Talk:Jamtlandic

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jamtlandic has had a peer review by Wikipedia editors which is now archived. It may contain ideas you can use to improve this article.

Contents 1 Sceptics 2 Requested move 2.1 Voting 2.2 Discussion 2.3 Vote on Jamtska → Jamtlandic 3 IPA for the "eng" sound 4 Reecent changes. 5 A completely new article based on prof em Dalen's article on Jamtlandic

[edit] Sceptics

I'm skeptical about many aspects of SIL's treatment of the dialect:

• As with Scanian, the separate classification seems to have been made merely on political grounds, and it is therefor questionable if the article should use the infobox. The two sources I've read on the dialects of Jämtland so far (NE and Pamp's Svenska dialekter from 1978) are both very clear about that they don't believe that any form of jämtländska is to be considered "Norwegian", i.e. West Scandinavian. This is not to say that there are obvious Western influences in the dialect(s).
• The estimates of the number of speakers is also somewhat suspicious. How is Jam(t)ska defined from other dialects of Jämtland? What are the sources for the figures in the first place?
• Has the unpublished book by Persson actually been used as a source, by the way? How has it been accessed? I would recommend that it not be refered to until it's actually been published. I would also like to know more about who Persson is. Is he to Jamska what Helmer Lång is to Scanian, i.e. a somewhat regionally partial layman?
• If one listens to Jämtland dialect samples provided by SweDia, it's hard to find any samples that aren't mutually intelligible with Standard Swedish. Which of the samples provided is supposed to be what SIL (and the article) defines as Jamtska?
• Why is SIL using "Jamtska" rather than "Jamska"? The latter seems far more common, even among Jam(t)ska enthusiasts.

Peter ^Isotalo 16:22, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

My only reference is at the moment that I grew up there. The Jämtland dialect and Jamska is not the same thing (how you now define dialect), the Jämtland dialect is more ordinary Swedish with change in sound and pich etc... (don't know how to define it linguistic), but Jamska is more related with Norwegian.

Example (from [1]):

Jamska

E svårt e ku, ha vit e mjalk

Swedish

En svart ko har vit mjölk

English

A black cow have white milk

_→AzaToth 21:09, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunately, being a native speaker is not enough to satisfy the demands of Wikipedia:Verifiability. I would say Jamska is definetly the same thing as Jämtland dialect except that some of those dialects have a more distinct sense of independence. It does not, however, place them in a completely separate category. If you read the article, the attempt seems to be to include most, if not all, of Jämtland in the definition. Could you please check out the link to the sound samples at SweDia and explain which one of them are samples of Jamska or the dialects closest to Jamska?

Peter ^Isotalo 10:24, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

I am a native speaker as well, and I can confirm that Jamtlandic (use this term in English, please, since it is the most common - cf. Icelandic) is better described as western norse than eastern norse. E.g. extensive use of umlauts (hååll 'to hold' vs häll 'holds'; fära 'to go' vs fer 'goes'), western ú vs eastern ó (ku 'cow', cf. Swe ko), assimilations (place names such as Kall, Bräcke, Brattmon etc., would be Karl, Brinke, Brantmon etc. in Swedish), vocabulary (dä 'you (pl)', from Old West Norse þit, not Old East Norse it) etc. The best would though be to simply call it a fairly homogeneous group of scandinavian dialects. The only close-to-100% west norse dialects still existing are Icelandic, Faroese and some western norwegian dialects, and the only close-to-100% east norse dialects today are the gutnish ones. The western features have existed to some extent as far east as Eastern Svealand, and only Gotland seems to have been more or less 100% isolated from these novations. (The western features once were novations.) What AzaToth refers to as Jämtland dialect is what is usually referred to as Östersundsmål, i.e. Östersund speech, since Östersund is the capital of Jämtland (founded in 1786 by GIII) and thus has attained a swedified dialect. In the SweDia samples from Jämtland, Östersundsmål is the dominant speech heard. I personally use Östersundsmål when speaking to people I assume don't understand Jamtlandic. I understand that Peter Isotalo, being a stockholmer and possibly a svea patriot, feels like being stabbed by a knife in his heart when anything that violates his POV of the non-existence of special local cultures and languages in Sweden not originating from the Mälar area are brought up to the surface.

Peter Isotalo requested sample of Jamtlandic at SweDia. Since I find SweDia completely irrelevant regarding dialects, I say that he should listen to the following samples at SVD instead: http://www.svd.se/dynamiskt/Kultur/did_4400040.asp (Åsarna) and http://www.svd.se/dynamiskt/Kultur/did_4400198.asp (Föllinge). My dialect is very close to the latter one.

"Has the unpublished book by Persson actually been used as a source, by the way? How has it been accessed? I would recommend that it not be refered to until it's actually been published. I would also like to know more about who Persson is. Is he to Jamska what Helmer Lång is to Scanian, i.e. a somewhat regionally partial layman?"

