Talk:Elfdalian

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[edit] Etymology

Has ti anything to do with elven mythology in the Scandinavian lands? I guess it does, better give an etymology... Undead Herle King (talk) 05:38, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

The name "Älvdalen" you mean? No it has nothing to do with elves. A Scandivanvian word for river is älv (spelled elf before the 20th century) and dal is cognate to English "dale" (valley). //Heimvennar - divider 12:55, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] 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)
Dalecarlian has less in common with Swedish than Norwegian or Danish has. I have yet to meet a linguist that doesn't consider it a separate language. How much do you understand out of this text? • [[User:Tsujigiri|辻斬り]] 13:27, 18 Sep 2004 (UTC)
That's ridiculous. You can find examples of old dialects from all of Sweden that are incomprehensible to a speaker of modern standard Swedish. They are dialects of Swedish nevertheless. That doesn't mean they are separate languages.
Yeah, I agree. This is part of a series of misinterpreation of SIL's often quite inexplicable and very inconsistent tendency to classify certain (but far from all) dialects of Swedish as seperate languages. Just the fact that älvdalsmål ("Dalecarlian" is the nonsense-translation dervied from yet another nonsense translation of the Swedish Dalarna) is featured in the sample collection of the Swedish dialect project SweDia, is reason enough to remove the language template. The same has already been done for Scanian language, which was also moved to Scanian (linguistics).
No Swedish linguists, even if they are perfectly aware of the sometimes arbitrary distinctions between languages and dialects, use the term "language" to describe this dialect. I don't mind having a seperate article for the dialect, but I disapprove of the pseudo-English title and think it should have its proper Swedish name älvdalsmål instead, or at something like "Älvdalen dialect".
Peter Isotalo 13:31, May 17, 2005 (UTC)
What about Älvdalen tongue? Seems to me like the most neutral English term. As for the the article, I think it should explain how älvdalsmål has a separate lineage to Old Norse, while traditionally being regarded as a Swedish dialect. Please bear with me if I've got it all wrong — I believe the situation is similar to the Norwegian dialects of upper Setesdal, which are unintelligible with most other dialects, but still considered Norwegian because they're spoken in Norway, by Norwegians, and its speakers write in one of the standard languages. contrapuncti 22:15, May 20, 2005 (UTC)
Let's try to stay away from making our own translations. It wreaked some serious havoc with the articles on the provinces of Sweden. If no common English name exists ("Dalecarlian" is SIL's own completely unsupported concept) then it's best to stick with the Swedish terms that are recognized by almost all linguists. I moved the article, removed the infobox and rewrote the article quite a bit. Still a stub, but now it actually makes some sense.
Peter Isotalo 18:07, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

"New" diphtongs? Aren't the diphtongs old diphtongs, if they were present in Old Norse?

As far as I know, all diphtongs in Älvdalsmål are secondary. But in the dialects spoken just west of Älvdalen parish (Transtrand and Lima dialects), the Old Norse diphtongs are indeed preserved.
Jens Persson jepe2503 AT hotmail DOT com (13 Jan 2006)

[edit] 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)

The statement is very untrue. Just to take a quick example; the Dalecarlian sentence ulum dalska means in Swedish vi ska tala dalska. You will not find such big differences between American and British English. • [[User:Tsujigiri|辻斬り]] 13:42, 18 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I have looked at learning Dalecarlian and it is very different from Norwegian (which I can speak OK), Swedish and Danish. It retains alot of features that I know none of them do and only Jamska, Faroese and Icelandic still have (I think might Gotish too?). I suspect to Swedish-only speakers it probably sounds rather archaic.--172.208.177.147 05:29, 15 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Obviously, it seems like several people have no idea about what Älvdalsmål is. Claiming that it is as close to Standard Swedish as British English is to American English and claiming that it is spoken in Värmland (see below) is simply just a proof that some people should not "contribute" to Wiki. Please, if one does not have even the most basic knowledge about the subject, then do not add to the article in question! personally I have studied Älvdalsmål for five years or so quite thoroughly (on non-scholar level), and it is clear that most contributors here have not. Just to mention one name which is spreading his own biased personal views, often close to being disparaging and insulting to people in question, on the topics of several (dialect related) articles, I mention Peter Isotalo.
Jens Persson jepe2503 AT hotmail DOT com (13 Jan 2006)

"England and America are two countries separated by a common language." GB Shaw Robert Greer (talk) 22:56, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Älvdalsmål spoken in Värmland!?

Exactly where in Värmland is Älvdalsmål spoken? This information puzzles me since the distance between the Älvdalen parish and the border to Värmland is considerable. Did a group of Älvdalen people some time in history migrate to Värmland to form an Älvdalsmål speaking community? Until someone will confirm that Älvdalsmål is spoken in Värmland, I'll remove the claim. (I didn't think I could avoid the word moron describing the one who has claim the statement, but I could.)
Jens Persson jepe2503 AT hotmail DOT com (13 Jan 2006)

Please cite your sources. Your statements need to be verifiable or we can't possible know if you're being neutral or not.
Peter Isotalo 09:30, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
Nationalencyklopedin. (Or, since NE isn't too reliable concerning dialectology, e.g. Bengt Pamp's Svenska dialekter ( http://www.antikvariat1.se/index.asp?Show=R7573 ).) The sources don't say there isn't something called "Älvdalsmål" spoken in Värmland (there actually is such a dialect), but they definitely say that the dialect described in the article is confined to the Älvdalen parish, Dalecarlia.
I suggest you split the article into Älvdalsmål_(Dalecarlia) (the article already existing) and Älvdalsmål_(Värmland) (a new article describing the dialect spoken in Värmland - there's a description about it in the split article in NE).
Jens Persson (130.242.128.119 21:46, 8 October 2006 (UTC))
I forgot to say the following. Please mr Isotalo, regarding your statement that Älvdalsmål (as described in the present article) is also spoken in Värmland, cite your sources. Your statements need to be verifiable or we can't possible know if you're being neutral or not.
Jens Persson (130.242.128.119 21:06, 16 October 2006 (UTC))

