At Tue Sep 14 02:15:23 UTC 2004, Lars Aronsson wrote: Hello Lars, I fail to quite see your logic, but I will be happy to listen to your explanation of what you mean. In the mean time -- here are some of my thoughts on the subject of accent vs. dialect/language and on the place of Nynorsk within the major lineages of post-Mediaeval written Scandinavian: "English", the way the term is usually used, is a language which has a uniform grammar, including syntax -- but which has a number of minor variant spellings (e.g., UK, Australia, Eire, Canada, USA) and a standard basic pronunciation which has a range of actual *accents* (e.g., somewhat simplified, of London, Cardiff, Manchester, Glasgow, Belfast, Dublin, Toronto, New York, Seattle, Sidney, Auckland, Praetoria, etc.). Different from accents sre the *dialects* of English, which may have more or less profound differences in deep-level phonology, morphology, syntax, and vocabulary. Dialects of English include Cockney, Yorkshire, Geordie, US "Black English", and -- according to one view, Lowlands Scots. Scots (in th Lallands/Lowlands variety) has been viewed as a separate language in former times, and this view has been re-emerging in modern times. People in Glasgow, Edinburg, Aberdeen, etc., have grown up in a system where "English", albeit with a Scottish *accent" (rolling R's, narrow diphthongs, neutralised vowel quantity, etc.), has been the standard language. Of course, if you arrive in Glasgow with your London or Dublin or New York accent of the common English language, people will recognise you as a speaker of this common English language. But this has no bearing in itself on the nature of Scots -- which is a language or (set of) dialect(s) (depending on your poitical as well as linguistic reasons...), rather than an accent of standard English. When you speak Swedish in Oslo, you are most likely to be understood pretty well. But you are also likely to be sociologically classified as a speaker of a Language with a Different Name. That this language of Sweden happens to be more similar to local accents/dialects of Oslo than to a number of Swedish dialects is a fact that is as true as it is sociologically insignificant. What bearing this again has on the identity of Nynorsk versus Scottish is not quite clear to me. What is interesting, though, is that morphologically, Nynorsk is actually closer to Swedish than to Bokmål. The same actually goes, to some extent, for vocabulary. When working on the NN Wikipedia, it often strikes me how many of the differences between Nynorsk and Bokmål happen to at the same time be similarities between Nynorsk and Swedish. Another fact that needs to be considered in this respect, is the fact often that Bokmål/Riksmål/Danish actually forms a complete written-language continuum and is often, quite naturally, seen as variants of the same written language. Linguistically speaking: Within the dialect continuum of Scandinavia, there seems to be three major separate written language lineages: Danish, Nynorsk and Swedish. Bokmål/Riksmål as a written code arose gradually from Danish and has moved slowly in the direction of Nynorsk. (There is also, of course, the separate lineage of Dalmål -- which is about as different from any of the other contemporary Scandinavian written language lineages as Faeroese, Icelandic or Old Norse are...) Politically/sociologically speaking, the languages of Scandinavia can also be grouped into three, but from this perspective, Bokmål belongs with Nynorsk rather than with Danish. All this being said, I personally believe that it should be a long-term goal to coordinate the Scandinavian wikipedias as closely as possible, and that it would be desirable in the long run to build an integrated system where each user selects their language [yes, this is descriptively correct English grammar, and has been for many centuries] interface, AND that preferred language/s for articles can also be set as a separate user preference. Until this happens, I believe that we are all best served with the following goals: 1) Build up the article database for each of the four main forms of written Scandinavian; 2) Coordinate the contents to the extent practically possible; and 3) Work on improving and coordinating the user interfaces to make each of these as well-written and mutually intelligible within the given linguistical and stylistical constraints as practically possible. Bästa hälsningar / Beste helsing / Best regards, Olve ___________________ Olve Utne http://utne.nvg.org