Talk:Scanian (linguistics)

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  1. Talk:Scanian (linguistics)/Archive1 (52 kb)
    • The old material was concerning whether Scanian was a dialect or a language. It was originally tagged #* language, but especially Peter Isotalo argumented that it could not be a language. He backed it up with much evidence. This led to a NPOV and a disputed tag put on the article for several months. Eventually the sources of the language-claim was found, and due to overwhelming evidence it was unisonely decided to move the page to its current location and drop the language infobox.
    • There was some controversy concerning regionalism contra objectivism, where the credability of some sources were disputed. Those sources were then properly attributed and mentioned which solved the dispute.
    • This summary has been written by --Fred-Chess 22:13, August 1, 2005 (UTC)
  2. Talk:Scanian (linguistics)/Requested move (3 October - 15 October 2005) 41 KB
    • Skånska → Scanian dialect – Current title not in English

Contents

[edit] Well written - plenty of references - but basically wrong

I'm at loss looking at this page. It is well written and has plenty of references, but reading it in detail it turns out a lot of it must be considered wrong, misleading or at least not interesting for an encyclopedia. A lot of the page talks about the dialect or even language of Scanian. Talking about Scanian as a dialect makes some sense historically if one goes back in time more than 100 years. There used to be grammatical differences and a larger distinct vocabulary from both Danish and Swedish. However, today it is likely that more than 99.9% of all people from Scania use a grammar and vocabulary that is to more than 99.9% identical to the one of Stockholm. The only noticeable difference is the accent, which admittedly often stumps people from Stockholm in Scania. The article talks about the differences in vocabulary and grammar, and then cites Hasse Alfredsson as an example of a speaker. However, he (and probably the other quoted speakers as well) speaks pure standard Swedish, apart from his accent. His vocabulary would even be considered somewhat strange in Scania, as he occasionally uses words that are more common in Stockholm, where he has been living for the last few decades.

I'm sure one can find similarities between Scanian and the Danish accent of Bornholm, but Scanian is to more than 99.9% Swedish and Bornhomlsk is to 99.9% Danish. They are not the same dialect today, even if they probably were much closer before 1660, when they were separated by a border.

Is this article about the accent or about the dialect? If it is about the dialect, it should admit that almost no one in Scania today uses anything but standard Swedish grammar and vocabulary.

I don't have any references for what I write here, for the simple reason that few people bother writing articles about the obvious, and it is obvious to all knowledgable linguists that Scanian today simply is an accent - not a dialect, not a language.

Note that the Swedish article about Scanian is much shorter. The reason for this is probably that the Swedish and Scanian communities are more reluctant to accept this kind of statements about Scanian. 83.145.93.242 10:53, 26 May 2006 (UTC)