(Peter Isotalo)

I am the guy. I am currently working on this thesis about the standardisation of written Jamtlandic, a project which was triggered by the fact that Älvdalen speech became standardised a year ago. I have put up an extremely preliminairy (wrote it in two days using a pretty bad word editor) version in Swedish here (hosted by the Jamtamot association): http://www.mdh.se/ima/personal/lln01/jamtamot/dokument/dok-jamska/jenspersson_vart-skriftspraks-stavning.pdf . (I strongly recomennd especially Peter Isotalo to read the document. Note though that I have changed my mind in some details, e.g. the use of the front hard vowels ä, ü and ö which I have changed to ë, ÿ and ÿ, respectively.) If the owner of the publishing company Jengel ( http://www.jengel.just.nu/ ) is still positive to my project when I have finished my project, I will have it published there in some form. One should change the source in the article to the pdf file I linked to above until the project has been accepted to be transformed into a booklet or something by the publisher.

Jens Persson jepe2503 at hotmail dot com 26 January 2006

Thank you for replying, Jens. I still feel that some issues need to be addressed more thoroughly.

• What are the sources for your book? What material are the IPA-transcriptions used here based on?
• Describing SweDia, a major linguistic project, as "irrelevant" for dialects sounds very high-handed to me. Why are samples recorded over 40 years ago from informants that are long since dead prefered over more recent (and varied) samples?

Peter ^Isotalo 07:52, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

My sources for the book are various newer and older theses on the different dialects of Jamtlandic. To mention one important concerning modern Jamtlandic, this one will suffice: http://www.ssp.nu/nyheter/gustavadolf/folklivsbygd/hammerdal.htm . My spelling and normalised pronunciation is a synthesis of the dialects and a preferance towards the archaic features. Since most jamtlanders are conscious about what is "good Jamtlandic" or not, I have chosen to solely focus on "good Jamtlandic". This is the reason why 40 year old samples are more relevant in the context than modern samples, since Jamtlandic has not been more separated from standard Swedish since then, rather the opposite, I am afraid. It would be pointless to e.g. put up a Wikipedia entry on how teenage Östersund girls speak, since they speak standard Swedish with a slight southern Norrlandic accent. (More generally, it would be pointless to have an entry called Jamtlandic describing the variety of standard Swedish spoken by most jamtlanders.) That would be part of the Swedish entry rather than an independent one for Jamtlandic. I don't claim SweDia to be irrelevant for how people in Sweden speak to interviewing Stockholmers, but it is irelevant for the genuine dialects.

"What material are the IPA-transcriptions used here based on?" (Peter Isotalo)

Are you dubios about some specific details, or? As I said, I have normalised things, but to 97% it's consistent with e.g. my own dialect.

Jens Persson, jepe2503 at hotmail dot com (31 Jan 06)

So, most of this article is written by Jens Persson and based on his not yet published book. Please note the Wikipedia rules about original thought. It's interesting to note that the current article is four-five times larger than the Swedish equivalent, although you would expect that the matter should be of much more interest in the Swedish Wiki. The Swedish article (which doesn't seem to be written by Jens Persson, but probably by the other great Jamska patriot, Bo Oscarsson, as both external links in it go to his pages) mentions Jens Persson's forthcoming book and calls it a "proposal" for how Jamska should be written. It seems obvious that Persson's views are different from those of the "Academy of Jamska", i.e. Bodil Bergner, Berta Magnusson and Bo Oscarsson. Could it be that the Jamska patriots are using the different versions of Wikipedia as their soapboxes? This article is definitly POV! Thomas Blomberg 00:23, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

I wouldn't say it's soapboxes, but it lacks some verifiability and references. If Jens could submit all his references for the work it would be fine I think. _→AzaToth 00:32, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

The English part of Wiki is of course more international, so it's not strange that - assuming an occuring asymmetry - it's the more extended version. I don't agree that there're soapboxes here. There's no controversy between me and Bergner-Magnusson-Oscarsson, rather the opposite. I have never met Bergner in person, Magnusson only once while having a lecture on my new orthography in May 2005 (she didn't completely reject it), and I have met Oscarsson several times to discuss these matters and he agrees with me in principle. BTW, how would you write examples of the dialect of Jamtlandic, Thomas? You need an orthography, right? I would accept to postpone the current version of the article (regarding orthography) if you can give me an alternative orthography better suited for the Wikipedia spirit. (I assume here that you accept articles in Wikipedia on dialects; if not, it would be an understatement to claim that you reveal some chauvinistic traits.) 130.242.128.85 19:20, 2 February 2006 (UTC) (Jens Persson jepe2503 at hotmail dot com)

I see the same problem with Jens' contributions and lack of sources other than his own research as Thomas does. It's original research. For example, the idea of Jamtlanddic being Western Scandinavian isn't agreeing with either Bengt Pamp (Svenska dialekter) or Lars-Erik Edlund (Nationalencyklopedin). Claiming that SweDia consists of nothing but arrogant Stockholmers without even the most basic knowledge of how to conduct dialects surveys is also a very seriuous accusation to be handing out. Especially when coupled with insistance that 20-40-year-old dialect samples are the only "genuine" ones and that the language of Jamtlandic teenagers is just Standard Swedish rather than a localized or regional variant.

