Talk:Övdalian/Archive 1

Own language?

I think claiming the Dalecarlian is a separate language from Swedish is not NPOV. I can find no professional linguist asserting this. --Gabbe 17:42, Jun 19, 2004 (UTC)

It is considered by many, as well by experts, as an own language rather than a dialect. It have an own orthography (if this can be a measure of an own language.) Anyway, I just state some information from: http://www.nordiska.uu.se/aktuellt/alvdalska.htm (its only in Swedish and Daleclarian unfortunately) // Rogper 14:45, 20 Jun 2004 (UTC)

That article clearly mentions that it is traditionally counted as a dialect, that it nowadays has an orthography (it didn't use to have..) and further goes on to talk of älvdalska as a "linguistic variety". Granted, I didn't know about the separate orthography bit, but since a separate orthography can be established quite established almost arbitrarily (especially in lanugages like Swedish or English, where spelling usually has less in common with the spoken languages than in languages/orthographies such as Russian, etc.) I'm all for calling it unique among Swedish dialects, and I'm not trying to deny that it certainly is more different from Standard Swedish than most dialects, but I still feel that calling it a separate language is more of a statement of opinion than a scientifically (that is linguistically) well-established fact, in the sense that it is something generally agreed upon by the vast majority of linguists in the field. Maybe a middle way would be to have the article claim that it is considered by some linguists as being a separate language, or something to that effect? —Gabbe 18:12, Jun 23, 2004 (UTC)

differences

Is this statement really correct?

There are fewer differences between it and standard Swedish than between British English and American English,

When I read information from Nordic language institute in Uppsala I found out that they are quite different. // Rogper 07:22, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)