Hi there. I'll try to answer point by point, to make sure I don't miss anything. (Glad you brought up the fact that there is a historical Scanian and a contemporary accented Swedish labeled "Scanian". I thought that issue was made abundantly clear in both the Swedish and the English article, but I disagree that it is "wrong" and not "interesting" to highlight both the present, the history and the preservation efforts in regards to Scanian.) About the other points you raise:
*1. The introduction to the Swedish language Wikipedia article about Scanian actually states: "Scanian is a collective concept for several different dialects spoken in Scania." ("Skånskan är ett samlingsbegrepp för flera olika dialekter talade i Skåne"). It is simply NOT true that the Swedish article does not speak about Scanian as dialects.
*2. The Swedish article continues: "It is however widely held that Scanian - together with Swedish and Danish - originated in Old Norse, and some etymological dictionaries therefore separate the three into Old Swedish, Old Danish and Old Scanian." ("En utbredd uppfattning är dock att skånskan - tillsammans med svenskan och danskan - har sitt ursprung i fornnordiskan, och en del etymologiska ordböcker skiljer därför på fornsvenska, forndanska och fornskånska.").Thus the Swedish article DOES NOT differ from the English in suggesting that some scholars treat Scanian as a historic language.
*3. Yes, you are right about the difference in length (650 words +end notes compared to 1500 words +end notes). But please note that the editors of the Swedish article did not have two or three pages of heated arguments to deal with, about whether or not Scanian should be categorized as a Swedish or a Danish dialect, or whether or not it could even be allowed in the Wikipedia language category. The end result of this dispute on the English side, as you can see, was that Scanians are now to be considered speaking lingustics, not dialects, not a language, not an accent, but linguistics. ;) You have to admit that this situation alone takes up a couple of lines to deal with.
*4. Also: please note that nobody on the Swedish side found reason to insert 10-15 or so requests for notations into the text, demanding sources to demonstrate a> that Scanian was ever considered a historic language, or b> that some people in Scania have a separate language identity from the northern, normative dialect for Standard Swedish. Notice that the Swedish article deals with that in one simple blow. It labels the affected Scanian adaptation of the northern dialect "P1-skånska", (radio-program 1 Scanian).
*5. Last, but not least, please note that the Scanian Swedish side has a SIL box showing the language code, etc, etc, which makes the whole wordy paragraph about that information superfluous on the Swedish side. However, on the English side, it was removed, even though the organization that is consulted on all the other language pages had already designated Scanian a language. It appears the resistance against the removal of the box was abandoned only after some kind of agreement that the Scanian box would be the only one pulled and thus the only one which the organization designating SIL codes could be judged wrong about.
*Very last---just a quick note about Hasse Alfredsson, since you point to him as a bad example of Scanian: the article actually states that he speaks with "a Scanian accent", so that should not be a point of discontent, I hope? However, I wouldn't be too sure of what language skills Mr. Alfredsson does or does not have. Having spent a large part of his childhood summers in a row boat on the lake Värsjön, absorbing up close the utterly foreign tongue of an amazing (and locally (in)famous) old character from the forest of North Scania, Hasse will no doubt know more than the accented Swedish you may hear him perform on P1. Best, Pia
Pia 21:42, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
I feel embarassed that your answer is much more structured than my initial criticism. Well done! You are right that the Swedish article mixes the two uses of the word as well. However, I mostly still don't agree.
"Scanian (skånska (help·info)) is a closely related group of dialects spoken in Skåne (Scania)." No, it is not a group of dialects currently spoken. Hardly anyone speaks the dialect (with grammar and vocabulary differences from standard Swedish). Does anyone have any evidence of any single living speaker? Scanian is in almost all cases used to refer to the accent (pronunciation variant) of Skåne. The word can also be used to describe the historic dialect, but that is rarely done. This is what I mean by a misleading statement. The difference should be made already in the introduction.
"It is considered by some Scandinavian linguists to be a dialect of Swedish, by other Scandinavian linguists to be a dialect of Danish, while many early linguists, including Adolf Noreen1and G. Sjöstedt2, classified it as "South-Scandinavian"." Still talking about the historic dialect - not the accent.
"It is however classified as a separate language by SIL International (ISO 639-3:scy) and is assumed to include not only the dialect of Skåne but also those of Halland (halländska), Blekinge (blekingska), and the Danish island of Bornholm (bornholmsk). " Using present tense all the time here, but then a reference needs to be given. Who claims that the current accent of Bornholm has more to do with current Scanian than with Danish?
I would suggest changing the header "History" to "Historic Scanian Dialect". The header "Today" could become "The Contemporary Scanian Accent". The sections from Edvard Perssons could go under that section.
The sections about Vocabulary and Sounds I think are perfect. That is interesting information, as long as it is clear that they refer to the modern Accent. Adding similar sections for the historic dialect would also be interesting. There is quite a lot of data published about the old vocabulary.
When it comes to Scanian being a "language" according to SIL, I think that is their problem. We can reference it and say that they think so for some unexplained reasons, but that doesn't make it true that Scanian would be a "language".
83.145.93.242 10:52, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Reading the above statement, and reading previous archived statements and concerns raise about the use of the Info box within this article That when claims are made about the article as a whole being wrong the people making these claims need to identify themselves by logging in . Also given the nature of this statement it is only reasonable that references are clearly visable to support claims. Gnangarra 11:20, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Dear 83145, Concerning: "No, it is not a group of dialects currently spoken." Sources for this claim would be crucial, because I have never before seen anybody else present the claim that the Scanian dialect is not spoken anymore. You may want to follow some of the links in the article to listen to some samples if you have doubts of the existence of a Scanian dialect. Also, in this context, please explain how "Hardly anyone speaks it" can be equated to "does not exists." This is a logical fallacy. A botanists arguing this way would have to conclude: "In this meadow almost all the flowers are dandelions so therefore Primula veris do not exist and need not be protected or written about."
Concerning accented Swedish: If you think the accent aspect is neglected, maybe there could be a separate article that focuses more on this, or maybe a section of the Swedish language article that deals with different accents, including an overview of the excellent work produced at the Rinkeby institute of Multilingual Research. Immigrant varieties of Swedish has also been the focus of some worldclass research at Göteborg University. Concerning Scanian, in my view it is important to include both the historical aspects of the dialect/language and the more recent varieties of the adaptation of Swedish by Scanians, because obviously, the two are related. Sourced material with research that establishes how a strict differentiation can be made in the continous spectrum of language-dialect-accent when it comes to Scanian speakers, would be a truly wonderful addition. That could then be used as a base to rename the sections and change the tense as per your suggestions. Best, 71.107.14.149 20:18, 29 May 2006 (UTC). <<<(I'm on a work computer and can't allow cookies, which makes me logged out after a certain time period. I neglected to check to make sure I was still logged on before I signed. Got to type faster. Sorry Gnangarra.) Pia 20:29, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
Pia, I think part of our disagreement (if there is any) is the definition of the word "dialect". The word "dialekt" in Swedish is usually used to describe an "uttalsvariant", a different pronunciation from the standard language. However, that is not the scientific definition, and it is much rarer to use it in that sense in English. A dialect needs significant proper vocabulary and grammar - something current Scanian lacks. It is of course impossible to tell when the Scanian historic "dialect" changed into the current "accent". How would one determine when the proper vocabulary changed from a "significant" size to a "not significant" size? However, what is undisputable is that the Scanian you usually hear today is not a "dialect" in the linguistic sense. It is an accent. As far as I know, no one has written that down, for the simple reason that it is obvious to everyone in the field. You can check with anyone at the nearest department of linguistics, if you don't trust me and my trustworthy IP-address.
I think I have followed all the links in the article, but I have found no samples of current Scanian dialect. Feel free to point it out clearer to me.
I think the accent aspect is well covered in the article, but it is so mixed up with the dialect aspect that it is difficult to tell which is which.
I completely agree that one should keep descriptions of both current accent and historic dialect in the same article. But it has to be clear to the reader when s/he reads about one or the other. 83.145.93.242 08:36, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
The user 83.145.93.242 is making his own interpretations of words and such. But Wikipedia is not the place for original research no matter how correct it is, and I'm not going to debate it. That SIL International, the possibly most renowned linguistical classification, calls it a language is of no importance to 83.145.93.242 , which IMO shows how much we should care about his opinions.
The only thing 83.145.93.242 has done is to critize our current references, but without providing any references to support his own views. Applicable policies: Wikipedia:No original research and Wikipedia:Verifiability
Fred-Chess 15:14, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
Dialect: "A dialect is a complete system of verbal communication (oral or signed but not necessarily written) with its own vocabulary and/or grammar."
Dialect: "If the distinctions are limited to phonology, one often uses the term accent of a variety instead of variety or dialect."
SIL International: "SIL International is a worldwide non-profit evangelical Christian organization".
SIL International: "While widely respected and used by the academic community, it is nonetheless not 100% accurate, and has a tendency to 'split' into languages what others might term dialects, which attracts a significant level of criticism (e.g. here) from some linguists."
SIL International: "The 14th edition, published in 2000, included 7148 language codes which generally did not match the ISO 639-2 codes."
SIL Criticism
83.145.93.242 15:55, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
Yes, indeed 8345, it seems like we are making progress. You started out suggesting that the article was wrong because Scanian is not considered a dialect today and now we are in agreement that one would be hard pressed to, as you say, determine when the "proper vocabulary" changed from a "significant size" to a "not significant size" and that there is a continuum between the accented standard Swedish "uttalsvariant" P1-skånska and the old dialects of Scania. Many modern studies of Scandinavian dialects indicate that the identity of a dialect is to be found within the prosodic features and more specifically within the realization of the tonal gesture of focally accented words. It is therefore problematic to demand the use of a definition in a Wikipedia article that is not used in present scholarship and which is rendered utterly arbitrary by your addition of the word "significant". Your suggested definition for this Wikipedia article would actually declare that the academics in the field are involved in the study of something you say does not exist, a rather odd claim for a Wikipedia article. The dialect article you refer to also works against your definition, as it highlights the fact that in the Anglo-Saxon tradition, scholars are discussing Standard American English, Standard British English, and Standard Indian English as being standard dialects of the English language. They are obviously also involved in something you would not consider correct usage of the term dialect. What’s worse, in anthropological linguistics, dialect is defined as "the specific form of a language used by a speech community". That would make Scanian a language. Can’t have that, now can we? ;) When it comes to Scandinavian academia active in the dialect field today, the linguistics researchers of dialects insist they have no problem finding the Scanian dialects you say do not exist. And it’s not only the long-running collection performed by DAL (which I have linked to and which I hereby specifically refer you to) but also new projects, such as the rather large group of scholars at Universities of Umeå, Stockholm and Lund involved in the project Swedish Dialects. When answering the question, "Are those genuine dialects?" about the material they are collecting, the scholars state quite categorically: "Yes absolutely. There is a misconception that genuine means old, but from a scientific point of view, that reasoning is of course pure nonsense." None of these scholars seem aware that Scanian dialects do not exist. Please supply a source claiming this, so that we can stop arguing about it and get to work adding more dialect features to the page, as per your request, so that Scanian can be better distinguished from the dialects that formed the norm for Standard Swedish. There is an enormous amount of literature on this, as you know, including many attempts to answer the question asked by Gårding in Gårding et al, 1974. "Talar skåningarna svenska", (Do Scanians speak Swedish), p 107-117, in Platzack, Christer (red.), Svenskans beskrivning. Lund: Institutionen för nordiska språk. Best, Pia 22:25, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
Also, please note that "Dialect" is not used in Scandinavian research in a way that would make it an odd or different use of the term, as evident by the papers published for the international community, without any alteration to the term "dialect", by the participants in the SweDia project. See one of many scholarly papers born out of the project, here: "A pitch accent journey in southern Sweden", where pitch accent gestures were studied for some dialects in the south of Sweden for classification according to prosodic dialect type, internal variation within a prosodic dialect type and transition between dialect types. Pia 01:22, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
Pia, I changed the indent of your sections to show which of my sections you answer. I hope you don't mind.
My aim here is not to be "right" about what is a dialect and what is not. My aim is to give advice to change the article so it conveys the right impression to the reader. I know that "dialect" even in English sometimes is used when there only are pronunciation differences. However, it is not the most common way to use the word, and the word "accent" is much less ambiguous. Besides it doesn't imply things we don't want to say. That's why I recommend it. Use standard words for standard concepts.
I'm not fond of the word "dialect" in any context because of its ambiguity, but in some cases I can see that one uses it for lack of better words. In English you can talk about a "French accent" and a "Yorkshire accent". But in Swedish you talk about a "fransk brytning", and you cannot say a "närkisk brytning" as it might imply that there was something wrong with it. Hence the Swedes often fall back on "närkisk dialekt". That researchers writing about "betoning" (accent) in an article about a variety of speech choose to use the word "dialect" for the variety of speech to avoid talking about "the accent's types of accent" is hardly surprising.
I didn't quite follow what you wrote about American and British English. Did you imply that they would be closer to each other than Scanian and Standard Swedish?
Anyhow, I think I have written what I have to write on the subject. If no one else is convinced, let's just leave the article as is. If someone feels inspired to look further into the subject, feel free to do so. Yours truthfully 83.145.93.242 10:43, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