Original research is acceptable when there are no other sources available. As far as I know Swedish dialectology has been quite carefully surveyed for some 150 years now. I have a hard time believing that there are so few academic sources on Jamtlandic that there's need for OR in this article. How would you comment this, Jens? Have you used any published and peer reviewed sources?

Peter ^Isotalo 07:29, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

How ironic this is. I could give you loads of sources. I have given only one due to the problem of overload. (Are two sources always twice as good than one? In history; yes. In contemporary dialectology; no) The source I have chosen is Vidar Reinhammars book on the Hammerdal dialect. (Someone added the reference faster than me, though. I just mentioned it in the discussion.) From there I have taken most of the grammatical issues, e.g. the existence of vocative and genitive. I have chosen this single book since he, Vidar Reinhammar, was one of the most well-known swedish dialectologists and has even critized many subjective views from local jamtlanders. Like him, and unlike many jamtlandic patriots, I don't consider Jamtlandic to be a language, rather a dialect. (A dialect of the general group northern Scandinavian, not Swedish.)

I have also been very clear on that Jamtlandic is in the middle between West Norse and East Norse, though slightly more of the former kind. (I should mention that Vidar Reinhamar has this opinin as well, which is clear from his book.) The debate whether Jamtlandic is West Norse or East Norse is infected, to say the least. Bengt Pamp and Lars-Erik Edlund are two linguistics of many. If you read Nordisk familjebok (the quote I translated), you indeed see the opinion - though only implicitly stated - that Jamtlandic is clearly western. I have read bengt Pamp's book about the dialects, but I don't have it in my hand. Can you quote him and Edlund? I have quoted a source states that Jamtlandic is of western kind. Please, quote your sources if you have them in your hand.

The SweDia project is a very interesting one. I don't say that there are arrogant Stockholmers interviewing the people speaking, but rather merely Stockholmers. With a "Stockholmer" I mean anyone not from the neighbourhood. Stockholm happens to be the capital of Sweden, so it should expect some projections like this. (I apologize if I offended you as a Stockholmer, but I am one as well since some time.) My point isn't that SweDia gives a false view of how the majority people in Jämtland (and elsewhere) speak, but that it is completely irrelevant for the sake of an article on the genuine dialects of Jämtland. I follow the spririt of e.g. Vidar Reinhammar. Nowhere in his book (from the 90's and thus fairly new) he claims that the Hammerdal dialect is practically Standard Swedish with an accent. If you e.g. want to objectively describe aboriginal Australian in an article, would you write that these aussies pronunce the ou diphtong in e.g. house in a certain way? No, since then you're describing english Australian (i.e., Australian English). Clearly, most aboriginals speak English, but the old languages still exist to some extent in remote parts and one should focus on them. (Another example: Only because the automobiles have passed horses as being the most important means of transportation, we don't call horses "automobiles" - do we? And even if all horses were extincted, one could still have an article on Wikipedia about them without being redirected to an article about "Automobiles".)

"I have a hard time believing that there are so few academic sources on Jamtlandic that there's need for OR in this article. How would you comment this, Jens? Have you used any published and peer reviewed sources?" (P.I.)

I have only one OR in the article (I don't count the etymological orthography here which demands some scientific results), and that is my explanation for the vocative plural ending. This is due to the fact that noone else have tried to explain it, At least I haven't found any such source. I am sure that Vidar Reinhammars book, on which I have based most of my contributions, has been published. (Yes, I am ironic here.) I am also sure that it is scientifically written in all matters. After all, Vidar Reinhammar was e.g. the main editor of the project "Ordbok över Sveriges dialekter". I doubt they would put a moron in charge for such a project. The only thing which really needs to be discussed is my orthography. Any serious dialectologist would agree with me in this.

Final remark: Even though one day all people living, and those which have grown up, in Jämtland are only speaking Standard Swedish (with an accent, i.e. regiolect), there's no doubt that the concept of Jamtlandic is a clear one; people can read in books what the dialect really is. The term Jamtlandic doesn't refer to the way people speak in Jämtland, but rather to the dialect whose ancestor is the dialect of Old West Norse spoken in Jämtland some 1000 years ago. You can't change this, Peter. Please, stop being chauvinistic and please be more objective!

