Talk:Scanian dialect/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

Well written - plenty of references - but basically wrong

I'm at loss looking at this page. It is well written and has plenty of references, but reading it in detail it turns out a lot of it must be considered wrong, misleading or at least not interesting for an encyclopedia. A lot of the page talks about the dialect or even language of Scanian. Talking about Scanian as a dialect makes some sense historically if one goes back in time more than 100 years. There used to be grammatical differences and a larger distinct vocabulary from both Danish and Swedish. However, today it is likely that more than 99.9% of all people from Scania use a grammar and vocabulary that is to more than 99.9% identical to the one of Stockholm. The only noticeable difference is the accent, which admittedly often stumps people from Stockholm in Scania. The article talks about the differences in vocabulary and grammar, and then cites Hasse Alfredsson as an example of a speaker. However, he (and probably the other quoted speakers as well) speaks pure standard Swedish, apart from his accent. His vocabulary would even be considered somewhat strange in Scania, as he occasionally uses words that are more common in Stockholm, where he has been living for the last few decades.

I'm sure one can find similarities between Scanian and the Danish accent of Bornholm, but Scanian is to more than 99.9% Swedish and Bornhomlsk is to 99.9% Danish. They are not the same dialect today, even if they probably were much closer before 1660, when they were separated by a border.

Is this article about the accent or about the dialect? If it is about the dialect, it should admit that almost no one in Scania today uses anything but standard Swedish grammar and vocabulary.

I don't have any references for what I write here, for the simple reason that few people bother writing articles about the obvious, and it is obvious to all knowledgable linguists that Scanian today simply is an accent - not a dialect, not a language.

Note that the Swedish article about Scanian is much shorter. The reason for this is probably that the Swedish and Scanian communities are more reluctant to accept this kind of statements about Scanian. 83.145.93.242 10:53, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Hi there. I'll try to answer point by point, to make sure I don't miss anything. (Glad you brought up the fact that there is a historical Scanian and a contemporary accented Swedish labeled "Scanian". I thought that issue was made abundantly clear in both the Swedish and the English article, but I disagree that it is "wrong" and not "interesting" to highlight both the present, the history and the preservation efforts in regards to Scanian.) About the other points you raise:

*1. The introduction to the Swedish language Wikipedia article about Scanian actually states: "Scanian is a collective concept for several different dialects spoken in Scania." ("Skånskan är ett samlingsbegrepp för flera olika dialekter talade i Skåne"). It is simply NOT true that the Swedish article does not speak about Scanian as dialects.

*2. The Swedish article continues: "It is however widely held that Scanian - together with Swedish and Danish - originated in Old Norse, and some etymological dictionaries therefore separate the three into Old Swedish, Old Danish and Old Scanian." ("En utbredd uppfattning är dock att skånskan - tillsammans med svenskan och danskan - har sitt ursprung i fornnordiskan, och en del etymologiska ordböcker skiljer därför på fornsvenska, forndanska och fornskånska.").Thus the Swedish article DOES NOT differ from the English in suggesting that some scholars treat Scanian as a historic language.

*3. Yes, you are right about the difference in length (650 words +end notes compared to 1500 words +end notes). But please note that the editors of the Swedish article did not have two or three pages of heated arguments to deal with, about whether or not Scanian should be categorized as a Swedish or a Danish dialect, or whether or not it could even be allowed in the Wikipedia language category. The end result of this dispute on the English side, as you can see, was that Scanians are now to be considered speaking lingustics, not dialects, not a language, not an accent, but linguistics. ;) You have to admit that this situation alone takes up a couple of lines to deal with.

*4. Also: please note that nobody on the Swedish side found reason to insert 10-15 or so requests for notations into the text, demanding sources to demonstrate a> that Scanian was ever considered a historic language, or b> that some people in Scania have a separate language identity from the northern, normative dialect for Standard Swedish. Notice that the Swedish article deals with that in one simple blow. It labels the affected Scanian adaptation of the northern dialect "P1-skånska", (radio-program 1 Scanian).

