksson, Professor of Phonetics at Gothenburg University, one of the leading scholars involved in the project: "Frågor och svar om projektet: Är inspelningarna exempel på genuina dialekter?". SweDia 2000, (in Swedish). For a somewhat different definition, as applied in sociolinguistics, see for example Einarsson, Jan (2004).  Språksociologi. Lund: Studentlitteratur, p.139, where the spectrum between genuine dialect and spoken Standard Swedish is divided into five categories. For a common international definition, see for example Dr. John R. Rickford, Professor of Linguistics Stanford University, How Linguists Approach the Study of Language and Dialect, a document offered students in introductory linguistics classes at Stanford University. 
3. The article is not clarifying the difference between the codification of written and spoken Standard Swedish, which is odd considering the long section dedicated to the written standard. As pointed out in the article by Einar Haugen (Professor of Linguistics and Scandinavian, Harvard University, 1964–75) and Jan Terje Faarlund (Professor of Scandinavian Linguistics, University of Trondheim, Norway), who contributed the article "Languages of the subgroup Swedish" a North Germanic languages article in Encyclopædia Britannica Online (2006), a spoken Standard Swedish was not introduced until 1842. (See also a Swedish Television special of 25 Jan. 2006, about the "language hygienic" drive in Swedish schools, a drive aimed to obliterate dialects and enforce "well-mannered" (hyfsat) Stockholm-influenced speech in Swedish schools. 060125 - Reportage: Uttalshygien - dialekttvätt genom den allmänna folkskolan. (Media file, in Swedish). I see some other slight problems, which I will return to as time allows, but on the whole, I think this is an excellent article, and the featured status well deserved. Pia 00:00, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Three slight problems 

message: Hi.  We could use some outside input over at Categories for discussion.  In particular, here we have two people arguing over what to call :Category:Finland-Swedish, and another couple of opinions could be very helpful.  Thanks! -GTBacchus(talk) 20:57, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Input requested 

message: I'm attempting to section this discussion so we can discuss each issue separately. Please help me out on this one, as posts are getting very long and ungainly.
My choice of dialects back when I wrote most of the section more than a year ago was an attempt to provide a reasonable number of samples based roughly on the number of speakers and the degree of variation in each of the various dialect groups. I tried my best to compromise between representing as many dialects as possible and not cluttering the map too much. I was trying to be pragmatic. I'm sure that it doesn't fall into the category of "scientific methods", but then again, the purpose of the article is to give basic information on Swedish to laymen and to illustrate variation within the language, not to stand up to scrutiny though it was a scientific paper. I urge you to try to view this from the perspective of someone who doesn't know squat about linguistics or dialects. Peter Isotalo 12:10, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think we should compromise scientific exactness just because most people reading an article like this one happen to me laymen. I might violate Wikipedia policies by valuing scientic exactness (unreferenced or not) higher than than the providing of sources (misinterpreted or not). Perhaps my struggle should be aimed at changing Wikipedia policies instead of improving specific articles. Jens Persson (130.242.128.85 19:37, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Choice of dialect samples

message: Are you sure that /r/ can be pronounced as [ʐ] (voiced retroflex fricative)in Swedish? I am a native speaker and I and everyone I´ve asked have never heard something like that. We would consider it comical! 81.230.220.176 19:50, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Are you sure? 

message: SOUNDS section:
"Native speakers who adapt their speech when moving to areas with other regional varieties or dialects will often adhere to the sounds of the new variety, but nevertheless maintain the prosody of their native dialect. Oftentimes the prosody is the first to be changed, perhaps because it is the element most disruptive to understanding, or simply the easiest to adapt." —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 75.7.28.72 (talk) 02:06, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Logical Contradiction -- which changes "often(times)" -- phonology or prosody? 

