Talk:Norwegian exonyms

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[edit] Danish/German forms

Most of these entries are from Danish. The Bokmål/Riksmål varieties of written Norwegian has its roots in Danish, but names like "Venedig" are currently not used anymore, not in any variety of Norwegian. You may find them in old Bokmål/Riksmål dictionaries, though. I'll leave them here for the historical record, but they have to be marked as archaic. I might add a few comments to clarify this.

There is no need to restrict the list to European names. The title of the article is "Norwegian exonyms", not "Norwegian exonyms for European cities". hcholm 2006-12-28 15:12(CET)

I've reverted Travelbird's edits back to Schmiteye's version. The comments he removed were not POV, but stated the fact that these forms have not been in use in spoken or written Norwegian (my native language) for several decades. They are not allowed according to the official standards, and are not used in any maps or encyclopedic publications, exept as references to archaic forms. Since 1920, there have been several reforms of the Norwegian language, including many minor adjustments of loan words and exonyms, and dictionaries from 1920 are not in any way authorative. The fact that the Norwegian Wikipedia mentions the Danish/German forms as alternative forms, is not in conflict with my comments.

Travelbird removed the comment about Tirana ("Tirana (not really an exonym, this is the definite form of the name in Albanian)"). I fail to see what's POV about that comment. Either leave the comment, or delete Tirana.

For reasons unknown, he also removed the "(archaic)" comment after Stræla (Stralsund), which is one of the most archaic forms here. The form Stræla is virtually unknown in Norwegian, try a Google search. The biggest (and only?) reference book on exonyms in Norwegian, "Geografiske navn i flere språk" ("Geographical names in several languages") by Vigleik Leira does not mention this form at all as an exonym for Stralsund, including in Icelandic.

Travelbird also added comments such as "(rare)" or "(hist.)" seemingly at random. I suggest Travelbird leaves editing of this page to someone with at least acceptable knowledge of Norwegian, above his reported "no-1" level.

I'll leave all archaic, non-official forms, as they are quite interesting. I have a couple older (early 20th century) Norwegian maps around with several more interesting exonyms. I can add some of those one day. Hcholm 10:56, 9 June 2007 (UTC)