[Wikipedia-l] no:/nb:/nn:/etc. - modified suggestion

[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:

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:.




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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! :)





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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