"If it is about the dialect, it should admit that almost no one in Scania today uses anything but standard Swedish grammar and vocabulary."

1. It does state that the vocabulary isn't significantly different from standard Swedish these days.

2. It's simply not true that people don't use vocabulary that's different from standard Swedish. For example some people might complain about their children's "Skitta hossor" (Standard Swedish "Skitiga strumpor".) Påg and tös is still used, especially amoung older people. I could give more examples. And these aren't words that are only used by 90 year old farmers but by regular Scanian people. /Jiiimbooh 20:03, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Summary

  • User:83.145.93.242 concern with the article is the translation of Swedish dialekt to the english dialect that the sources quoted in the article actually mean dialekt to be translated as accent. The reasoning is that the use of the Swedish brytning which translates as accent would cause confusion when used in Swedish where the subject is Scanian.
  • Pia was supporting the current wording of the article, and inquiring as to the reasoning for the claim the article is basically wrong.

[edit] Conclusion

User:83.145.93.242 without sources to support the statement, User:83.145.93.242 has agreed to leave the article in its current state and left a request to inspire others to investigate the use of dialekt by the article's sources.

This summary was written by Gnangarra based on the arguements and responses presented above Gnangarra 12:13, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

my reason for following the discussion was that I had just promoted the article to GA and that if the article was basically wrong or sufficient doubt over the facts presented then I would nominate it for delisting from GA.Gnangarra

[edit] Triphthongs

Good summary of the previous discussions, Fred. You're doing newcomers and outsiders a big favor by cleaning up the talkpage. Kudos.

About the triphtongs, though. Is this something you've read or heard about or was it just a guess? I just want to make sure I didn't delete something that should've been in there.