Jens Persson ( 130.242.128.85 19:14, 3 February 2006 (UTC) )

Just a quick reply regarding the need for orthography. As far as I understand it, the text on this page is an example of ortography. However, it doesn't reflect how this text is pronounced. For that you use the International Phonetic Alphabet. By the look of it, in written Jamtsk you're trying to introduce Icelandic letters (ð) in a language/dialect spoken in Sweden, and you change accepted Swedish spelling of common words as well (why should "tack" be spelled "takk" in Jamtsk, for instance?). I'm all for documenting the way dialects are spoken, but I can't see the point of trying to carry that over into writing The Swedish spelling reformers around Ture Nerman in the early 20th century very quickly gave up their idea; that people should write the way it sounds. Ture Nerman instisted on spelling "Sverige" as "Svärje", while other reformers, living closer to Stockholm, insisted on writing it "Sverje". And I bet others would have liked to spell it "Svörje" or "Svårje", depending on where in the country the lived. And in many parts of the country it should iof course be "Sväje" or "Sveje", as the "r" often isn't sounded. By the late 1910s Ture Nerman was one of the few who still insisted on "writing the way people speak" - and trying to read his editorials in "Nya Samhället" from that period is very difficult, as his spelling defies all the rules we have learned. The whole point of written text is to be able to communicate with others, and standardized spelling of words is essential to achive this. Thomas Blomberg 19:19, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for the fairly sober and constructive response! I agree that IPA should be used, which is why I have used it for every occuring jamtlandic word. Peter Isotalo's opinion is that there's simply too much IPA in the article. I would definitely accept a strategy where we only use IPA and no normalised text. At least until it can be proven that people actually start using my orthography, except myself. It would not be a good idea to use e.g. swedish spelling, i.e. writing e.g. "stejn" 'stone' instead of "stein" (accepted by all writers of Jamtlandic) or [¹stʰeɪːn] (the proper IPA spelling).

You write: "By the look of it, in written Jamtsk you're trying to introduce Icelandic letters (ð) in a language/dialect spoken in Sweden,...". I respond: This discussion isn't very relevant, but anyway - here I go. The ð is not merely an icelandic letter, but an old norwegian as well and was used in some 14th century documents in Jamtlandic. See e.g. http://www.dokpro.uio.no/perl/middelalder/diplom_vise_tekst.prl?b=2551&s=212&str= (1348, Berg). (An extract of the document showing the use of 'ð' in old jamtlandic texts: "Ollum monnum þeim sem þetta bref sea eðr hœyra. senda Lafranz Gunnason loghmaðr j Jamptalande Tofue prester j Frœysœy. Besse Bærdhorsson ok Œdgisl a Lite q. g. ok sina. Þæt se ollum monnum kunnight att ver varom þær hia hœyrdom ok saam aa j sezstawnne firir Berghe j Frœysœy aa friadaghen nesta firir Mathie a niunda are ok tyttughta.". We see that this is actual Jamtlandic due to some lacking of u-umlauts, especially placenames: Kuggastadhom = Ice. Kuggastöðum, Aspasum =Ice. Öspásum and that one has oll- rather than all-, e.g. ollan þænn = Ice. allan þann etc. A funny detail: Jämtland obviously had its own curency back then, "merker jamzskar" i.e. "jamtlandic marks"; cf. http://www.mdh.se/ima/personal/lln01/jamtamot/hederspriset/1990/1990-www_jamtska-mark.html ) For sure, the letter ð must have been used ever since people started to write Jamtlandic in latin letters in the 12th century. Unfortunately, the diplomatarium of Jämtland prior to the 14th century was destroyed in a fire in Trondheim quite recently so we cannot be 100% sure that one used ð prior to the 14th century as well, but pretty sure at least. Obviously, historically there's a reason to use the ð in the orthography. But this isn't the main reason to use it. The main reason is that even though ð is silent (like in e.g. Faroese and in Olav Jakobsen Høyem's version of Nynorsk), it plays an important rôle in the pronunciation and for the consistency. E.g., staðn´ [²stʰɒːn] 'to stop' has a long vowel in all jamtlandic dialects. The improper spelling *stan´ would induce that in some dialects in the eastern parts of the province, it would be incorrectly pronunced with a half-long vowel, *[²stʰɒˑn], which doesn't make any sense.

You write: "...and you change accepted Swedish spelling of common words as well (why should "tack" be spelled "takk" in Jamtsk, for instance?)". I respond: First of all, practically all writers of Jamtlandic use the spelling kk insetad of ck since 100 years due to Erik "Äcke" Olssons attempt to normalise the spelling. (Read more about his achievements here: http://web.telia.com/~u63501054/Acke.html .) Second of all, why use swedish spelling rules? Jamtlandic isn't Swedish and we are considering an article in English. Swedish spelling rules are completely irrelevant in this context.

I simply don't understand your references to Ture Nerman, and the reformation of the swedish spelling in the early 20th century in general, in this context. What do you mean here? The key sentence "...I can't see the point of trying to carry that over into writing The Swedish spelling reformers..." is not good grammatically and completely makes your argumentation arcane here.