message: I don't know if you would like to include some legal information on Swedish from a new article I have created on Nordic Language Convention. --Michkalas 12:00, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Looks like a nice addition. I recommend including it under "Official status". Peter Isotalo 14:23, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Nordic Language Convention]] 

message: I'm a native Swedish speaker, and I can't understand a word of Icelandic. Say, German, is closer to mutually intellegible with Swedish than Icelandic in my opinion (not saying that it is). Can any other native Swedish speaker confirm or deny this? Dingbats 07:07, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Mutual intelligibility is not something that is either true or false and the article says "to some extent". Understanding other languages is also to a great extent something that has to do with attitude. That you would never be able to understand a single word of Icelandic is obviously not true unless you had actually decided not to try. That it's not as easy to understand as Norwegian or Danish doesn't mean that it's 100% gibberish. The "not a word"-level of non-understanding only really occurs with more distant languages like Russian or Hindi. Peter Isotalo 07:23, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: But I still don't think that kind of far-fetched mutual intellegibility is relevant here. In that case you could note on the article on English that it's mutually intellegible with Dutch and German, or say that French is mutually intellegible with Romanian or something. I don't think it belongs here. Dingbats 18:43, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

text: Again, mututally intelligibility is not something that is either just true or false with no middle ground. Are you sure you've understood how closely related the North Germanic languages really are? It's not even remotely comparable to the distance between French and Romanian. Peter Isotalo 19:58, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I am a native Swedish speaker myself, and I do know that they are closely related, yes. But it doesn't matter if they're closely related or not when it comes to this; if speakers of the two languages can't understand one another, then that's enough not to call them mutually intellegible. What I'm disputing is where you seem to be drawing the border of what is to be called mutually intellegible and not. I think Swedish and Icelandic are on the far side of that border. Dingbats 20:13, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

text: Which is exactly what "to some extent" means. Peter Isotalo 20:26, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: But then as I said, English is "to some extent" mutually intellegible with German, or French with say Italian. Just because you recognise a word here and there, it doesn't mean the languages are mutually intellegible enough to have it mentioned. I went to this page with Icelandic phrases recorded on it and clicked the links at random without reading the text. At best I could make out a word somewhere, but the rest was like gibberish. And I really tried to understand it. You're defining mutual intellegibility way too loosely. Dingbats 06:10, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

text: OK, so I'll remove that line from the article now. Dingbats 15:15, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, I agree. I think Danish could be rather difficult because of the slurred speech, but when written or if pronounced slow and clearly, it's generally not difficult. Icelandic, on the other hand, is generally an enigma. Even for clear prose, I can't make out much more than a rough gist, even if I try to make an effort. 惑乱 分からん * \)/ (\ (< \) (2 /) /)/ * 13:13, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mutual intellegibility with Icelandic? 

message: I'm going to change the parts in the article where it says Swedish has a genitive case. This 'case' is a clitic that attaches to whole phrases, not individual words (cf. mannen med grå kavajs hatt). If anyone disagrees, don't revert without letting me prove you wrong first. --Dingbats 17:14, 15 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: This seems to have gone by somewhat unnoticed. Do we have any sources for this? The interpretation of published linguists is what really matters here. Peter Isotalo 06:00, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Genitive 'case' 

message: Can someone please update the references?   There are several references in this article that are incomplete, such as "Crystal, Scandinavian", "Bergman, pp. 21–23", "Pettersson, p.139".  The title of the article, the author's first name or initial, year of publication, journal (if published in a journal) etc needs to be included.  Using Wikipedia:Citation templates may help ensure that the minimum info is included in a citation.  panda 21:56, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The "Notes" simply refers to the sources in the "References" section, where the complete information on all the sources are included. henrik•talk 10:39, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

text: Citation templates have the disadvantage of introducing huge swathes of wikicode for very little benefit, making the article a lot more difficult to edit. The format of referencing used here is pretty much identical to how footnotes are used in print literature and avoids the staggering redundancy that the citation templates tend to lead to. Peter Isotalo 17:08, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  I didn't notice the References section.  Thanks for pointing that out. –panda 05:25, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Incomplete references