Hello Lars A. & everyone else,
This posting has two main parts: First, a reply to your recent posting quoted below; and then a summary of my arguments in light of, amongst others, your and Mark Williamson's recent postings; and finally a modified suggestion with the following main points:
1) Renaming to Norsk (bokmål) and Norsk (nynorsk) 2) Moving Norsk (bokmål) to nb:, while KEEPING NO: as an automatic ("shadow") redirect to nb: -- thus parallelling Danish, with dk:> da:, keeping full continuity through keeping the two current codes; and making cooperation with nn: politically easier through discrete use of the domain no:.
===== REPLY =====
You wrote:
*Paints "POV" in huge red letters over Williamsons mail*
I will get back to this further down.
Your mail have inaccuancies to bokmål and nynorsk, bokmål people view nynorsk as a pest? This goes both ways, the ones that mostly hates nynorsk (or bokmål) is teenagers that is forced to learn a different language in school, that they don't feel they have any use for (unlike english or perhaps german). Perhaps this "haterd" is stronger with the bokmålusers (since nynorsk is smaller and is, in their eyes, less useful).
What you write seems to be pretty much in agreement with what Mark wrote... I recognise the factual situation from both descriptions -- with yours maybe describing/articulating the "hatred" from Bokmål users against Nynorsk in more local terms (?)
It was the same time that part of the norwegian history was romantized, the union with denmark was seen as "the four thousandyear nigth", eventhough this where directly false.
I presume you mean "400-year-night", not "4000-year-night" :)
Mr. Aasen made nynorsk by collecting dialects (dominantly the western and the valleys in central-south norway. However the parts of norway with the largest population was largely ignored, like the farming areas of eastern norway, the south part of Oppland, Hedmark, Akershus, Østfold, Buskerud and Vestfold) also the northern part of norway was largely ignored.
Aren't Mr. Aasens "Norske Folkesprog" as well as the mid-19th Century Danish used in Norway both quite far removed from our Nynorsk and Bokmål...? Since the 1840s, both Nynorsk (then called Det norske Folkesprog by Ivar Aasen, later coined Landsmaal, but also actually known as Bokmaal (!)) and Bokmål (then near-identical with Danish, later known in its historically increasingly norvagised form as Rigsmaal and Riksmål) have changed very much. Today's mainstream Nynorsk most closely resembles dialects in relatively "moderate" dialect areas like Lofoten, Vesterålen, eastern parts of Telemark, parts of Vestfold and Oppland (including Toten). Today's mainstream Bokmål is also quite different from the Danish used in Norway in the mid-1800s, and lies closest to the dialects of middle-class and upper-class people in the cities of SE Norway -- esp. Oslo and Drammen.
It is true that Nynorsk is currently most commonly used in Sogn og Fjordane and Møre og Romsdal. However, it is also used to varying degrees most other places in Norway, and Norwegian literature abounds with authors from both Bokmål and Nynorsk.
You wrote about Mark's posting: *Paints "POV" in huge red letters over Williamsons mail*. I do not agree that Mark is unprecise or skewed enough in his writing to warrant such an outburst. Whereas I personally think that one mainly Bokmål Wikipedia is more constructive than two,
Yes, no: should point to the norwegian written language, but there are none such thing. 80% of norwegians use bokmål (allthough some of them speaks a dialect that contains some nynorsk words, like -a endings (these are allowed on bokmål too). However, the languages are equal in terms of administrative language. But on a national basis bokmål is more used.
When some of us mention that a large proportion of Norwegians speak a dialect that is closer to Nynorsk than Bokmål, we are of course not talking about "some nynorsk words, like -a endings" (that would include, in fact, a rather large proportion of Oslo's population), but of dialects which show, *predominantly*, traits that are closer to the continuum if Nynorsk morphology than Bokmål. Such traits include, amongst others:
- different plurals for masculine nouns (-a(r) or -æ(r), occasionally -ø(r)), feminine nouns (either merged -e(r) or, like in Swedish -e(r)/-o(r) depending on the class of each noun) and neutral nouns (mainly -) as opposed to a generic plural in Bokmål (-er, with neutral nouns varying between - and -er) - forms of personal pronouns that are closer to Nynorsk (such as e(g), æ(g) rather than je(g) = I; ho, hu rather than hun (she); dykk(~), dekk(~), dokk(e(r)) rather than dere = you (pl., accusative); etc.) - forms of verbs that are closer to Nynorsk (such as a higher incident of strong verbs, ablaut and umlaut forms; and, less significantly, -a in past tense of verbs were stylistically mainstream Bokmål has -et)
Of secondary importance is the vowel system, with Nynorsk tending to have more historical vowels and fewer secondary vowels than Bokmål. The presence of many vowels is popularly viewed as "the" characteristic of Nynorsk -- but this trait is actually of less use in this connection.
Forms that are permitted but in practice deprecated in Bokmål include: -a in past tense of certain verbs; -a as definite article in plural of neutral gender nouns;
You pointed out that some -a endings are permitted in Bokmål. You did not, however, mention that these forms tend to be criticised, or even "corrected" away in practice -- because many (the majority?) of Bokmål users find them to be stylistically inappropriate.
btw. the paralell solution would kill the no: (informaly bokmål) wiki.