Peter Isotalo 14:24, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm certain it isn't the best possible summary (very subjective thing to write of course) but I wrote what I remembered... you could probably add a paragraph if you think I have left something important out...
About the triphthongs: I read it the first time when I was in school, in a Svenska-bok in the chapter about Swedish dialects. I think it was in 7-9th grade. My experience is also in agreement with it.
--Fred-Chess 18:16, August 2, 2005 (UTC)
Do you have any examples of these triphthongs?
Peter Isotalo 03:30, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
I have even heard about quadruphthongs in Scanian, so the existence of simple triphthongs is nothing I doubt. // Hunef 130.242.128.85 21:20, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Unbacked statements

I see nothing to back this statement up: " Although the dialect is influenced by the region's proximity to Denmark, most Danes today consider Skånska to be even harder to understand than Swedish.". In my experience (I live near Helsingør) Skånska is much more easy to understand than the other Swedish dialects and most people I know acknowledge this as well. Of course, this is just my opinion and it shouldn't be included for that reason. Neither should that comment, so I'm removing it.

I've heard that Danish people have trouble understanding Skånska. I myself (as a "skånian speaker" ;)) understand Norweigan better than Danish. /Jiiimbooh 07:22, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
You need to have references to back it up. There is no lack of references however. For example: jk-konsult: "Av någon anledning, jag vet inte vilken, har dansken svårare för skånska än för andra svenska dialekter." (For some reason, I don't know why, the Danes have more difficulties with Scanian than other Swedish accents.)
Or Oeresundsbron.com: "Skåningar bör vara återhållsamma med diftonger. Skånska är svårare för danskar att förstå än rikssvenska." (It's best for Scanians to use their diphthongs sparingly [when speaking with Danes]. Scanian is more difficult to understand for Danes than standard Swedish.)
The experience of the first poster is hardly surprising, as s/he lives close to Scania, and there are plenty of Scanians travelling around that part of Denmark.
So yes, Jiimbooh, you can put that phrase back into the text. 83.145.93.242 06:44, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
It would be better to refer to a proper study; otherwise you'll have another "he says--she says" story between business consultants, etc. The issue of "mutual intelligibility" is tangled web indeed. As shown by the Comparative Semantics for Nordic Languages (NORDSEM) project, which dealt with Swedish, Norwegian and Danish, comparative linguists point out that these language varieties are historically, lexically and structurally very similar and systematic semantic differences between them are hard to analyze: the formal semantic analytic tools that have been developed mainly for English and German may not be sufficiently fine-grained to account for the differences among the Scandinavian languages. As a matter of fact, some linguists would argue that Swedish and Danish are just dialects: mutually intelligible, too similar, not sufficiently differentiated in vocabulary, syntax, etc, etc to clearly constitute different languages, except by convention. See the more radical version of "historic linguistics" in the wikiarticle on dialects you pointed to before). It is therefore a given that Danes would understand Standard Swedish, if they put some effort into it. Perhaps the diphthongs in the Scanian dialects are troublesome to some Danes, but if so, then we need to consider whether or not Danes could understand a Visby accent better than a Göinge accent. And how about a Bergen accent as opposed to a Simrishamn accent? If it's not the diphthongs, how about a Föllinge accent and an Ystad accent? (I'm starting to wonder if this is a new slant on the accent theory, to argue that Danish dialects are becoming Swedish accents too now, by sheer exposure to Standard Swedish on TV? Or is the argument that Scanian is just as different from Danish as it is from Swedish?) :) Peace, Pia 13:51, 5 June 2006 (UTC)(Pia)
You also have more authorities like:
Nordisk Språkråd: "”'Skånska är lättare än rikssvenska för danskar.'” Detta är en skånsk lokalpatriotisk missuppfattning. Många skåningar förstår danska bättre än vad andra svenskar gör och menar därför att danskar skulle förstå skånska bättre än annan svenska. Någon riktig ömsesidighet föreligger dock inte; danskar i allmänhet anser själva att de förstår rikssvenska bättre. Rikssvenskan har ett mer bokstavsnära uttal, och det är mest rikssvenska man hör i etermedierna."
The same text is published at Kirke- Utdanings- och Forskningsdepartementet
And then you have Swedish Wikipedia, which takes up the same thing. 83.145.93.242 15:40, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
Yes, the www.nordisk-sprakrad.no is a much better source. Very interesting. (Especially Professor Ulf Teleman and his predictions about the future of the spoken language in the region.) But about the quote you chose: I don't know anybody who is "local-patriotic", so I can't answer for what may or may not have been argued by such an individual, whether from Svealand or Scania, about the language competence of Danes. Considering that the Swedish Wikipedia article states that in modern use in Sweden today, patriotism refers mainly to groups with neo-Nazi and white supremacy tendencies, I tend to think it is put here on Wikipedia as a gross insult, which becomes active with the simple additon of [ [ wikilinking]]. Disregarding that: One would imagine that it would be more important for any type of "patriot" to stress the uniqueness of the area he/she feels patriotic about instead of its dependence on another for culture and language. And: It would only seem crucial from a centralist ultra-nationalist or patriotic view to stress that Scanian and Danish are in some way fundamentally different and that since Denmark is "the other", the alien element invading the Swedish pureness in Scania, it must be kept at bay and the historic relationship between Scania and Denmark hidden away. Neither Swedes nor Danes have had to engage in code-switching or been forced to learn (a) new mother tongue(s) so to me it is totally natural that Scanians would be more flexible and better at comprehension (as are the Norwegians, according to the report). The fact that spoken Standard Danish is much further removed from written Danish than spoken Standard Swedish is from written Swedish may of course explain why Swedes can't understand Danes and why Danes understand Swedes a little better. Since there is no written Scanian, we can't talk about Scanian in this context, of course. Best wishes and thanks for sharing these articles, Pia 18:31, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
I browsed through your last entry, but I gave up when you started talking about neo-Nazis and ultra-nationalists. If you want an article about that, I have nothing against it, but it hardly belongs in this article. Could you give a short summary which just talks about the linguistic aspects? Thanks. 83.145.93.242 06:37, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
Certainly. Let me spell it out for you: The most efficient way to keep the focus on the issues is to refrain from making inflammatory and rude comments such as the one you manage to introduce above by quoting a DN journalist/Swedish language teacher who made the somewhat flippant and typically 'mass media cute and catchy' summary of the findings in the report. The person writing the first entry above stated that in his or her experience from living near Helsingør, "Skånska is much more easy to understand than the other Swedish dialects and most people I know acknowledge this as well." You labeled that opinion a "skånsk lokalpatriotisk" misconception by the use of a quote. I am pointing out to you how the Wikipedia article defines the Swedish usage of that term to show you that this type of label has no place here. Back to the real issue: the study is based on the interview of how many Danes? If 300 persons in total were interviewed in Scandinavia, were maybe 50 Danish speakers? And does that mean that we must categorically state that Danes in general have problems with Scanian and if we disagree because of personal experience such as the above, that we must be labeled? With respect, Pia 08:02, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
By the way, I'm not at all arguing against the inclusion of the results in the article about Scanian. I think that would be nice actually. Without the labels. Pia 08:30, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Continuity of ideas