*5. Last, but not least, please note that the Scanian Swedish side has a SIL box showing the language code, etc, etc, which makes the whole wordy paragraph about that information superfluous on the Swedish side. However, on the English side, it was removed, even though the organization that is consulted on all the other language pages had already designated Scanian a language. It appears the resistance against the removal of the box was abandoned only after some kind of agreement that the Scanian box would be the only one pulled and thus the only one which the organization designating SIL codes could be judged wrong about.

*Very last---just a quick note about Hasse Alfredsson, since you point to him as a bad example of Scanian: the article actually states that he speaks with "a Scanian accent", so that should not be a point of discontent, I hope? However, I wouldn't be too sure of what language skills Mr. Alfredsson does or does not have. Having spent a large part of his childhood summers in a row boat on the lake Värsjön, absorbing up close the utterly foreign tongue of an amazing (and locally (in)famous) old character from the forest of North Scania, Hasse will no doubt know more than the accented Swedish you may hear him perform on P1. Best, Pia

Pia 21:42, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

I feel embarassed that your answer is much more structured than my initial criticism. Well done! You are right that the Swedish article mixes the two uses of the word as well. However, I mostly still don't agree.

"Scanian (skånska (help·info)) is a closely related group of dialects spoken in Skåne (Scania)." No, it is not a group of dialects currently spoken. Hardly anyone speaks the dialect (with grammar and vocabulary differences from standard Swedish). Does anyone have any evidence of any single living speaker? Scanian is in almost all cases used to refer to the accent (pronunciation variant) of Skåne. The word can also be used to describe the historic dialect, but that is rarely done. This is what I mean by a misleading statement. The difference should be made already in the introduction.

"It is considered by some Scandinavian linguists to be a dialect of Swedish, by other Scandinavian linguists to be a dialect of Danish, while many early linguists, including Adolf Noreen1and G. Sjöstedt2, classified it as "South-Scandinavian"." Still talking about the historic dialect - not the accent.

"It is however classified as a separate language by SIL International (ISO 639-3:scy) and is assumed to include not only the dialect of Skåne but also those of Halland (halländska), Blekinge (blekingska), and the Danish island of Bornholm (bornholmsk). " Using present tense all the time here, but then a reference needs to be given. Who claims that the current accent of Bornholm has more to do with current Scanian than with Danish?

I would suggest changing the header "History" to "Historic Scanian Dialect". The header "Today" could become "The Contemporary Scanian Accent". The sections from Edvard Perssons could go under that section.

The sections about Vocabulary and Sounds I think are perfect. That is interesting information, as long as it is clear that they refer to the modern Accent. Adding similar sections for the historic dialect would also be interesting. There is quite a lot of data published about the old vocabulary.

When it comes to Scanian being a "language" according to SIL, I think that is their problem. We can reference it and say that they think so for some unexplained reasons, but that doesn't make it true that Scanian would be a "language".

83.145.93.242 10:52, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Reading the above statement, and reading previous archived statements and concerns raise about the use of the Info box within this article That when claims are made about the article as a whole being wrong the people making these claims need to identify themselves by logging in . Also given the nature of this statement it is only reasonable that references are clearly visable to support claims. Gnangarra 11:20, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Dear 83145, Concerning: "No, it is not a group of dialects currently spoken." Sources for this claim would be crucial, because I have never before seen anybody else present the claim that the Scanian dialect is not spoken anymore. You may want to follow some of the links in the article to listen to some samples if you have doubts of the existence of a Scanian dialect. Also, in this context, please explain how "Hardly anyone speaks it" can be equated to "does not exists." This is a logical fallacy. A botanists arguing this way would have to conclude: "In this meadow almost all the flowers are dandelions so therefore Primula veris do not exist and need not be protected or written about."