I agree that that could be a risk, and therefore I believe that such a split *should be avoided at any reasonable cost*.
And since most of the articles on no: is on either bokmål or riksmål, some 100-200 on nynorsk (i've been rcpatroling on no: since we where just ~800 articles, so i have a pretty good idea of the amount of articles in either language. Knowing that a large part of this work would fall on me i don't cherish this idea, and the fact that it's creating a chaos, two rcs to monitor and a devertion of work. Also, there are no bokmål grasroot movement that wants to do this work, the people that supports this solution is mostly nynorskusers (primary nynorsk atleast).
I believe that once there is a solution that "everyone" agrees on (including, hopefully, the Wikipedia community as a whole) -- which I hope will be an adjustment of the current language-based split rather than a fork within the current no: -- the work of adjusting the language contents of the Bokmål version will be relatively easily accomplished. I for one hereby volunteer to do my share of the job. Even though I seem to have been coined as a Nynorsk user (and even, to my frustration, as a Bokmål hater) by some, I am very interested in
I vote for a solution where bokmål keeps no: (but creates a page with reasons to why bokmål have no:, that's going to get linked from the mainpage, and "ads" for nynorskwiki), the interwiki decoding changes to "norsk (bokmål)" to clairify for non-norwegians that it's bokmål.
This way we don't kill a well functioning wiki, and i belive/hope most parts would be happy with the solution.
The Norsk (nynorsk) vs. Norsk (bokmål) (without capitalisation of nyn. and bokm.) renaming is OK with me. Whether the Norsk (bokmål) Wikipedia actually lies on no: or nb: has, as has been pointed out already, absolutely no significance: The Norsk (bokmål) Wikipedia will be exactly as continuos on nb: as on no:, with absolutely no foreseeable extra work for its admins and other users, other than an optional long-term bot task of going through the various wikipedias and automatically changing all [[no: entrances to [[nb:. Since a change of domain would include a universal redirect from no: to nb: for a relatively long period (in fact, just reversing the current situation, there should be plenty of time to do this.
To illustrate the current situation: Please try clicking on this link to the article "Norge" on nb: (Norway) and see what happens...
http://nb.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norge
See? That is how easy the reversal of this would be on the readers! :)
================= SUMMARY OF REPLY: =================
A I think a split of the current no: Wikipedia should be avoided at any reasonable cost. B A move of this Wikipedia to nb: would not lead to any significant extra work for the admins and users on no: C If no: is moved to nb: in accordance with a more precise implementation of the language codes, then no: should be a redirect domain to nb: the way it is today, with the main page as the only exception. D In the event of such a move, bots should be set up to go through the other wikipedias and change all [[no: and [[:no: codes to [[nb: and [[:nb: E It seems that the main argument against having Norsk (bokmål) on nb: is an emotional one rather than practical (since the move would be very easy to implement and would be executed centrally rather than by no: admins) or logical (since no: is the country code and the umbrella language code, whereas nb: is the specific language code for Bokmål, including Riksmål). F Those emotional arguments must be respected, since our long-term goals as an international Wikipedia community would be adversely affected if there were to be unnecessary long-term resentment between the user groups of individual projects.
Therefore, my hunch is that we should first try to reach consent about the underlying factors. Here is what I propose that these are:
LOCAL UNDERLYING FACTORS
- Bokmål as a written language has more users than Nynorsk - Bokmål and Nynorsk are both recognised as official languages in Norway. - Bokmål and Nynorsk are linguistically extremely closely connected with Swedish and Danish.
COUNTRY AND LANGUAGE CODES IN A SCANDINAVIAN PERSPECTIVE - The Swedish language Wikipedia, primarily serving people in Sweden and parts of Finland, has the language code sv: rather than the country code se: (which is connected to the use of se: for Northern Sami and sa: for Sanskrit) - The Danish language Wikipedia, primarily serving people in Denmark, has the language code da: rather than the country code dk. There is a redirect from dk: to da: - The Nynorsk language Wikipedia, primarily serving Nynorsk language users in Norway, has the language code nn: - The mainly Bokmål Wikipedia, which started out as a mixed Bokmål/Nynorsk environment with the emphasis on Bokmål (including Riksmål), uses both the country code no: (which, when used as a language code, includes both Bokmål and Nynorsk) and the language code nb: (as a redirect).
CURRENT SITUATION ON NO: - The no: Wikipedia is changing its rôle from a generic Bokmål/Nynorsk language wikipedia (albeit with almost exclusively Bokmål contents, as Lars Alvik has pointed out) to a specifically Norsk Bokmål language version. - The new Nynorsk Wikipedia works as an independent project and, while fastly expanding, has not had any significant effect in terms of disrupting the continuity of the no: Wikipedia in general except for there being a bit more activity on the Village Pump page than usual.
========================================== MODIFIED SUGGESTION FOR LONG-TERM SOLUTION ==========================================
(This suggestion is based primarily on Lars Alvik's previous suggestion, with modifications/additions based on arguments that have emerged in the debate locally on no: and nn: as well as here on wikipedia-l.)
1) The "Norsk" and "Nynorsk" interwiki names are changed to "Norsk (bokmål)" and "Norsk (nynorsk)" respectively.
