På 11. nov. 2004 kl. 05.10 skrev jneden@bellsouth.net:
Hi, everybody
First things first, I have by no means been active in the list lately, but I have been checking in with things. This is one topic I felt the need to discuss.
As a fairly competent (though not fluent) Norwegian speaker, I am well familiar with the bokmål/nynorsk contrast and the political connotations they entail. Norway's unique lingual situation has been going on for over a century. While Swedes may not get it (and I understand that leaving bokmål at no: might make a lot of sense), the use of no: (or a "macro-language" Norwegian code) for bokmål implies that bokmål is the "normal" form of Norwegian, whereas nynorsk is "specialty" Norwegian. They are neither. Nynorsk and bokmål (I'm most fluent in the latter, which is admittedly the "big brother" in this situation) truly are equal forms of the greater spectrum of Norwegian dialects, and they deserve their place. To Norwegians, dialect matters much more than in many other countries. There are a lot of viable options here, but using no: or a general Norwegian code for bokmål is simply not one of them.
The idea nowadays is to change the interwikicoding and provide a list of reasons why bokmål is no: (like Utne suggested). This would create a bokmål/riksmål wiki on no: and formalize the language situation. And yes, i see this as an permanent solution. I recon there are probably no more than 300 nynorsk arcticles on no:. These and new nynorsk articles on no: will not get deleted but will not get "protected" against translation either. We don't want no trouble with the nynorskpeople (eventhough we are indeed very tired of the debate in general). Just moving no: to nb: creates a lot of problem and establish an own nb: wiki idependantly of no: would kill the community and confuze new users (i for one don't think it's fun to move around 11 500 articles).
The reason why i've not been debating earlier is that my written english is quite crappy and i perfer my own language, norwegian (bokmål).
mvh. Lars Alvik