Jens Persson ( 130.242.128.85 21:40, 3 February 2006 (UTC) )

Sorry, I missed the full stop between "...into writing" and "The Swedish spelling reformers", which is perhaps why you got confused. My point is that spoken language and written language are two very different things. For a long time people in most languages wrote the way it sounded, which is why spelling in old documents often is very inconsistent. In many languages, Swedish for instance, spelling wasn't standardized until the middle or late 19th century. The great advantage of standardized spelling is that things are easier to read and thus understand, no matter what spoken dialect the writer has. What would English and French look like, if people spelled the way it sounded - and English sounds very different in Glasgow and New York, and spoken French in Guadalope is extremly different from sapoken French in Paris. Also, I don't regard Jamtsk to be a separate language, but either a dialect of Swedish or of Norwegian. If you can get the language experts to agree that it's a Norwegian dialect, then you should use Norwegian spelling (takk instead of tack), but if it's a Swedish dialect after 361 years of ruthless Swedish occupation, then you should use Swedish spelling, except when writing words that are unique to Jamtsk, of course. Whenever you're attempting to show HOW people are talking, you should use IPA. Thomas Blomberg 04:50, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Now I get your point; thanks for the explanation. I completely agree with this: "If you can get the language experts to agree that it's a Norwegian dialect, then you should use Norwegian spelling (takk instead of tack), but if it's a Swedish dialect after 361 years of ruthless Swedish occupation, then you should use Swedish spelling, except when writing words that are unique to Jamtsk, of course." My point though is that I don't regard Jamtlandic (the genuine form of it which was generally used in Jämtland until a few generations ago and which is still spoken in remote villages) as being either a dialect of Norwegian or of Swedish, but rather of Scandinavian. Linguists have agreed that Swedish and Norwegian (and Danish, for that matter) are dialects of the very same language; Scandinavian. I agree with them. And likewise I don't consider Jamtlandic a separate language. My conclusion is thus that one needs to go back to Old Norse normalised orthography. If you look at scientific papers and theses on dialects, you'll find that one often compare dialect words with the cognate old norse word with normalised spelling. E.g., a very common (even today and amongst people who hardly uses the genuine dialect otherwise) jamtlandic word like hɪːnan (using IPA here; one would of course use Landsmålsalfabetet instead) '(exactly) here' would be compared with and referred to Old (West) Norse hérna(n). And one would explain the lacking [ɳ] in the modern pronunciation by the sound shift [rn] > [dn] > [ðn] > [n] in an earlier stage of Jamtlandic. Thus, in the spelling of this jamtlandic word, one is led to the conclusion that one needs to spell the word héðnan. In any case, normalised Old Norse orthography is the relevant reference-spelling when looking at genuine dialects. The swedish written language (and to some extent the norwegian one as well) is full of inconsistencies since it is not scientifically constructed. Normalised Old Norse, on the other hand, is a very scientific written language and has the advantage of being the ancestor of all modern dialects. As you know, not written Modern Swedish nor written Modern Norwegian is the ancestor of e.g. a confined dialect as Jamtlandic, but rather ugly cousines. (Ugly in the sense of being non-scientific.)

Conclusion: One is led to using not Modern Swedish, nor Modern Norwegian, spelling of e.g. Jamtlandic, but rather a spelling given by the scientifically defined Old Norse normalised spelling, since Old NOrse is the only language which has a direct link to the dialect in question. (No dialect comes from Modern Swedish or Modern Norwegian, and all comes from Old Norse. Old Norse is thus the given unambiguous point of reference and should be employed.) Together with a spelling inherited from Old Norse one should use IPA in order to being able to discern dialectal differences.

It is the fact that one can define a unique normalised spelling valid for all dialects of Jamtlandic which makes this procedure valid.

Jens Persson ( 130.242.128.85 17:34, 4 February 2006 (UTC) )

[edit] Requested move

[edit] IPA for the "eng" sound

How come that the IPA symbol for the "eng" sound looks just like an ordinary 'n' in the employed font? (The HTML number code is 331 for the symbol called "Lowercase eng".) This is somewhat disturbing when trying to describe the (normalised) pronunciations of some of the examples of Jamtlandic. The best thing would be to use another font for this particular IPA symbol.

Jens Persson, jepe2503 at hotmail dot com (29 Jan 06)

I'm seeing good ol' regular engs, but I know IPA-decoding can be quite a hassle on many systems. I recommend that you ask about it at Template talk:IPA.

Peter ^Isotalo 11:03, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

The article is really starting to get overloaded with the phonetic minutiae, btw. Every other word doesn't need to be transcribed phonetically. The info is also very dense and specific. There needs to be more general information written in summary style.

Peter ^Isotalo 07:34, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Don't you think it is pretty necessary to "overload" the article with phonetic symbols? Have you ever seen how an article in dialectology is written in scientific papers? I agree though that thearticle isn't wel-written due to the fact that there're so many people involved. Some people (like me) know things about Jamtlandic, other people (like you, Peter) mess things up by being ignorant, biased and judgemental and thus can't tolerate deviations from the culture and language of the Sons of Gustav Vasa (i.e. Gösta Eriksson) etc. For example, you choose to mention sources claiming Jamtlandic to be East Norse. Me, being objective, claims Jamtlandic to be a transitional dialect between East and West. And so it goes on. The one who shouts loudest win, and I know you are shouting everywhere on Wikipedia trying to shout down other people which are less ignorant.