2) The "Norsk (nynorsk)" wikipedia uses the language code nn:
3) The "Norsk (bokmål)" wikipedia is moved to the proper language code nb:, with the central Wikipedia developers/admins making sure that the extra workload on the current no: admins is kept to an absolute minimum. (This will in effect (see #4) only be an internal reversal of the two domains already de facto used by the Norsk (bokmål) Wikipedia, thus ensuring maximum continuity.)
4) For reasons of continuity and relative size of community, "Norsk (bokmål)" Wikipedia keeps the domain no:, but for reasons of impreciseness of the term as regards the language situation in Norway, this code will only be used as a redirect of links and URLs with the code to the corresponding nb: page. (Thus parallelling exactly the Danish usage of dk: and da:)
5) The communities on nn: and nb: will commit themselves to implementing the solution locally, with a special emphasis on information about and promotion of the other Wikipedia on the "Main" and "Latest edits" page; and also, to the extent possible, through putting the interwiki link to the other language first in the list of links in each article.
6) A specific technical solution that has been brought up is the splitting of the "Donations" link into a locally wikipedia-wide universal link to the other Wikipedia of the two. This solution, while admittedly clogging up the quick navigations field slightly, may have positive effects for the local cooperation, and should therefore be reciprocally applied to the nn: and nb: wikipedias.
7) In the interest of strengthening the Scandinavian Wikipedia community, I suggest to implement points 5) and 6) also to sv: and da:, thus facilitating quick navigation between these wikipedias, effectively creating a half-integrated article pool of about 83,000 articles (on 14 Nov. at ca 7 AM GMT) and an incitement for each of the four Scandinavian communities to cooperate and expand.
8) Work towards more integrated multilingual wikipedias through making the Scandinavian wikipedias a test project for the development of an interlingual search function limited to a specific pool of wikipedias, where searches and no-hit events lead to a search within the pre-defined pool of closely related languages. For Scandinavian, this would include, in order of community size, sv:, da:, nb:, and nn:.
-Olve
___________________
Olve Utne http://utne.nvg.org
På 14. nov. 2004 kl. 08.19 skrev Olve Utne:
Hello Lars A. & everyone else,
This posting has two main parts: First, a reply to your recent posting quoted below; and then a summary of my arguments in light of, amongst others, your and Mark Williamson's recent postings; and finally a modified suggestion with the following main points:
- Renaming to Norsk (bokmål) and Norsk (nynorsk)
- Moving Norsk (bokmål) to nb:, while KEEPING NO: as an automatic
("shadow") redirect to nb: -- thus parallelling Danish, with dk:> da:, keeping full continuity through keeping the two current codes; and making cooperation with nn: politically easier through discrete use of the domain no:.
===== REPLY =====
You wrote:
*Paints "POV" in huge red letters over Williamsons mail*
I will get back to this further down.
Your mail have inaccuancies to bokmål and nynorsk, bokmål people view nynorsk as a pest? This goes both ways, the ones that mostly hates nynorsk (or bokmål) is teenagers that is forced to learn a different language in school, that they don't feel they have any use for (unlike english or perhaps german). Perhaps this "haterd" is stronger with the bokmålusers (since nynorsk is smaller and is, in their eyes, less useful).
What you write seems to be pretty much in agreement with what Mark wrote... I recognise the factual situation from both descriptions -- with yours maybe describing/articulating the "hatred" from Bokmål users against Nynorsk in more local terms (?)
It was the same time that part of the norwegian history was romantized, the union with denmark was seen as "the four thousandyear nigth", eventhough this where directly false.
I presume you mean "400-year-night", not "4000-year-night" :)
Ofcurse *slaps own head* :P
Mr. Aasen made nynorsk by collecting dialects (dominantly the western and the valleys in central-south norway. However the parts of norway with the largest population was largely ignored, like the farming areas of eastern norway, the south part of Oppland, Hedmark, Akershus, Østfold, Buskerud and Vestfold) also the northern part of norway was largely ignored.
Aren't Mr. Aasens "Norske Folkesprog" as well as the mid-19th Century Danish used in Norway both quite far removed from our Nynorsk and Bokmål...? Since the 1840s, both Nynorsk (then called Det norske Folkesprog by Ivar Aasen, later coined Landsmaal, but also actually known as Bokmaal (!)) and Bokmål (then near-identical with Danish, later known in its historically increasingly norvagised form as Rigsmaal and Riksmål) have changed very much. Today's mainstream Nynorsk most closely resembles dialects in relatively "moderate" dialect areas like Lofoten, Vesterålen, eastern parts of Telemark, parts of Vestfold and Oppland (including Toten).
Today's mainstream Bokmål is also quite different from the Danish used in Norway in the mid-1800s, and lies closest to the dialects of middle-class and upper-class people in the cities of SE Norway -- esp. Oslo and Drammen.
It is true that Nynorsk is currently most commonly used in Sogn og Fjordane and Møre og Romsdal. However, it is also used to varying degrees most other places in Norway, and Norwegian literature abounds with authors from both Bokmål and Nynorsk.
You wrote about Mark's posting: *Paints "POV" in huge red letters over Williamsons mail*. I do not agree that Mark is unprecise or skewed enough in his writing to warrant such an outburst.