[edit] Östen Dahl of Råðdjärum

Mr Isotalo, you did the following edit:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=%C3%84lvdalsm%C3%A5l&diff=74303750&oldid=73682137

where you e.g. changed the statement

"Recently there have been attempts to create a written standard language for Elfdalian through the establishment of the Ulum Dalska association with the help of the Råðdjärum (lit. 'Let us confer') group of Swedish linguists such as Östen Dahl."

into

"Recently there have been attempts to create a written standard for Älvdalsmål through the establishment of the association Ulum Dalska with the help of the groupRåðdjärum (lit. 'Let us confer') and prominent Swedish linguists such as Östen Dahl."

i.e., the original (implicitly) stated fact that Östen Dahl is a member of Råðdjärum is changed into a (implicit) statement that Östen Dahl is not a member of the mentioned group. If you check the reference http://www.alvdalen.se/alvdalska/ (given in the article) you'll see the following statement:

"Råðdjärum, Älvdalska språkrådet började sin verksamhet i augusti 2004. Det består av fem ledamöter: Östen Dahl, Gunnar Nyström, Yair Sapir, Lars Steensland och Inga-Britt Petersson."

i.e., Östen Dahl is a member of Råðdjärum! This was the reference I used when originally stating that he's a member of the group. Now, if you condiser your given information to be more reliable than mine, please cite your sources. Your statements need to be verifiable or we can't possible know if you're being neutral or not.

Jens Persson (130.242.128.119 21:26, 16 October 2006 (UTC))

[edit] Move of article

Please note that contributions to this article on 31 December 2006 and 1 January 2007 (notably the move from Älvdalsmål to Elfdalian) were made by a friend who is interested in Elfdalian. Since I was logged in he happened to write under my username. I can't claim any responsability for changes made nor should I be credited for all his fine work. Likewise, I won't enter into any discussion about these specific changes. --Sasper 16:32, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

"Elfdalian" seems like a good title, but it would be nice to have more than just a single article on the topic as evidence that it is indeed the most commonly used English name. We also have a problem with the definition now because Dalecarlian language redirects here, but is defined in this article as the East Scandinavian dialect group to which Elfdalian belongs. There's also a link to the Ethnologue entry that uses the term "Darlecarlian" for this particular dialect.
Peter Isotalo 18:33, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
"Elfdalian" is the common English name used for Älvdalska today, used by Prof. Östen Dahl among others. See also the English summaries of the articles on Efdalian on [1]. Elfdalian is a member of the Dalecarlian dialect group, in turn a member of the East Scandinavian language group. Unfortunately this information is for some reason not visible in the entry's language classification box. VR
I don't think it is accurate to say that "Elfdalian" is the most commonly used English name. As far as I can tell it was introduced by Dahl & Koptjevskaja-Tamm in 2005 and adopted by Sapir in his article. There seem to be as many articles using the less misleading term "Övdalian." I say misleading because the meaning of älv (Övdalian öv, by regular sound change) is 'river' but the neologism Elfdalian inspires visions of elves. Svenonius 07:24, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
I am by the way in Älvdalen as I write this, doing research on the language/dialects, and the river is culturally extremely salient, so much so that it forms the basis for the system of compass directions; the words cognate with 'west' and 'east' (base forms west- and ost-) refer to opposite directions away from the river, which runs generally north-south; so that where the river bends to run west-east, as it does between Brunnsberg and Karlsarvet (locally Kallser), what English would call 'south' is west. The words corresponding to 'north' and 'south' similarly use the way the river runs, rather than magnetic or polar north. Just in case you thought that it was accidental that the place should be called 'River Valley.' Svenonius
Interesting, but what does this observation have to do with the discussion concerning the word "Elfdalian"?
Jens Persson (213.67.64.22 01:39, 7 July 2007 (UTC))

[edit] "Dalecarlian" and conservation

Currently, the separate classification of "Dalecarlian" redirects here and I can't for the live of me understand exactly what other dialects are supposed to be included in this group. It seems that they both are just pretty different terms for the same thing.

I'm also a tad skeptical to the claim that the dialect is the "best preserved". My experience is that linguists tend to consider these kinds of statements to be over-simplification as all languages experience change one way or the other. The ever-present tendency for younger speakers to differ their speech from their elders, for example, can hardly be absent in Dalarna. So which of the sources actually makes this claim? Could we have a citation either here or in the article?

Peter Isotalo 13:48, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Dalecarlian is the English word for Swedish dalmål (especially österdalälvsmåland västerdalälvsmål). There are many dalmål, e.g. Orsamål, Moramål, Våmhusmål etc.
Please, use common sense when it comes to the claim about conservatism. Do we really have to dig up references supporting obvious claims? If you have the time, you can read Östen Dahl's article Att sätta älvdalskan på kartan where this issue is discussed, especially in chapter 4. In the English summary, Dahl writes:
"It is also shown that the Ovansiljan varieties on one hand belong the most conservative in Scandinavia, on the other display a considerable number of innovations which turn out to be quite widely distributed in northern and eastern Scandinavia. It is hypothesized that these innovations may have have spread from the Mälar provinces during the early Middle Ages, although they are no longer found there, due to influence from the south."
I definitely recommend you to read the article thoroughly.
Jens Persson (213.67.64.22 23:39, 27 May 2007 (UTC))