Jens Persson ( 130.242.128.85 18:56, 3 February 2006 (UTC) )

A peculiar statement from someone who states his own unpublished work as reference material! There is only constructive critizism by Peter in this article. If you can't handle not having things your way, then put up or get out.

The same goes for "Herdalia". Show me that "Herdalia" is in actual use today? Otherwise, the wikipedia consensus in strongly in favour of using the Swedish names instead of pseudo-English that hasn't been used for centuries. "Härjdedalen" is on the other hand used of today -- e.g. [2] and many other sites on the internet. Be prepared to have this reverted time and time again. / Fred-Chess 21:44, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

I am using my unpublished work as a reference for the orthography, not for the actual features of the dialect itself. I don't claim anything using my own work, but am rather using it for the orthography. And as I have said earlier, I accept that one removes my orthography and only keeps the IPA spelling. That's the reason why there's so much IPA in the article now. I accept that ones uses Härjedalen. But then one should add some IPA for the pronunciation, since especially ä and j will easily be misinterpreted by the english speaking person. This is of course the case also for "Jämtland". (A problem: The actual local dialect's pronunciation should be used - in the true spirit of Wikipedia - making the swedish spellings quite strange. After all, there's areason why one has "Herdalia" and not "eriedalia" in Latin. Cf. the village "Lillhärdal" in southern Herdalia/Härjedalen. Obviously, Latin respects the dialect in this case, pompous Swedish doesn't, as usual.)

Jens Persson ( 130.242.128.85 22:03, 3 February 2006 (UTC) )

Please settle down, both of you. To Jens I would like to point out that engaging in personal attacks and incivility is not deemed as acceptable behavior at Wikipedia. It doesn't make discussion easier and it's just plain bad manners. If you're upset about something concrete and relevant, bring it up in a civilized manner instead of resorting to name-calling.

Please leave the Härjedalen-quibble out of this article. The name of our article is Härjedalen, so this should be used when linking to it. The native pronunciation is really not particularly relevant to this article either, so please don't add yet more IPA. There's already an audio file at the main article and adding a transcription might be a good idea.

As for East/West Scandinavian, I have not questioned that Jamtlandic is transitional, but rather that it's been designated so squarely as Western. My sources are Beng Pamp's Svenska dialekter and Nationalencyklopedin article "Jämtland" subpage "dialekter".

Finally, the article is an encyclopedic article intended for general readership. I'm very aware of how academic works on linguistics look like; dense and difficult to understand if you don't have previous knowledge about the subject. Writing encyclopedia articles in this way is not that helpful in diffusing knowledge about one's favorite topic to a wider audience.

Peter ^Isotalo 21:22, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

OK, I'll try to settle down a bit. I'll leave the far-fetched discussion on Härjedalen. My proposal is that we start all over again and proceed as folows. (1) We mention that the english name of the dialect, the local pronunciation of it (using IPA) and the different swedish forms of the name. (2) We mention where it is spoken. (3) We mention that it used to be generally spoken in Jämtland but is today widely replaced by the regiolect of Swedish spoken in southern Norrland. (4) We mention some features of Jamtlandic, though without giving explicit examples. (5) We keep the exmple, using the original version, provided by AzaToth. (6) Most important, we do not mention whether it is western or eastern. We can somply mention that it has features in common with dialects on the norwegian side, though spoken in Sweden. Do you agree on these matters? It's quite natural that I get personal when discussing these matters, and I really want to be as neutral as possible. I think that my list above will give a non-biased article. It is pretty clear that I have deep knowledge of Jamtlandic (since I have grown up with it and have studied it since my early 20's) and that you have the thorough experience of how to contribute to Wikipedia in the best posible manner. I hope we'll have a fruitful cooperation leading to a result satisfiable for everyone.

Jens Persson ( 130.242.128.85 22:31, 4 February 2006 (UTC) )

[edit] Reecent changes.

It's good to have the article extended, but there are no more references to sources. Please add them if there are new ones. _→AzaToth 20:00, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] A completely new article based on prof em Dalen's article on Jamtlandic

I propose that we make a completely new article based on prof em Arnold Dalen's article on Jamtlandic, since it is more sober than e.g. Pamp's or Lundell's POV. (E.g., the outdated notion of west norse vs east norse is refined to include also south norse vs north norse. North norse is basically "Tröndersk" which made Peter Isotalo remopve the infobox. Now we have support for this classification due to some of the most renowned and sober dialectologists.) Until I have confirmed that the article may be put on the web, I'll forward my email from Tor Erik Jenstad (a collegue of Dalen) and Dalen's article on your request. Use my email address below. (NB: The name of the article is Jamskan - norsk, svensk eller midtnordisk?, i.e. 'Jamtlandic - Norwegian, Swedish or Central Nordic?' where "Central Nordic" is equivalent to Northern Norse.)