It was not as much as what we wrote, it was how he wrote it, if you catch my drift. But in either way it was a derailing of the real debate.
Whereas I personally think that one mainly Bokmål Wikipedia is more constructive than two,
Hear hear!
Yes, no: should point to the norwegian written language, but there are none such thing. 80% of norwegians use bokmål (allthough some of them speaks a dialect that contains some nynorsk words, like -a endings (these are allowed on bokmål too). However, the languages are equal in terms of administrative language. But on a national basis bokmål is more used.
When some of us mention that a large proportion of Norwegians speak a dialect that is closer to Nynorsk than Bokmål, we are of course not talking about "some nynorsk words, like -a endings" (that would include, in fact, a rather large proportion of Oslo's population), but of dialects which show, *predominantly*, traits that are closer to the continuum if Nynorsk morphology than Bokmål. Such traits include, amongst others:
- different plurals for masculine nouns (-a(r) or -æ(r), occasionally
-ø(r)), feminine nouns (either merged -e(r) or, like in Swedish -e(r)/-o(r) depending on the class of each noun) and neutral nouns (mainly -) as opposed to a generic plural in Bokmål (-er, with neutral nouns varying between - and -er)
- forms of personal pronouns that are closer to Nynorsk (such as e(g),
æ(g) rather than je(g) = I; ho, hu rather than hun (she); dykk(~), dekk(~), dokk(e(r)) rather than dere = you (pl., accusative); etc.)
- forms of verbs that are closer to Nynorsk (such as a higher incident
of strong verbs, ablaut and umlaut forms; and, less significantly, -a in past tense of verbs were stylistically mainstream Bokmål has -et)
Of secondary importance is the vowel system, with Nynorsk tending to have more historical vowels and fewer secondary vowels than Bokmål. The presence of many vowels is popularly viewed as "the" characteristic of Nynorsk -- but this trait is actually of less use in this connection.
Forms that are permitted but in practice deprecated in Bokmål include: -a in past tense of certain verbs; -a as definite article in plural of neutral gender nouns;
I see i've been outgunned...
You pointed out that some -a endings are permitted in Bokmål. You did not, however, mention that these forms tend to be criticised, or even "corrected" away in practice -- because many (the majority?) of Bokmål users find them to be stylistically inappropriate.
criticised? I've never heard of them being criticised, perhaps back in the 50ies during the samnorsk period, when parents "corrected" their childerens schoolbooks.
btw. the paralell solution would kill the no: (informaly bokmål) wiki.
I agree that that could be a risk, and therefore I believe that such a split *should be avoided at any reasonable cost*.
Hear hear!
And since most of the articles on no: is on either bokmål or riksmål, some 100-200 on nynorsk (i've been rcpatroling on no: since we where just ~800 articles, so i have a pretty good idea of the amount of articles in either language. Knowing that a large part of this work would fall on me i don't cherish this idea, and the fact that it's creating a chaos, two rcs to monitor and a devertion of work. Also, there are no bokmål grasroot movement that wants to do this work, the people that supports this solution is mostly nynorskusers (primary nynorsk atleast).
I believe that once there is a solution that "everyone" agrees on (including, hopefully, the Wikipedia community as a whole) -- which I hope will be an adjustment of the current language-based split rather than a fork within the current no: -- the work of adjusting the language contents of the Bokmål version will be relatively easily accomplished. I for one hereby volunteer to do my share of the job. Even though I seem to have been coined as a Nynorsk user (and even, to my frustration, as a Bokmål hater) by some, I am very interested in
I vote for a solution where bokmål keeps no: (but creates a page with reasons to why bokmål have no:, that's going to get linked from the mainpage, and "ads" for nynorskwiki), the interwiki decoding changes to "norsk (bokmål)" to clairify for non-norwegians that it's bokmål.
This way we don't kill a well functioning wiki, and i belive/hope most parts would be happy with the solution.
The Norsk (nynorsk) vs. Norsk (bokmål) (without capitalisation of nyn. and bokm.) renaming is OK with me. Whether the Norsk (bokmål) Wikipedia actually lies on no: or nb: has, as has been pointed out already, absolutely no significance: The Norsk (bokmål) Wikipedia will be exactly as continuos on nb: as on no:, with absolutely no foreseeable extra work for its admins and other users, other than an optional long-term bot task of going through the various wikipedias and automatically changing all [[no: entrances to [[nb:. Since a change of domain would include a universal redirect from no: to nb: for a relatively long period (in fact, just reversing the current situation, there should be plenty of time to do this.
To illustrate the current situation: Please try clicking on this link to the article "Norge" on nb: (Norway) and see what happens...
http://nb.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norge
See? That is how easy the reversal of this would be on the readers! :)
Hmm, nice, well, that last demonstration blowed me away, i have no objections to move no: to nb: (provided no: is a permanent, and then i mean _permanent_, redirect, perhaps with a exception of a protected mainpage that states the current situation and offers nice and big links to either side)
================= SUMMARY OF REPLY: =================
A I think a split of the current no: Wikipedia should be avoided at any reasonable cost. B A move of this Wikipedia to nb: would not lead to any significant extra work for the admins and users on no: C If no: is moved to nb: in accordance with a more precise implementation of the language codes, then no: should be a redirect domain to nb: the way it is today, with the main page as the only exception. D In the event of such a move, bots should be set up to go through the other wikipedias and change all [[no: and [[:no: codes to [[nb: and [[:nb: E It seems that the main argument against having Norsk (bokmål) on nb: is an emotional one rather than practical (since the move would be very easy to implement and would be executed centrally rather than by no: admins) or logical (since no: is the country code and the umbrella language code, whereas nb: is the specific language code for Bokmål, including Riksmål).