Concerning accented Swedish: If you think the accent aspect is neglected, maybe there could be a separate article that focuses more on this, or maybe a section of the Swedish language article that deals with different accents, including an overview of the excellent work produced at the Rinkeby institute of Multilingual Research. Immigrant varieties of Swedish has also been the focus of some worldclass research at Göteborg University. Concerning Scanian, in my view it is important to include both the historical aspects of the dialect/language and the more recent varieties of the adaptation of Swedish by Scanians, because obviously, the two are related. Sourced material with research that establishes how a strict differentiation can be made in the continous spectrum of language-dialect-accent when it comes to Scanian speakers, would be a truly wonderful addition. That could then be used as a base to rename the sections and change the tense as per your suggestions. Best, 71.107.14.149 20:18, 29 May 2006 (UTC). <<<(I'm on a work computer and can't allow cookies, which makes me logged out after a certain time period. I neglected to check to make sure I was still logged on before I signed. Got to type faster. Sorry Gnangarra.) Pia 20:29, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Pia, I think part of our disagreement (if there is any) is the definition of the word "dialect". The word "dialekt" in Swedish is usually used to describe an "uttalsvariant", a different pronunciation from the standard language. However, that is not the scientific definition, and it is much rarer to use it in that sense in English. A dialect needs significant proper vocabulary and grammar - something current Scanian lacks. It is of course impossible to tell when the Scanian historic "dialect" changed into the current "accent". How would one determine when the proper vocabulary changed from a "significant" size to a "not significant" size? However, what is undisputable is that the Scanian you usually hear today is not a "dialect" in the linguistic sense. It is an accent. As far as I know, no one has written that down, for the simple reason that it is obvious to everyone in the field. You can check with anyone at the nearest department of linguistics, if you don't trust me and my trustworthy IP-address.

I think I have followed all the links in the article, but I have found no samples of current Scanian dialect. Feel free to point it out clearer to me.

I think the accent aspect is well covered in the article, but it is so mixed up with the dialect aspect that it is difficult to tell which is which.

I completely agree that one should keep descriptions of both current accent and historic dialect in the same article. But it has to be clear to the reader when s/he reads about one or the other. 83.145.93.242 08:36, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

The user 83.145.93.242 is making his own interpretations of words and such. But Wikipedia is not the place for original research no matter how correct it is, and I'm not going to debate it. That SIL International, the possibly most renowned linguistical classification, calls it a language is of no importance to 83.145.93.242 , which IMO shows how much we should care about his opinions.

The only thing 83.145.93.242 has done is to critize our current references, but without providing any references to support his own views. Applicable policies: Wikipedia:No original research and Wikipedia:Verifiability

Fred-Chess 15:14, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Dialect: "A dialect is a complete system of verbal communication (oral or signed but not necessarily written) with its own vocabulary and/or grammar."

Dialect: "If the distinctions are limited to phonology, one often uses the term accent of a variety instead of variety or dialect."

SIL International: "SIL International is a worldwide non-profit evangelical Christian organization".

SIL International: "While widely respected and used by the academic community, it is nonetheless not 100% accurate, and has a tendency to 'split' into languages what others might term dialects, which attracts a significant level of criticism (e.g. here) from some linguists."

SIL International: "The 14th edition, published in 2000, included 7148 language codes which generally did not match the ISO 639-2 codes."

