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<TITLE>Re: request for subtag for Elfdalian</TITLE>
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This is a bit long again, sorry. <BR>
<BR>
<BR>
This is getting back to an issue that bugs me. It is not immediately<BR>
relevant to the current discussion about Älvdalian, but looks at<BR>
the broader perspective of Nordic languages.(But Älvdalian does<BR>
appear towards the end of this message.)<BR>
<BR>
<BR>
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Den 2016-02-06 04:05, skrev "John Cowan" <<a href="cowan@mercury.ccil.org">cowan@mercury.ccil.org</a>>:<BR>
<BR>
<FONT COLOR="#0000FF">> Kent Karlsson scripsit:<BR>
> <BR>
</FONT><FONT COLOR="#008000">>> Note again that **all** variants of Old Norse are closely related<BR>
>> to (modern) Icelandic, and *distantly* related to the modern Swedish/<BR>
>> Norwegian/Danish. <BR>
</FONT><FONT COLOR="#0000FF">> <BR>
> You're confusing relatedness with similarity.<BR>
</FONT>[...]<BR>
<BR>
I had a feeling you would say that. It still does not make sense.<BR>
<BR>
<FONT COLOR="#008000">>> In summary, that "Old Norse split into Old East Norse and Old West Norse"<BR>
>> "is neither here nor there" (all of them are essentially Icelandic, and<BR>
>> the split is minor and NOT at all related to any of the modern divides),<BR>
</FONT><FONT COLOR="#0000FF">> <BR>
> It is, though. Nynorsk, like Icelandic, is egkavian, whereas Danish/Bokmaal<BR>
> and Swedish are jegkavian.<BR>
</FONT><BR>
Ok, some new terms for me... Searching for "egkavian jegkavian" in Google<BR>
turns up exactly one hit (so I don't feel too bad about not knowing those terms):<BR>
<B><a href="http://languagehat.com/tolkien-translation-of-beowulf/">http://languagehat.com/tolkien-translation-of-beowulf/</a></B>, and that<BR>
just in a comment field, no explanation: "<I>Egkavian versus Jegkavian. Jutland<BR>
is Egkavian.</I>". If this refers to the use of "eg" versus "jag" (similar) for<BR>
the word for "I", then I regard that as completely irrelevant very minor<BR>
difference, very far from being any interesting dividing line. In any case,<BR>
inventing some new terms will not make this non-existent "great divide"<BR>
magically come into existence.<BR>
<BR>
A more interesting, and relevant, comment from that one hit page:<BR>
"<I>But I don’t really accept the clear East/West Scandinavian dichotomy. I think it’s<BR>
an artifact of documentation, a result of the location of the main scribal centres<BR>
within what never ceased to be a continuum. There are room for a lot of both<BR>
north-south and east-west lines across the peninsula between Lund/Vadstena<BR>
in southeast and Trondheim/Iceland in northwest.</I>"<BR>
<BR>
And... on that one hit page you(!) link to your page<BR>
<B><a href="http://mercury.ccil.org/~cowan/essential.html">http://mercury.ccil.org/~cowan/essential.html</a></B>. Many of the "essential"<BR>
statements relating to north Germanic languages are just silly. And some<BR>
others I've heard before (but do reflect matters in a very rude way). A<BR>
new one (to me) that I kind of like is "<I>Nynorsk (or Redneck, as I call it)<BR>
is essentially Swedish with a bad accent. --David Oftedal</I>".<BR>
<BR>
In any case, it is not the case that the various "mainland" Scandinavian<BR>
languages/dialects have developed in isolation, after some imagined split<BR>
a millennia ago. Not just internal influences, but influences from other<BR>
languages as well (particularly old German and French, but now more from<BR>
English). These (mostly internal, and to a large extent political)<BR>
influences far overshadow any imagined split a millennia ago, making the<BR>
East/West/Old Gutnish (minor) splits moot in relation to the modern<BR>
languages/dialects. Sure, there are remnants of old local pronunciations<BR>
(i.e. spoken rather than written) in the modern languages/dialects, but<BR>
that is hardly to be regarded as some "true origin", just remnants.<BR>
<BR>
It's not a nicely branching tree. Even Faroese, which did branch off together<BR>
with Icelandic, is now very influenced by (modern) Danish.<BR>
<BR>
So similarity is the best one can do for this group of languages,<BR>