Accualy i have an other, quite weak estetic argument, no: and nn: is right next to each other, compared to nb: and nn: (nl: in between), so in a alfabetizied interwikilist, nynorsk and bokmål would get splitted. Perhaps this would be solved with keeping no: as a commonly used interwikicode, or perhaps this would create total havoc.
F Those emotional arguments must be respected, since our long-term goals as an international Wikipedia community would be adversely affected if there were to be unnecessary long-term resentment between the user groups of individual projects.
Therefore, my hunch is that we should first try to reach consent about the underlying factors. Here is what I propose that these are:
LOCAL UNDERLYING FACTORS
- Bokmål as a written language has more users than Nynorsk
- Bokmål and Nynorsk are both recognised as official languages in
Norway.
- Bokmål and Nynorsk are linguistically extremely closely connected
with Swedish and Danish.
COUNTRY AND LANGUAGE CODES IN A SCANDINAVIAN PERSPECTIVE
- The Swedish language Wikipedia, primarily serving people in Sweden and parts of Finland, has the language code sv: rather than the country code se: (which is connected to the use of se: for Northern Sami and sa: for Sanskrit)
- The Danish language Wikipedia, primarily serving people in Denmark, has the language code da: rather than the country code dk. There is a redirect from dk: to da:
- The Nynorsk language Wikipedia, primarily serving Nynorsk language users in Norway, has the language code nn:
- The mainly Bokmål Wikipedia, which started out as a mixed Bokmål/Nynorsk environment with the emphasis on Bokmål (including Riksmål), uses both the country code no: (which, when used as a language code, includes both Bokmål and Nynorsk) and the language code nb: (as a redirect).
CURRENT SITUATION ON NO:
- The no: Wikipedia is changing its rôle from a generic Bokmål/Nynorsk language wikipedia (albeit with almost exclusively Bokmål contents, as Lars Alvik has pointed out) to a specifically Norsk Bokmål language version.
- The new Nynorsk Wikipedia works as an independent project and, while fastly expanding, has not had any significant effect in terms of disrupting the continuity of the no: Wikipedia in general except for there being a bit more activity on the Village Pump page than usual.
========================================== MODIFIED SUGGESTION FOR LONG-TERM SOLUTION ==========================================
(This suggestion is based primarily on Lars Alvik's previous suggestion, with modifications/additions based on arguments that have emerged in the debate locally on no: and nn: as well as here on wikipedia-l.)
- The "Norsk" and "Nynorsk" interwiki names are changed to "Norsk
(bokmål)" and "Norsk (nynorsk)" respectively.
The "Norsk (nynorsk)" wikipedia uses the language code nn:
The "Norsk (bokmål)" wikipedia is moved to the proper language code
nb:, with the central Wikipedia developers/admins making sure that the extra workload on the current no: admins is kept to an absolute minimum. (This will in effect (see #4) only be an internal reversal of the two domains already de facto used by the Norsk (bokmål) Wikipedia, thus ensuring maximum continuity.)
- For reasons of continuity and relative size of community, "Norsk
(bokmål)" Wikipedia keeps the domain no:, but for reasons of impreciseness of the term as regards the language situation in Norway, this code will only be used as a redirect of links and URLs with the code to the corresponding nb: page. (Thus parallelling exactly the Danish usage of dk: and da:)
- The communities on nn: and nb: will commit themselves to
implementing the solution locally, with a special emphasis on information about and promotion of the other Wikipedia on the "Main" and "Latest edits" page; and also, to the extent possible, through putting the interwiki link to the other language first in the list of links in each article.
- A specific technical solution that has been brought up is the
splitting of the "Donations" link into a locally wikipedia-wide universal link to the other Wikipedia of the two. This solution, while admittedly clogging up the quick navigations field slightly, may have positive effects for the local cooperation, and should therefore be reciprocally applied to the nn: and nb: wikipedias.
- In the interest of strengthening the Scandinavian Wikipedia
community, I suggest to implement points 5) and 6) also to sv: and da:, thus facilitating quick navigation between these wikipedias, effectively creating a half-integrated article pool of about 83,000 articles (on 14 Nov. at ca 7 AM GMT) and an incitement for each of the four Scandinavian communities to cooperate and expand.
- Work towards more integrated multilingual wikipedias through making
the Scandinavian wikipedias a test project for the development of an interlingual search function limited to a specific pool of wikipedias, where searches and no-hit events lead to a search within the pre-defined pool of closely related languages. For Scandinavian, this would include, in order of community size, sv:, da:, nb:, and nn:.
Where do i sign up? :P
All this is good, however I have a couple of questions.
What would http://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noreg redirect to? It would be strange for somebody to end up at the nonexistant article :nb:Noreg, or be re-directed to :nb:Norge only to have to click on the Nynorsk interwiki link to get to where they wanted to be originally.