The first two paragraphs of the article seem to be a bit confused in how they communicate information. Anyone mind if I attempt to edit them a little bit? P.MacUidhir 20:18, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

I have edited bits of the article, changed the order in which some ideas were presented, and revised a few other things in the first two-thirds of the article. There remain quite a few unsupported assertions within the article, mostly dealing with evidence of Skånska possessing unique dialectual elements. Is there anyone editing this article that can provide that data? Perhaps the person/people who originally inserted the data in each instance?
If anyone objects to my edits, feel free to let me know. P.MacUidhir 23:37, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] The move

I must say I really prefered the old article title, even it was slightly bulky. Considering we're encouraged to use English when possible, it doesn't make sense to use the Swedish term. Especially not when it contains umlauts that few are familiar with. I'm also fairly sure that the majority of our readers don't really know how to play .ogg-files.

Peter Isotalo 17:12, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

Regarding .ogg files- do you know of a popular file format that is comparable in quality to an .ogg file whilst also being free of copyright issues in using the file compression algorithm? .mp3 is certainly not a good idea. P.MacUidhir 00:57, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

"Scanian" is, per se, probably better title than "Skånska", but since we have "Skåneland", "Skåne", and other dialect as "Halländska", etc, this must be the most consistant. Fred-Chess 09:44, September 5, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Skåne-map

Could we switch the current map? It's quite misleading since halländska and blekingska are considered separate from Scanian. And please avoid linking to Skåneland unless actually discussing the term itself. It's not in general use in Sweden and I doubt that most Swedes or even Scanians are even aware of the term.

Peter Isotalo 11:27, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

I switched the map back because the SIL's definition of Scanian includes halländska and blekingska, and I've said so in the text. As I understand it, the English term "Scania" usually means the area described at Skåneland rather than the area described at Skåne (Scania is a dab page that links to both). I wouldn't mind having [[Skåneland]] changed to [[Skåneland|Scania]], though. --Angr/tɔk tə mi 09:51, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Bornholm

On Bornholm, the Danish language is spoken. The dialect on Bornholm is Bornholm Danish, because Bornholm is and has (almost) always been a Danish island. It has nothing to do with modern Scanian, where the dialect is a Swedish variant.

// Fred-Chess 10:53, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Actually, the Bornholm Danish is a lot more "Swedish" than other Danish dialects, which is partly due to the dialect being one of the old East Danish dialects, but also due to the heavy immigration wave in the 19th century by Swedes, mainly coming from Småland. At one time 1/3 of the population in the northern areas (surrounding Sandvig/Allinge) was, in fact, Swedish.
// Johan

[edit] Number of speakers

According to the current article there should be 80 000 speakers. Being a native Scanian myself I find that figure hard to believe. Scania itself has approx. 1.1 million inhabitants. Of course not all of these speaks Scanian, but I'm leaning towards the conclusion that there should be another zero. Remember, according to the article Scanian should also include the Hallandian and Blecingaean (and possibly Bornholmian) dialects. Any thoughts?

// Johan

Johan, that number may accurately reflect the amount of people able to speak a Scanian which is more or less unaffected by the Swedification process, or at least demonstrating an element of resistance to a it. Regarding the various degrees of Swedification: It is often possible to establish how far the process has proceeded in seperate cases simply by analyzing the labeling and use of derogatory name for that group of speakers. A random example, one in a sea of such unreflective prejudices: Trelleborg skånska is labeled "lantlig", as in "uneducated farmer" in comparison to certain variants of Malmö skånska because it generally uses more Scanian "slang", that is Scanian words not present in Standard Swedish. The label "ädelskånska" always amuses me, is that a reaction to the labeling or the ultimate in Swedification with twist? ;) Best, Pia 19:34, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Infobox

The language infobox should stay in this article. The infobox is designed to be used in all language articles, and its flexibility allows it to be used very widely. The infobox can be used for all languages, dialects and varieties, and is an integral part of the template agreed at WikiProject Languages. As the reason for removing it was given that the number of speakers is questioned, I have added a link to the source. If other sources can be found, they can be used. --Gareth Hughes 13:14, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

