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:
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
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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.)
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:.
Where do i sign up? :P