Thus I propose there be an additional provision of some sort so that when article titles are different between nn: and nb: (they aren't always different), the Nynorsk name on no: redirects to a Nynorsk article rather than a Bokmål article.
In addition, I think one extremely important thing regarding promotion of other Scandinavian Wikipedias is this:
While the Sami language(s) may not be related to sv:/da:/nn:/nb:/, since they are a national minority in all of these countries (excepting Denmark), there should be prominently placed invitations in Sami, if possible (otherwise in the language of the Wikipedia they're on), to come contribute to the Sami Wikipedias if you can.
Just to make things more complicated (and forseeing a possible future issue)... currently, TTBOMK, we only have http://se.wikipedia.org/ for Sami (more specifically N. Sami). Should we create additional Wikipedias for the other Sami languages/dialects/whatever? If so, perhaps we should have a notice on the Norwegian, Swedish, and Finnish Wikipedias (don't forget, Finland has Sami people too!) in some sort of "unified Sami" (which everybody can understand, even if it's not a standard in everyday use) inviting people to contribute to the appropriate Sami Wikipedia.
Also I have a sneaking suspicion that, as Norwegians and Swedes and Finns, the participants in this discussion have some contacts who speak Sami, and if not they know somebody who has a Sami-speaking contact or something of the sort.
I thus encourage all such users to STRONGLY URGE (= at gunpoint) any Sami speakers they know or meet to contribute to the appropriate Sami Wikipedia. (not really at gunpoint!)
The same goes for the rest of you if you know somebody who can speak a language of a small or inactive Wikipedia, inform the person that it exists and urge them to contribute and note that it will be a significant leap in the history of their language.
If you know someone who speaks a language that there is no Wikipedia for, CHECK to make sure there is no Wikipedia - there's a good chance there is one that you just didn't know about - and if there really isn't one, encourage them to go through the steps to have one created.
And, IF YOU SPEAK such a language, but only contribute to en: or fr: or de: or af: or hi: etc., I STRONGLY URGE you to promote literacy, learning, and maintenance of your language by joining that Wikipedia and actively participating! Please!
Mark
On Sun, 14 Nov 2004 13:11:56 +0100, Lars Alvik larsal@stud.ntnu.no wrote:
På 14. nov. 2004 kl. 08.19 skrev Olve Utne:
Hello Lars A. & everyone else,
This posting has two main parts: First, a reply to your recent posting quoted below; and then a summary of my arguments in light of, amongst others, your and Mark Williamson's recent postings; and finally a modified suggestion with the following main points:
- Renaming to Norsk (bokmål) and Norsk (nynorsk)
- Moving Norsk (bokmål) to nb:, while KEEPING NO: as an automatic
("shadow") redirect to nb: -- thus parallelling Danish, with dk:> da:, keeping full continuity through keeping the two current codes; and making cooperation with nn: politically easier through discrete use of the domain no:.
===== REPLY =====
You wrote:
*Paints "POV" in huge red letters over Williamsons mail*
I will get back to this further down.
Your mail have inaccuancies to bokmål and nynorsk, bokmål people view nynorsk as a pest? This goes both ways, the ones that mostly hates nynorsk (or bokmål) is teenagers that is forced to learn a different language in school, that they don't feel they have any use for (unlike english or perhaps german). Perhaps this "haterd" is stronger with the bokmålusers (since nynorsk is smaller and is, in their eyes, less useful).
What you write seems to be pretty much in agreement with what Mark wrote... I recognise the factual situation from both descriptions -- with yours maybe describing/articulating the "hatred" from Bokmål users against Nynorsk in more local terms (?)
It was the same time that part of the norwegian history was romantized, the union with denmark was seen as "the four thousandyear nigth", eventhough this where directly false.
I presume you mean "400-year-night", not "4000-year-night" :)
Ofcurse *slaps own head* :P
Mr. Aasen made nynorsk by collecting dialects (dominantly the western and the valleys in central-south norway. However the parts of norway with the largest population was largely ignored, like the farming areas of eastern norway, the south part of Oppland, Hedmark, Akershus, Østfold, Buskerud and Vestfold) also the northern part of norway was largely ignored.
Aren't Mr. Aasens "Norske Folkesprog" as well as the mid-19th Century Danish used in Norway both quite far removed from our Nynorsk and Bokmål...? Since the 1840s, both Nynorsk (then called Det norske Folkesprog by Ivar Aasen, later coined Landsmaal, but also actually known as Bokmaal (!)) and Bokmål (then near-identical with Danish, later known in its historically increasingly norvagised form as Rigsmaal and Riksmål) have changed very much. Today's mainstream Nynorsk most closely resembles dialects in relatively "moderate" dialect areas like Lofoten, Vesterålen, eastern parts of Telemark, parts of Vestfold and Oppland (including Toten).
Today's mainstream Bokmål is also quite different from the Danish used in Norway in the mid-1800s, and lies closest to the dialects of middle-class and upper-class people in the cities of SE Norway -- esp. Oslo and Drammen.
It is true that Nynorsk is currently most commonly used in Sogn og Fjordane and Møre og Romsdal. However, it is also used to varying degrees most other places in Norway, and Norwegian literature abounds with authors from both Bokmål and Nynorsk.