similarities ARE the relationships. It's not like that in this case<BR>
there has been independent, and without any common influence, development<BR>
of similarities, something I think would be quite rare for languages.<BR>
(Here I mean actual similarities, not similarities of development, like fading of dialects.)<BR>
<BR>
Now, if you REALLY HAVE TO find a dividing line that goes back over a<BR>
millennia and that is based on a isolated phonetic phenomena:<BR>
<BR>
"<I>Old Norse had a stress accent which fell on the first syllable. Several<BR>
scholars have proposed that Proto-Norse also had a separate pitch accent,<BR>
which was inherited from Proto-Indo-European and has evolved into the tonal<BR>
accents of modern Swedish and Norwegian, which in turn have evolved into<BR>
the stød of modern Danish. Another recently advanced theory is that each<BR>
Proto-Norse long syllable and every other short syllable received stress,<BR>
marked by pitch, eventually leading to the development of the Swedish and<BR>
Norwegian tonal accent distinction. Finally, quite a number of linguists<BR>
have assumed that even the first phonetic rudiments of the distinction<BR>
didn't appear until the Old Norse period.</I>"<BR>
(<B><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Norse_language">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Norse_language</a></B>)<BR>
<BR>
I have no idea how that was arrived at. However, that is a much more<BR>
plausible dividing line for the mainland Scandinavian languages, and<BR>
one that really does survive until today.<BR>
<BR>
Even though you (and apparently others) try to lay out an east/west<BR>
dividing line, the /actual fact/ is that Nynorsk ("west") is and was<BR>
close to Swedish ("east"), are so close that Nynorsk (which is actually<BR>
a constructed language) could be regarded as a "moderate" dialect of<BR>
Swedish (no offence intended) and Bokmål, somewhere between standard<BR>
Swedish and Norwegian bokmål. (Says I, who can, or rather could, actually<BR>
speak a "Norwegian-ish" dialect of Swedish more distant from standard<BR>
Swedish than the distance from standard Swedish to Nynorsk (no, not<BR>
Älvdalian). It is not usable outside of a very small region, and these days<BR>
not even there... Dialects are fading rapidly.)<BR>
<BR>
I repeat, for emphasis: Similarity is the best one can do for this group<BR>
of languages, similarities ARE the relationships. Not some fictional<BR>
dividing line between east and west. It just /may/ have been relevant<BR>
ABOUT a millennia ago, for /written/ material only. (Remember that at<BR>
this time most people could not read, so no reason to adapt to actual<BR>
local dialect.) But /it/ does in no way start divergent developments<BR>
thereafter. It is completely different dividing lines that do that,<BR>
in addition to a lot of "common" (for various reasons) developments.<BR>
<BR>
<BR>
<B><a href="http://eplads.norden.org/nordenssprak/kap2/2a/11.asp">http://eplads.norden.org/nordenssprak/kap2/2a/11.asp</a> </B>by Arne Torp,<BR>
professor of North Germanic languages at the University of Oslo,<BR>
gives an explanation to the situation, however. I have taken the<BR>
language relationship (yes, relationships, not happenstance similarities)<BR>
figures on that page and <B>augmented </B>them a bit below.<BR>
<BR>
Unfortunately, on a later page, <B><a href="http://eplads.norden.org/nordenssprak/kap2/2a/13.asp">http://eplads.norden.org/nordenssprak/kap2/2a/13.asp</a></B>,<BR>
professor Torp tries to defend the "tree model", whereas the proper<BR>
answer to the question "<I>Är stamträdsmodellen mogen för skräphögen?</I>"<BR>
("Is the tree model [for the Nordic languages] ready for the scrap heap?")<BR>
should be "Yes, it is high time! Should have been done long ago.<BR>
The tree model just confuses people and gives the wrong relationships."<BR>
<BR>
So I try to summarise page 11 below, while adding some bits and<BR>
pieces that were omitted in the <B>eplads.norden.org/nordenssprak<BR>
</B>pages. It is not perfect, so I'm sure it can be improved upon.<BR>
Of course the years are just rough indications. The evolvement has<BR>
of course been gradual, no sharp lines.<BR>
<BR>
