On Tue, 16 Nov 2004 20:17:35 +0200, Andy Rabagliati wrote: Dear Andy Rablagliati: Norwegians also understand English, Swedish and Danish. Swedes mostly understand Norwegian and English, and, to varying degrees, Danish. Danes mostly understand Norwegian Bokmål and English, and, to varying degrees, Swedish. Most Dutch and many Belgians understand English. Bokmål and Nynorsk are not dialects, they are written languages -- each with a solid tradition. Should we then close down all but one of the four Scandinavian Wikipedias, as well as the Dutch one? And how about the Afrikaans one? (English, Dutch) Or the Alemannish one? (German, French) Or the Panjabi one? (Hindi, Urdu) How about the Spanish/Asturian/Galego/Portuguese situation? If you know either Spanish or Portuguese and you know a bit of language history, it is reasonably easy to read all of them! But that doesn't make it any more or less "justified" for them to have a feeling of what is their language identity! As for Alemannish, I have no serious problem reading it with my background in knowing German, Yiddish and some Dutch. But I will not ask for it to be closed down, and I do not think would be appropriate in any way for me as an outsider to tell them to quit their project and work only within the German or French wikipedias instead! Information indeed comes first. In this case, we are talking about two literary languages, each with a solid tradition going back about a hundred years as a separate language for Bokmål (defined as the time of the first major orthographic reform away from Danish) and 150 years for Nynorsk (defined by the publishing of Ivar Aasen's dictionary and grammar of "Det norske Folkesprog". Both Bokmål and Nynorsk have their own, extensive literature -- with authors like Olav Duun, Tarjei Vesaas, Aslaug Moren Vesaas, Arne Garborg, Kjartan Fløgstad, Olav H. Hauge and many others in Nynorsk; and André Bjerke, Knut Hamsun, Johan Falkberget, Johan Bojer, Anne-Cath. Vestly, and many others in Bokmål. Both Bokmål (< Riksmål < Rigsmaal < Danish) and Nynorsk (< Landsmål < Landsmaal < "Det norske Folkesprog") have had separate, clear identities continually since the mid-1800s. Both Bokmål and Nynorsk each have status as official languages in Norway. The morphology and orthography of Bokmål and Nynorsk differ to a much higher degree than is the case of UK vs. US English or the Portuguese of Portugal vs. Brazil. It has also been made clear a few times already in this discussion that we are not talking about splitting up Bokmål and Nynorsk. *That has already happened,* after it became clear that the experiment of joining the two didn't work all that well for practical reasons. It appears that that was a good move in that it created a new base of recruitment, and the new users tend to work in both Nynorsk and Bokmål, making it a win-win situation for everyone. There is what appears to be a minority opinion (Ulf Lunde) of splitting the "mostly Bokmål" and an "entirely Bokmål" Wikipedia -- a proposal it appears that most of the debattants on wikipedia-l do not in fact support. The topic we are discussing is whether the mostly Bokmål Wikipedia on no: should move from the countrycode no: for Norway to the language code nb: for Bokmål. Also, we are discussing -- and your input would be appreciated there -- is how to implement a solution where we can let these two languages, together with Swedish and Danish, have optimal opportunities for integration and cooperation while also keeping them separate enough that it is possible to have a good workspace for fine-tuning of grammar and orthography within each language as well as having an easier time figuring out what information is lacking in one or more of these languages. Looking forward to your input in these topics. All the best, Olve ___________________ Olve Utne http://utne.nvg.org