SIL's figure has no source whatsoever. It seems to be pure guesswork and no one has even attempted to define what separates these 80,000 people from the 1,1 million living in the region. I don't agree in the least that the template should be used for any dialect or variety and I have yet to see any support for this. There's no reason to keep it except to state that one single figure and keep SIL's unsupported classification tree. Until there's more substantial support for Scanian from both linguists as well as the speakers themselves as a well-defined separate entity, the infobox should not be in here.
Peter Isotalo 14:44, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
I suggest that the number of speakers be changed if a source is found to support a new number, as I am fully aware of the raggedness of Ethnologue's data. To call something a dialect is wholly subjective, and not being sufficiently distinct does not stop any lect from being language. The infobox is neutral: all that it says is given in the article. There is nothing in it that makes it unsuitable for the merest of idiolects. The actual reason for removing it has yet to be given. --Gareth Hughes 16:45, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
It's not a matter of finding a different figure, it's a question of the figure being bogus to begin with. There's no source given for it and there's no reason to believe that SIL has made a serious attempt at collecting those statistics. And calling a dialect is indeed subjective, but in this instance only a tiny, tiny minority considers it a separate language with virtually no support from academic linguists. And this has nothing to do with conservatism, because the consensus concerning, for example, älvdalsmål is very clear. Most linguists recognize it as a separate language and there are attempts at producing orthographic standards. No such attempts are being made for Scanian except by excentric regionalists. Including the infobox only to show off the completely hoaky stats serves no reasonable purpose and I'm removing it. I do not agree that there is any kind of consensus or practice of using the language infobox for widely recognized dialects or varieties (and certainly not ideolects).
Peter Isotalo 12:37, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
Peter, I'd agree with Garzo on this, on basis of wikipedia:verifiability: "the threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth!. // Fred-Chess 14:35, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
I included the 80,000 figure in the lead when I removed the infobox, so no information has actually been removed. I am, however, intending to point out in prose that SIL does not back this figure up. There's no information as to the origins of this particular fact. The verifiability policy clearly states that sources have to be reliable and credible. In this case, SIL seems to be neither.
Peter Isotalo 17:04, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
I see the infobox has been removed again, with the phrase see talk. I cannot see the reason given here. Peter, the infobox does nothing other than display information provided in the article. The infobox does not say how many speakers there are, but simply provides a field for that information. As you are only agrieved by this one line in the infobox, you should change it, not remove the entire thing. What you have failed to do again, is to say why the article cannot have the infobox. Don't just say something about one number you don't like, tell us really why you don't want it. --Gareth Hughes 17:16, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
I don't think that obvious and really undisputed dialects should use the infobox. I especially don't like the thought of ideolects and the like using the infobox. To me it seems like a way for language POV-fighters to blur the at least somewhat reasonable destinction that does exist between recognized language and dialects. Taking the strictly academic it's-all-subjective-attitude just doesn't strike me as being a good idea in an encyclopedia with NPOV as its main policy.
Peter Isotalo 19:17, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
SIL is an authority on languages, so I would suggest you take it up with them. I also think that if you say "most linguists" treat it as a dialect, it would be nice if you mentioned other respectable linguists (internationally recognized) who say that Scanian is a dialect. Not because I disagree with you, but because it would make the claim more respectable. / Fred-Chess 10:33, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

Actually, I am coming round to Peter's point of view. I maintain that the infobox is neutral, but concede that it might not be appropriate for language varieties (though I say this with caution, because I do not want to see the infobox pulled from lots of other pages). Actually, what I was trying to get Peter to say was that the infobox adds 'undeserved' respectability to the status of Scanian. That line, I feel, is non-neutral. I do hold that the popular language-in-its-own-right is entirely subjective, but would still place a more cautious threshold for an 'individual' (SIL's term) language. In these cases, the test is almost wholly socio-political, and there is plenty of precedent among linguists for recognising certain varietal lects as individual due to socio-political pressure. All of these decisions are controversial, and always so on their respective Wikipedia pages. As for SIL, we all know that it is flawed in so many places, but it gives a very useful broad-brush linguistic view. It is interesting that, even though SIL is the registering authority for yet completed ISO 639-3 codes, Ethnologue 15 published a page for Scanian with the code scy, but the SIL documentation to accompany the codes says that scy does not exist. It seems that its presence in Ethnologue is a carryover from the 14th edition, and that a decision has been made somewhere to exclude Scanian from ISO 639-3. As a native British English speaker, I know a number of dialects that are quite distinctive and have their own pecularities of vocabulary and grammar. However, due to their being completely subsumed by the standard dialect, they are little more than curiosities anymore, and are not really spoken by anyone. Relating this situation with the Swedish linguistic landscape, which I know very little about, I completely understand Peter's point of view, and agree with it. In the end, I return to the point that the removal of the infobox is normally a retrograde act, and would not be the correct choice in every article. --Gareth Hughes 11:14, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

So did that mean that you think it's justifiable to do without the infobox in this article, Gareth?
I made a few edits to the lead after pondering the content for a while. In trying to represent the Scanian-as-a-language POV, we've overlooked the fact that the term would to the majority of Swedes (and Scanians) mean the dialect spoken in Scania, and not the wider definition of SIL and the regionalists. I've tweaked the lead to reflect this fact more accurately.
Peter Isotalo 17:43, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
Yes, you did read me correctly. I notice that Jamtska is in a similar position: Ethnologue 15 gives it a unique ISO 639-3 code, but the code can not be found in the documentation for the draft standard. --Gareth Hughes 13:21, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
Is it an requirement to be in the SIL-database to be able to utilize the language infobox? I thought that infobox was for both languages and dialects. (Although I wouldn't define scania and jamtlandic as dialects more than danish, norwegian and swedish is separated from old norse. →AzaToth 16:44, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
I guess you are not going to get an answer. I believe the reason this box was removed and the reason for the vehement arguing against a historical view of Scanian as a language is purely political. The University of Lund has more than a million notes of Scanian words and expressions which are not subjected to scientific study because the State of Sweden does not accept that the Scanian language exists. It is obvious that some posters have a personal stake in not allowing Scanian to be recognized and thus divert funds from other minority languages which are closer to their hearts. If I understand the reasoning for erasing the box, it was based on the following arguments: 1> Scania is neither a state nor a country. However, the box remover task force has left all the other language boxes for various dead languages (that is, languages with no speakers) and many minority languages within other states, and even something as odd as Loxian. The argument that Scanian doesn't have enough speakers to warrant a box is therefore highly questionable. 2> Scanian has no standardized language or a written language. But neither does a lot of other languages with boxes. 3> Scanian is fully understandable by other Swedes. Thus the Scanian speakers can not be excluded from speakers of the Swedish language. However, the Meänkieli box has been left alone, even though the same person who removed the Scanian box states that it is not a language, but a Finnish dialect. Peter Isotalo states: "the Finnish speakers of Tornedalen (in northern Sweden) were forced by the Swedish state to use Swedish in school earlier this century that when they finally got recognition of their native language (which is really just Finnish dialect), they decided it was 'their language', which is what Meänkieli literally translates to." And the Scanians were not? How many in Tornedalen were killed and impaled for resisting this Swedification? May I point out that some sources estimate the Scanian losses to close to 25 percent of the population. That makes this statement about the Finnish speakers of Tornedalen pretty interesting: "The Swedish state screwed these people royally and the result is this sense of regionalism. It's lamentable, but it's hardly fair to blame the Tornedale-Finns for this. That Scanian or Scanians have been suppressed in a similar manner is probably not even claimed by those few crackpot separatist regionalists that do demand that Scanian be given official minority status." Apart from strong condemnation of the insults continuously forwarded by this person towards people interested in the preservation of Scanian culture and language preservation, ("crackpots" is one of the milder ones, the most common ones being references to his mistaken perception that all Scanians who consider Scanian worth preserving are separatist eccentrics), I just want to say that the region is on its own when it comes to research, not by choice, but by necessity.