The figures are in "ASCII art", and the line breaks are significant. The<BR>
line breaks (long lines) are likely to be messed up in the plain text<BR>
version of this email, but I hope the HTML version will be better.<BR>
<BR>
Vertical bars:<BR>
| Dialect level difference<BR>
|| Language level difference<BR>
||| Great divide<BR>
|||| Major divide<BR>
<BR>
---------------------------------------------------------------------<BR>
---------------------------------------------------------------------<BR>
year 150-700<BR>
</SPAN></FONT><SPAN STYLE='font-size:11pt'><FONT FACE="Courier New"> Proto-Norse (urnordiska)<BR>
</FONT><FONT FACE="Calibri, Verdana, Helvetica, Arial">---------------------------------------------------------------------<BR>
year 700–1200 <BR>
</FONT><FONT FACE="Courier New"> Old Norse (fornnordiska, dǫnsk tunga) 'non'<BR>
| |<BR>
West Nordic (a) | East Nordic (b) | Old Gutnish (c)<BR>
</FONT><FONT FACE="Calibri, Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"><BR>
[Minor dialect differences ONLY; **NOT** the basis for any<BR>
split that came, and any implication that it was is false.<BR>
But there may be some //very minor// and **completely<BR>
insignificant** remnants of resp. dialect here in modern<BR>
languages/dialects. I.e. if these were the actual dialects<BR>
at all, which is highly questionable.] (A)<BR>
<BR>
(a) Iceland, Faroe, "Norway" (very few, and **completely insignificant**<BR>
minor remnants in Nynorsk).<BR>
<BR>
(b) "Denmark", "Sweden" (very few, and **completely insignificant** minor<BR>
remnants in Danish, Bokmål, Swedish of today).<BR>
<BR>
(c) Gotland, some **minor remnants** in the Gotland (Gutnish)<BR>
dialect of Swedish (Gutnish /today/ is a mild dialect of Swedish).<BR>
According to the tree model, modern Gutnish would be on a branch<BR>
of its own, far separate from all the other languages in the tree.<BR>
That would be absurd.<BR>
<BR>
(A) For written material, probably more dialects spoken.<BR>
<BR>
---------------------------------------------------------------------<BR>
1200–1600<BR>
</FONT><FONT FACE="Courier New"> North Germanic<BR>
||<BR>
-------- Old North Nordic ------------- || South Nordic<BR>
| | ||<BR>
Norn 'nrn' | Old Icelandic/Faroese/Norwegian | Old Swedish (B) || Old Danish (Scania and Norway: parts of Denmark)<BR>
<BR>
</FONT><FONT FACE="Calibri, Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"> [Out of these, only Norn has a language code.]<BR>
<BR>
(B) Old(!!) Dalecarlian (apprx. Old Älvdalian) is a dialect of Old(!!) Swedish (but NOT of modern Swedish).<BR>
<BR>
---------------------------------------------------------------------<BR>
1600-now <BR>
</FONT><FONT FACE="Courier New"> North Germanic<BR>
||||<BR>
Insular Nordic (Old North Nordic) |||| Scandinavian<BR>
|| ||| |||| |||<BR>
|| ||| |||| ------North Nordic------- ||| South Nordic<BR>
|| ||| |||| || || | |||<BR>
Icelandic (C) || Faroese ||| Älvdalian |||| Swedish (D) || Nynorska || Bokmål | Danish (written) ||| Danish (spoken)<BR>
</FONT><FONT FACE="Calibri, Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"><BR>
[Except for Älvdalian, these have language codes;<BR>
SIDE ISSUE:<BR>
<B>for Danish: 'da'/'dan' and 'jut' for the Jutish dialect/language;<BR>
though there is no "macro-language" code. Strangely 'jut'<BR>
is marked as "historical" in ISO 639 reg., but (correctly)<BR>
as "vigorous" in Ethnologue. So it is not clear if 'da'<BR>
covers 'jut' (though Ethnologue implies so). Though<BR>
I guess 'da' does cover Bornholmian (apprx. modernised<BR>
Old Scanian, "east Danish") as Ethnologue implies.</B>]<BR>
<BR>
(C) Revitalised and "modernised" Old (West) Norse.<BR>
<BR>
(D) Including (e.g.) modern Scanian (NOT(!!!) "east Danish") and<BR>
modern Dalecarlian and modern Gutnish. From a historic perspective<BR>
one also does the additional divisions into "New Swedish"<BR>
(apprx. 1600-1900) and "Now Swedish" ("nusvenska", modern<BR>
Swedish) (1900-now). 'sv' should apply only to "Now Swedish".<BR>
<BR>
---------------------------------------------------------------------<BR>
---------------------------------------------------------------------<BR>
<BR>
/Kent K<BR>
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