Jens Persson (jepe2503 at hotmail dot com) ( 130.242.128.85 17:44, 7 February 2006 (UTC) )

Just added to say that Central Nordic = Northern Norse since historically the norse language were spoken as far north as Central Scandinavia, but not further north. (It seems like that the northern branch of Early Old Norse - i.e. early "ONN" - was not heavily affected by the western norse and eastern norse novations such as umlauts (typically western feature; e.g. PN saku > OWN sök 'thing' which is u-umlaut, OEN [& ONN] sak) and breakings (typically eastern feature; e.g. PN sinkwan > OEN sjunka 'to sink' which is w-breaking, OWN sykka [& ONN sinka]).

Jens Persson (jepe2503 at hotmail dot com) ( 130.242.128.85 19:24, 8 February 2006 (UTC) )

I don't why Dalen would be less POV than Pamp or Lundell, but that's not how NPOV works. NPOV means thay you have to respect the view of all serious contenders, not just the ones you agree with. And I don't think it's a good idea at all to base the article on the work of just one or two people, let alone just one article.

Peter ^Isotalo 07:29, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

I definitely see your point, but Arnold Dalen is a more profiled dialectologist than Lundell and more recent than Pamp. (And the fact that he is norwegian and thus not led by unconscious nationalistic feelings to make Jamtlandic a Mälardalen dialect is of course good as well.) As far as I know, Arnold Dalen is the authority in this context today (after the death of Vidar Reinhammar who had similar thoughts of categorizing Jamtlandic) and his statement is - from an objective POV - more sober since he is reluctant to speak about the west vs east which is not really a valid way of categorize dialects in the modern view. But still, I would like to see exactly what Pamp and Lundell write about the dialects of Scandinavian spoken in Jämtland. Can you quote them here in this discussion forum in order for me to verify what you state about their claims? Perhaps you're simply misinterpreting their statements? In any way, I can't accept employing your statements if you're not fair in showing exactly what the claim. Verifiability is the no. 1 priority in a project like this, which I hope even you understand by now.

Jens Persson jepe2503 at hotmail dot com (130.242.128.85 19:30, 10 February 2006 (UTC))

I did cite both sources in my very first post and neither of them are the least bit obscure, but here are the specific passages with translations:

Bengt Pamp, Svenska dialekter (1978):

I motsats till Härjedalen har Jämtland i språkligt avseende inte påverkats så starkt från väster att man kan kalla målen i landskapet för norska. Ett undantag är dock ett område i norr, i Frostvikens sockens norra del, var dialekten snarast får betratkas som norsk. I övrigt sammanfaller Jämtlands viktigaste dialektgräns med riksgränsen.

"Unlike the dialects in Härjedalen, the dialects of Jämtland have not been as strongly influenced from the west that the dialects in the province can be considered Norwegian. One exception is an area in the north, in the northern part of Frostviken parish, where the dialect should be considered Norwegian. Otherwise the dialectal boundary of Jämtland coincides with the border [to Norway]."

Lars-Erik Edlund Nationalencyklopedin article: Jämtland: dialekter

Dialekterna i Jämtland har, till skillnad från de norskpräglade målen i Härjedalen, svensk karaktär.

"The dialects in Jämtland have, unlike the Norwegian-influenced dialects in Härjedalen, a Swedish character to them.

Dalen can very well have better arguments and a more modern analysis, but there is no such thing as "objective POV". Please read up on NPOV. Also, please stop refering to just about every Swedish dialectologist as being nationalist or Stockholm-chauvinistic. It's not as much an insult to capital-dwellers as it makes your own view seem more doubtful. If you have good factual arguments, then that should be more than enough to convince us.

Peter ^Isotalo 08:34, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

I almost totally agree with Pamp's conclusions and it doesn't contradict my point of view. I agree that Jamtlandic, unlike Herdalic, is not a dialect of Norwegian. I also agree that the most important dialectal borders are along the Sweden-Norway national border. No doubt about it. Of course, in 361 years of swedish reign, the dial. borders to the east stay practically the same, i.e., stay non-converged, and the dial. borders to the west converge to the national border. Tröndersk has been norwegianised for 361 years more than Jamtlandic; naturally there will be an accumulation of isoglosses at the national border. My main point though is that Jamtlandic is not to be considered as east norse or west norse, but rather "northern norse" (following Arnold Dalen and Oskar Bandle).

I would really like to see Lundell's arguments labeling Jamtlandic as having swedish character. As a theoretical physicist I am used to support claims by strong arguments. If I claim something, I need to be convincing. Lundell simply doe not convince me. I can give many examples of features in Jamtlandic with norwegian character (assimilations nk > kk, ú instead of ó etc) but no features with swedish character (only exception is a few examples of w-breaking, e.g. sjoonk 'to sink', Swe sjunka Nor sykke; the fact that there is no expected assimilation nk > kk here suggests that this is borrowed at some late stage, cf. Jam lyng vs Swe 'ljung where there's no w-breaking).