If there was no vote on the removal of this box, I suggest it is reintroduced. If the consensus is that it should be removed again, let the record show that people had a say in this matter and do a proper voting process on the matter. 71.106.244.66 04:52, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] GA

Facinating read, well done to all who have edited this article, Gnangarra 13:17, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Vocabulary, "rälig"

Under Vocabulary, this statement is found: "While the general vocabulary does not differ considerably from Standard Swedish, a few specifically Scanian words exist (..) rälig, "bad" (Standard Swedish ful, äcklig, dialect Danish: rærlig)"

This statement suggests that the word rälig comes from Danish. This is misleading.

The word rädelig has been comonly used in the Swedish language, although it has fallen out of use in modern times (replaced by the German loan-word (förskr)äcklig in the rest of Sweden).

Nordisk Familjebok 1800-talsutgåva, Digerdöden http://runeberg.org/nfac/0605.html, in a statement by king Magnus Eriksson (14th century Swedish): "Vi haffuom förstondit för visso rädelig tidende.." (the rest of the quote can be found at the link).

Herman Lindqvist in Historien om Sverige supports this idea. I'm sure academic research also exists which support that this word was used in Swedish as well. My guess is that it's an Old Norse word, perhaps stemming from rädd.

Scania was ceded to Sweden before the German influence on the Swedish language. For this reason, even claiming that the Scanian use of the word comes from Danish may be inaccurate.

I have little knowledge in Danish and this paragraph is a minor point of mine, but judging from the wording of the current edit, I take it that rälig isn't used in Danish today except in some dialects. In this case it would mirror the situation in Sweden, which makes the reference to Danish a bit irrelevant; it may as well point to Swedish. There is no evidence cited in the article which claims that the use of rälig in Scanian is out of Danish influence, as opposed to Swedish influence, although either would be equally plausible I suppose. The Swedishification of Scania was probably quite thorough. Or does the writer consider Scanian a Danish accent? If so the word would have come into Scanian from Scanian, and that can't be right.

In conclusion, I find it highly inaccurate to claim that rädelig/rälig is a Danish word.

This is for someone else to pick up and consider editing the article, unfortunately I don't have the time to reseach this further myself. --Dsandlund 05:20, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

There is a lot that could be improved in that section. I have come to think of several words that are Scanian. I don't have the necessary references to back them up, but it should be possible to acquire such references... it is also the issue of current-day Scanian vs the historical Scanian -- some supports of Scanian can easily mention hundreds of words that are Scanian, but few that I would use or have heard anyone use. Among the older generation, there is some unique vocabulary -- again it depends if one should focus on the "historical" Scanian or the modern day. In some areas, Scanian is no more a dialect than it is an accent.
Some standard references would be nice; I'm sure the vocabulary section could be improved.
Fred-Chess 12:37, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
Fred, as it is now, the list of words is focused on words that is used now, and in no way claims to be a complete list. I've sinced added the word "pantoffel" as an example of a more old-fashioned, but still well-known word. I think this list of four words is enough, as the aim of the list is just to give a few examples, not to teach the reader how to speak Scanian.
And BTW I don't really agree with your statement "In some areas, Scanian is no more a dialect than it is an accent." There are probably many things people say and never think of as being dialect. "Vars en, vars två" is dialect. In standard Swedish it's "varsin/en var, två var". The game pjätt is called different things in different parts of Sweden. "Fjor" instead of "fjol". "Bytade" instead of "bytte" is common in Scania but appears to be almost non-existant outside of Scania. Things that people think of as being dialect seems to be disappearing in just a few generations, but things that people never think of as dialect appears to be surviving also in younger generations. /Jiiimbooh 20:24, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
Well, there have been significant contacts between Danish and Swedish for a long time, as two closely related, geographically adjacent languages, so the exact origin of a word is difficult to find. Both http://g3.spraakdata.gu.se/saob/ and http://runeberg.org/svetym/ states that "rälig", is related to swedish "rädd", (afraid) and "rädas" (to be afraid), lit. "to cause afraid-like", i.e. originally "scary", both Swedish and Danish examples are given. 惑乱 分からん 09:53, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
The wording was mine, and I hadn't noticed it had become the object of confusion. I am pretty sure the word rærlig is quite old, but I haven't investigated it further. I am no linguist. I mostly associate this word with Funish. The word also exists in other forms of Danish I have seen it spelled as both ræddelig / rædderlig / rædelig / ræderlig. If I had to chose between these, I would personally pick "ræddelig". Btw, although slightly outdated, Danish still has the word ræd which has the same meaning as rädd. Ordbog over det danske sprog might contain more information. Valentinian (talk) / (contribs) 15:13, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
The word tös is understood all over Sweden. But you should not try to use it in Denmark. There it it means a very special type of girl. --Vedum 13:31, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
I have inserted "rädelig" as former Swedish. According to SAOB (rälig) it's "etymologiskt identiskt med RÄDELIG" ("etymologically identical to rädelig", I don't know how good this translation is) so it's definitely relevant info. /Jiiimbooh 20:54, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

påg , "boy" (Standard Swedish: pojke, former Danish: poge / pog) has been change to: påg , "boy" (Standard Swedish: pojke, former Danish: dreng). Isn't it better to compare påg to pog, than to compare it to dreng? Also isn't dreng current Danish? Maybe the user changing pog to dreng didn't realize that it said "former Danish" and change it because he/she didn't recognise the word pog? /Jiiimbooh 20:02, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] SIL International

Should one really refer to SIL International's claim that Scanian is a language? The reason I mention this is because in the late 90's (or perhaps year 2000?), I succeeded to make the organization adopting Jamtlandic as a language. My point here is not to say Scanian (or Jamtlandic for that matter) is not a language, but that one may argue that the information provided by SIL International may be based on data given by people who may not be the most reliable sources. The fact that a 20 year old guy (i.e. me in late 90's) with no linguistic "weight" could make SIL International to adopt Jamtlandic as a language, which they most likely had never heard about before, without scrutinizing my (back then naïve) claims makes their information rather irrelevant.