You wrote about Mark's posting: *Paints "POV" in huge red letters over Williamsons mail*. I do not agree that Mark is unprecise or skewed enough in his writing to warrant such an outburst.
It was not as much as what we wrote, it was how he wrote it, if you catch my drift. But in either way it was a derailing of the real debate.
Whereas I personally think that one mainly Bokmål Wikipedia is more constructive than two,
Hear hear!
Yes, no: should point to the norwegian written language, but there are none such thing. 80% of norwegians use bokmål (allthough some of them speaks a dialect that contains some nynorsk words, like -a endings (these are allowed on bokmål too). However, the languages are equal in terms of administrative language. But on a national basis bokmål is more used.
When some of us mention that a large proportion of Norwegians speak a dialect that is closer to Nynorsk than Bokmål, we are of course not talking about "some nynorsk words, like -a endings" (that would include, in fact, a rather large proportion of Oslo's population), but of dialects which show, *predominantly*, traits that are closer to the continuum if Nynorsk morphology than Bokmål. Such traits include, amongst others:
- different plurals for masculine nouns (-a(r) or -æ(r), occasionally
-ø(r)), feminine nouns (either merged -e(r) or, like in Swedish -e(r)/-o(r) depending on the class of each noun) and neutral nouns (mainly -) as opposed to a generic plural in Bokmål (-er, with neutral nouns varying between - and -er)
- forms of personal pronouns that are closer to Nynorsk (such as e(g),
æ(g) rather than je(g) = I; ho, hu rather than hun (she); dykk(~), dekk(~), dokk(e(r)) rather than dere = you (pl., accusative); etc.)
- forms of verbs that are closer to Nynorsk (such as a higher incident
of strong verbs, ablaut and umlaut forms; and, less significantly, -a in past tense of verbs were stylistically mainstream Bokmål has -et)
Of secondary importance is the vowel system, with Nynorsk tending to have more historical vowels and fewer secondary vowels than Bokmål. The presence of many vowels is popularly viewed as "the" characteristic of Nynorsk -- but this trait is actually of less use in this connection.
Forms that are permitted but in practice deprecated in Bokmål include: -a in past tense of certain verbs; -a as definite article in plural of neutral gender nouns;
I see i've been outgunned...
You pointed out that some -a endings are permitted in Bokmål. You did not, however, mention that these forms tend to be criticised, or even "corrected" away in practice -- because many (the majority?) of Bokmål users find them to be stylistically inappropriate.
criticised? I've never heard of them being criticised, perhaps back in the 50ies during the samnorsk period, when parents "corrected" their childerens schoolbooks.
btw. the paralell solution would kill the no: (informaly bokmål) wiki.
I agree that that could be a risk, and therefore I believe that such a split *should be avoided at any reasonable cost*.
Hear hear!
And since most of the articles on no: is on either bokmål or riksmål, some 100-200 on nynorsk (i've been rcpatroling on no: since we where just ~800 articles, so i have a pretty good idea of the amount of articles in either language. Knowing that a large part of this work would fall on me i don't cherish this idea, and the fact that it's creating a chaos, two rcs to monitor and a devertion of work. Also, there are no bokmål grasroot movement that wants to do this work, the people that supports this solution is mostly nynorskusers (primary nynorsk atleast).
I believe that once there is a solution that "everyone" agrees on (including, hopefully, the Wikipedia community as a whole) -- which I hope will be an adjustment of the current language-based split rather than a fork within the current no: -- the work of adjusting the language contents of the Bokmål version will be relatively easily accomplished. I for one hereby volunteer to do my share of the job. Even though I seem to have been coined as a Nynorsk user (and even, to my frustration, as a Bokmål hater) by some, I am very interested in
I vote for a solution where bokmål keeps no: (but creates a page with reasons to why bokmål have no:, that's going to get linked from the mainpage, and "ads" for nynorskwiki), the interwiki decoding changes to "norsk (bokmål)" to clairify for non-norwegians that it's bokmål.
This way we don't kill a well functioning wiki, and i belive/hope most parts would be happy with the solution.
The Norsk (nynorsk) vs. Norsk (bokmål) (without capitalisation of nyn. and bokm.) renaming is OK with me. Whether the Norsk (bokmål) Wikipedia actually lies on no: or nb: has, as has been pointed out already, absolutely no significance: The Norsk (bokmål) Wikipedia will be exactly as continuos on nb: as on no:, with absolutely no foreseeable extra work for its admins and other users, other than an optional long-term bot task of going through the various wikipedias and automatically changing all [[no: entrances to [[nb:. Since a change of domain would include a universal redirect from no: to nb: for a relatively long period (in fact, just reversing the current situation, there should be plenty of time to do this.