I suspect that Lundell is far to liberal when labeling dialects as being "swedish". Exactly how does he define a dialect to be "swedish"? Even though I find the west norse vs east norse classification somewhat unmodern and irrelevant for modern dialects, the classification of dialects being "swedish", "norwegian", "danish" etc is even more unmodern and irrelevant. I almost find it disparaging, and definitely biased.

It is a fact that Jamtlandic has been "styvmoderligt" (i.e., unfairly) treated by swedish dialectologists, no doubt about that - they're not more than humans brought up in a certain atmosphere of e.g. nationalistic feelings. (Though I don't doubt that they are trying to be as fair and unbiased as possible.) Norwegian dialectologists are more often of the point of view that Jamtlandic is an intermediate dialect. Of course, I am just as biased as you are here, Peter. You argue, being ignorant in Jamtlandic and without real arguments but supported by some swedish authority (Pamp and Lundell), that Jamtlandic is a Mälardalen dialect I argue, with deep knowledge in Jamtlandic and with some arguments and supported by both swedish and non-swedish authorities (Dalen, Bandle etc.) that Jamtlandic is not a Mälardalen dialect, but rather a northern norse dialect with no deeper connection with west or east norse. (And definitely no deeper connection with "swedish", i.e. Mälardalen dialect.)

Jens Persson (130.242.128.85 17:20, 11 February 2006 (UTC))

There's no point in discussing any of this if you're just going to keep branding everyone who doesn't agree with your view of truth as incompetent or nationalist. And since you so illicitly equate my (cited) claims of "not Western" with the totally absurd idea of "Mälardalen dialect", I have nothing more to say to you.

Peter ^Isotalo 01:11, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

The "Mälardalen dialect" reference was pure irony. And your cited claims were not only the moderate "not western" but also the more stronger "of swedish character". My ironic comment about Mälardalen was just an extrapolation of this process of confining: non-western > eastern > swedish > mälardalish. I can only agree that Jamtlandic is non-western. I don't agree that it's eastern and I certainly don't agree it's swedish. My reference to Mälardalen was merely ironic and based on an absurd induction here.

I'll completely rewrite the article. Can you point to some language related article I can use as a raw model? Until I start, I'll erase the whole article.

Jens Persson (130.242.128.85 22:45, 13 February 2006 (UTC))

Wikipedia:WikiProject Language Template.

Peter ^Isotalo 10:00, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, Peter. A problem here may be that the template is specialised to recognised languages rather than dialects. I'll figure out how to modify it to suit Jamtlandic. One problem still remains: How should I spell Jamtlandic? Can I use my developed spelling, though not "official"? Since the article is in English, it is pointless to use swedish or norwegian "phonetics". The text would also be too dense using IPA. (In fact, IPA doesn't even cover all vowels of Jamtlandic - one really has to use Landsmålsalfabetet for this. One example is a sound between [ʏ] and [ø], or in its unrounded form between [ɪ] and [e], which is really typical for Jamtlandic and which is considered as an allophone of /y/, or in the unrounded form /i/, in front of a long consonant, and an allophone of /ø/, or in the unrounded form /e/, in front of a short consonant. My point here is that it is perhaps better to use an etymological spelling rather than a phonetical one. Its only in the phonology section where the phonetics is important, where we use a modified IPA. Modified in the sense that subtleties as described above will be recognised. Perhaps there are some diacritics to use; I am not an expert on IPA.)

One of my problems so far has been that I am sitting in Stockholm writing about Jamtlandic. In mid March I will take a trip home to Jämtland for two weeks. Then I'll borrow as many books about J. as I can at the Jämtland county library and read through reference books there and carefully make notes about my sources. Then the veryfiability won't be any problem. (At least not if you live close to Östersund.)

Jens Persson (130.242.128.85 18:43, 14 February 2006 (UTC))

Just added to say that with "Lundell" I really mean "Edlund". (In fact, "Lundell" is the one who wrote about Jamtlandic in Nordisk familjebok quoted in the article. Lundell is in fact - unlike Pamp or Edlund - of the opinion that Tröndersk is the closest relative of Jamtlandic. Needless to say, but Herdalic is of course just a southeastern dialect of Tröndersk, which even Pamp and Edlund agree on, I think. But by some strange reason they always categorize Herdalic as a Norrlandic dialect just because it happens to be spoken (have been spoken) in a province which these days is labeled as a part of Norrland. Of course, anything that doesn't fit into the Götaland and Svealand perspective is labeled "Norrland". Nothing wrong with that, but one must realize that "Norrland" is - unlike the somewhat more historically based superprovinces Götaland and Svealand - a recent construction without any ethnic or linguistic relevance in any period of history.)

Jens Persson (130.242.128.85 17:58, 19 February 2006 (UTC))