Jens Persson (130.242.128.85 21:08, 14 November 2006 (UTC))

Jens, I don't think this article should be the battle ground for how SIL International defines languages. It needs to be fought out, or straightened out, on the SIL page itself, and more importantly, with the Wiki group concerned with linguistics, and then implemented for all Wiki language related articles that mention the SIL International classifications. I am going to remove the recently added, unsourced, comment about the SIL International definition from the Scanian article and let this article simply state the NPOV fact that Scanian has been classified as a language by SIL International---until a more general policy has been worked out in regards to SIL Int classifications. The definition of language vs. dialect is in itself POV influenced, so deleting one side is usually heavily influenced by nationalistic tendencies. Considering the recent march of a certain right-wing Swedish state-nationalist party into Scanian regional politics, that would be right up their alley. Pia 22:43, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
I agree we shouldn't discuss SIL's internal affairs here. But exactly how important is SIL in the context? What kind of organization is it? Even though we should not discuss internal affairs of SIL, we should definitely discuss SIL as a source.
Pia, which is your agenda concerning Wikipedia and Scanian?
Jens Persson (213.67.64.22 18:37, 25 March 2007 (UTC))

[edit] Lack of empirical evidence

There is NO empirical evidence for the existence of a seperate Scanian language! The SIL International clasification is based on flawed data collection. The persons claiming Scanian to be a laguage of its own do so for ”regional patriotic” reasons not linguistic ones! They mix up words from differnt sources and just IMAGINES that they represent a single varity. They also claim Scanian to be decent of Danish: showing that they don't know what they are talking about. Originaly, there was a group of multually underastanable dialects called East Scandinavian. The dialects in the politically cental parts of Sweden was standardised into Swedish. Simultanously, the dialects spoken by the ruling classes of Denmark was standardised into Danish. Most of this process happend AFTER Scania was conquered by Sweden (1658). Thus, the claim is a lingistic anacronism.

How should we clasify present-day Scanian? Its sound system is slightly closer to Standard Danish than Standard Swedish. The vocabulary is clearly closer to Swedish than Danish. I have no reason to belive that the grammar differs more from Standard Swedish than other dialects. Consequently, Scanian is a Sewdish dialect not a Danish!

2006-11-16 Lena Synnerholm, Märsta, Sweden.

The 80 000 speakers of the "Scanian language" are not possible to identify in any way. It is a figure taken out of thin air. It is probably "constructed" in the same way as discribed by Jens Persson above. The SIL could be fooled in many ways and is not a reliable source. But, unfortunatly the WP is jammed with persons who WANT Scanian to be 1) a language of its own or 2) a Danish dialect. The truth (Scanian just being a group of Swedish dialects among many others) is not interesting for theese individuals. --Vedum 16:00, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
The 80 000 "speakers" are still mentioned in the article, but nobody seems to be interested in discussing this very dubious "fact" here. But if anybody deletes this information I am sure it will be restored in less than a day. So, somebody prefers to believe it. Is there any source at all (other the SIL), confirming this number? --Vedum 13:27, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
Still no discussion here. But I made a minor change in the article (just for a test). In just TWO MINUTES it was reverted! The alarm system is efficient, congratulations! --Vedum 23:11, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
Dear Vedum, I have this page on my watchlist like several hundred other pages. It is simply a bad idea to edit a referenced sentence without adding new sources or removing the original source first. The topic of the article is unimportant in this respect. I would have reacted the same way if this type of edit was made to the article about Maria Feodorovna (Sophie Dorothea of Württemberg). Cheers. Valentinian T / C 23:23, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
I personally would not consider modern Scanian to be a seperate language (or Danish) but I think it's an interesting and relevant fact that SIL considers skånska/Scanian to be a seperate language. Ofcourse the article could be updated with more sources who claim that Scanian is a Swedish dialect. /Jiiimbooh 19:47, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Does anyone have a copy of Nationalencyklopedin?

Since the article points out some different views on whether Scanian is a Swedish or Danish dialect or even a seperete language I think it would be appropriate to list NE's definition since they are generally considered to be a very reliable source, but I don't have a copy of NE myself. /Jiiimbooh 18:05, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The "Scanian lobby"?

This discussion page is very interesting. The very small group of Scanian "regionalists" must be consisting of a buch of extremely persuasive persons. I must say, that I in some strange way admire them. They have succeded in making "Skåneland" a member of UNPO and they have also succeded in making the SIL accepting "Scanian" as a language. And they have almost taken over Wikipedia in some langauages then it comes to Scania and related topics. But they are almost unknown to the general population in Scania and even moore in Sweden as a whole. --Vedum 23:08, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, I succeeded in making Jamtlandic a language in SIL when I was a naïve 20-year-old in the 90's. It must have been even easier for a Scanian organization to make Scanian a language in SIL. Of course, SIL doesn't control the provided information. They just accept it, perhaps after confirming that the speech in question is not a ConLang.
Jens Persson (213.67.64.22 18:43, 25 March 2007 (UTC))

[edit] Linguistic description

The text about Scanian and its status throughout the centuries is very elaborated, but there is practically no description of the language/dialect in itself, only a few examples. Would be nice to have a more elaborated text on the actual speech. I am not comptetent doing this, though. Jens Persson (213.67.64.22 18:51, 25 March 2007 (UTC))

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