To illustrate the current situation: Please try clicking on this link to the article "Norge" on nb: (Norway) and see what happens...
http://nb.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norge
See? That is how easy the reversal of this would be on the readers! :)
Hmm, nice, well, that last demonstration blowed me away, i have no objections to move no: to nb: (provided no: is a permanent, and then i mean _permanent_, redirect, perhaps with a exception of a protected mainpage that states the current situation and offers nice and big links to either side)
================= SUMMARY OF REPLY: =================
A I think a split of the current no: Wikipedia should be avoided at any reasonable cost. B A move of this Wikipedia to nb: would not lead to any significant extra work for the admins and users on no: C If no: is moved to nb: in accordance with a more precise implementation of the language codes, then no: should be a redirect domain to nb: the way it is today, with the main page as the only exception. D In the event of such a move, bots should be set up to go through the other wikipedias and change all [[no: and [[:no: codes to [[nb: and [[:nb: E It seems that the main argument against having Norsk (bokmål) on nb: is an emotional one rather than practical (since the move would be very easy to implement and would be executed centrally rather than by no: admins) or logical (since no: is the country code and the umbrella language code, whereas nb: is the specific language code for Bokmål, including Riksmål).
Accualy i have an other, quite weak estetic argument, no: and nn: is right next to each other, compared to nb: and nn: (nl: in between), so in a alfabetizied interwikilist, nynorsk and bokmål would get splitted. Perhaps this would be solved with keeping no: as a commonly used interwikicode, or perhaps this would create total havoc.
F Those emotional arguments must be respected, since our long-term goals as an international Wikipedia community would be adversely affected if there were to be unnecessary long-term resentment between the user groups of individual projects.
Therefore, my hunch is that we should first try to reach consent about the underlying factors. Here is what I propose that these are:
LOCAL UNDERLYING FACTORS
- Bokmål as a written language has more users than Nynorsk
- Bokmål and Nynorsk are both recognised as official languages in
Norway.
- Bokmål and Nynorsk are linguistically extremely closely connected
with Swedish and Danish.
COUNTRY AND LANGUAGE CODES IN A SCANDINAVIAN PERSPECTIVE
- The Swedish language Wikipedia, primarily serving people in Sweden and parts of Finland, has the language code sv: rather than the country code se: (which is connected to the use of se: for Northern Sami and sa: for Sanskrit)
- The Danish language Wikipedia, primarily serving people in Denmark, has the language code da: rather than the country code dk. There is a redirect from dk: to da:
- The Nynorsk language Wikipedia, primarily serving Nynorsk language users in Norway, has the language code nn:
- The mainly Bokmål Wikipedia, which started out as a mixed Bokmål/Nynorsk environment with the emphasis on Bokmål (including Riksmål), uses both the country code no: (which, when used as a language code, includes both Bokmål and Nynorsk) and the language code nb: (as a redirect).
CURRENT SITUATION ON NO:
- The no: Wikipedia is changing its rôle from a generic Bokmål/Nynorsk language wikipedia (albeit with almost exclusively Bokmål contents, as Lars Alvik has pointed out) to a specifically Norsk Bokmål language version.
- The new Nynorsk Wikipedia works as an independent project and, while fastly expanding, has not had any significant effect in terms of disrupting the continuity of the no: Wikipedia in general except for there being a bit more activity on the Village Pump page than usual.
========================================== MODIFIED SUGGESTION FOR LONG-TERM SOLUTION ==========================================
(This suggestion is based primarily on Lars Alvik's previous suggestion, with modifications/additions based on arguments that have emerged in the debate locally on no: and nn: as well as here on wikipedia-l.)
- The "Norsk" and "Nynorsk" interwiki names are changed to "Norsk
(bokmål)" and "Norsk (nynorsk)" respectively.
The "Norsk (nynorsk)" wikipedia uses the language code nn:
The "Norsk (bokmål)" wikipedia is moved to the proper language code
nb:, with the central Wikipedia developers/admins making sure that the extra workload on the current no: admins is kept to an absolute minimum. (This will in effect (see #4) only be an internal reversal of the two domains already de facto used by the Norsk (bokmål) Wikipedia, thus ensuring maximum continuity.)
- For reasons of continuity and relative size of community, "Norsk
(bokmål)" Wikipedia keeps the domain no:, but for reasons of impreciseness of the term as regards the language situation in Norway, this code will only be used as a redirect of links and URLs with the code to the corresponding nb: page. (Thus parallelling exactly the Danish usage of dk: and da:)
- The communities on nn: and nb: will commit themselves to
implementing the solution locally, with a special emphasis on information about and promotion of the other Wikipedia on the "Main" and "Latest edits" page; and also, to the extent possible, through putting the interwiki link to the other language first in the list of links in each article.
- A specific technical solution that has been brought up is the
splitting of the "Donations" link into a locally wikipedia-wide universal link to the other Wikipedia of the two. This solution, while admittedly clogging up the quick navigations field slightly, may have positive effects for the local cooperation, and should therefore be reciprocally applied to the nn: and nb: wikipedias.
- In the interest of strengthening the Scandinavian Wikipedia
community, I suggest to implement points 5) and 6) also to sv: and da:, thus facilitating quick navigation between these wikipedias, effectively creating a half-integrated article pool of about 83,000 articles (on 14 Nov. at ca 7 AM GMT) and an incitement for each of the four Scandinavian communities to cooperate and expand.
- Work towards more integrated multilingual wikipedias through making
the Scandinavian wikipedias a test project for the development of an interlingual search function limited to a specific pool of wikipedias, where searches and no-hit events lead to a search within the pre-defined pool of closely related languages. For Scandinavian, this would include, in order of community size, sv:, da:, nb:, and nn:.
Where do i sign up? :P
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