SIL Criticism

83.145.93.242 15:55, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Yes, indeed 8345, it seems like we are making progress. You started out suggesting that the article was wrong because Scanian is not considered a dialect today and now we are in agreement that one would be hard pressed to, as you say, determine when the "proper vocabulary" changed from a "significant size" to a "not significant size" and that there is a continuum between the accented standard Swedish "uttalsvariant" P1-skånska and the old dialects of Scania. Many modern studies of Scandinavian dialects indicate that the identity of a dialect is to be found within the prosodic features and more specifically within the realization of the tonal gesture of focally accented words. It is therefore problematic to demand the use of a definition in a Wikipedia article that is not used in present scholarship and which is rendered utterly arbitrary by your addition of the word "significant". Your suggested definition for this Wikipedia article would actually declare that the academics in the field are involved in the study of something you say does not exist, a rather odd claim for a Wikipedia article. The dialect article you refer to also works against your definition, as it highlights the fact that in the Anglo-Saxon tradition, scholars are discussing Standard American English, Standard British English, and Standard Indian English as being standard dialects of the English language. They are obviously also involved in something you would not consider correct usage of the term dialect. What’s worse, in anthropological linguistics, dialect is defined as "the specific form of a language used by a speech community". That would make Scanian a language. Can’t have that, now can we? ;) When it comes to Scandinavian academia active in the dialect field today, the linguistics researchers of dialects insist they have no problem finding the Scanian dialects you say do not exist. And it’s not only the long-running collection performed by DAL (which I have linked to and which I hereby specifically refer you to) but also new projects, such as the rather large group of scholars at Universities of Umeå, Stockholm and Lund involved in the project Swedish Dialects. When answering the question, "Are those genuine dialects?" about the material they are collecting, the scholars state quite categorically: "Yes absolutely. There is a misconception that genuine means old, but from a scientific point of view, that reasoning is of course pure nonsense." None of these scholars seem aware that Scanian dialects do not exist. Please supply a source claiming this, so that we can stop arguing about it and get to work adding more dialect features to the page, as per your request, so that Scanian can be better distinguished from the dialects that formed the norm for Standard Swedish. There is an enormous amount of literature on this, as you know, including many attempts to answer the question asked by Gårding in Gårding et al, 1974. "Talar skåningarna svenska", (Do Scanians speak Swedish), p 107-117, in Platzack, Christer (red.), Svenskans beskrivning. Lund: Institutionen för nordiska språk. Best, Pia 22:25, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Also, please note that "Dialect" is not used in Scandinavian research in a way that would make it an odd or different use of the term, as evident by the papers published for the international community, without any alteration to the term "dialect", by the participants in the SweDia project. See one of many scholarly papers born out of the project, here: "A pitch accent journey in southern Sweden", where pitch accent gestures were studied for some dialects in the south of Sweden for classification according to prosodic dialect type, internal variation within a prosodic dialect type and transition between dialect types. Pia 01:22, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Pia, I changed the indent of your sections to show which of my sections you answer. I hope you don't mind.

My aim here is not to be "right" about what is a dialect and what is not. My aim is to give advice to change the article so it conveys the right impression to the reader. I know that "dialect" even in English sometimes is used when there only are pronunciation differences. However, it is not the most common way to use the word, and the word "accent" is much less ambiguous. Besides it doesn't imply things we don't want to say. That's why I recommend it. Use standard words for standard concepts.

I'm not fond of the word "dialect" in any context because of its ambiguity, but in some cases I can see that one uses it for lack of better words. In English you can talk about a "French accent" and a "Yorkshire accent". But in Swedish you talk about a "fransk brytning", and you cannot say a "närkisk brytning" as it might imply that there was something wrong with it. Hence the Swedes often fall back on "närkisk dialekt". That researchers writing about "betoning" (accent) in an article about a variety of speech choose to use the word "dialect" for the variety of speech to avoid talking about "the accent's types of accent" is hardly surprising.

I didn't quite follow what you wrote about American and British English. Did you imply that they would be closer to each other than Scanian and Standard Swedish?

Anyhow, I think I have written what I have to write on the subject. If no one else is convinced, let's just leave the article as is. If someone feels inspired to look further into the subject, feel free to do so. Yours truthfully 83.145.93.242 10:43, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

"If it is about the dialect, it should admit that almost no one in Scania today uses anything but standard Swedish grammar and vocabulary."

1. It does state that the vocabulary isn't significantly different from standard Swedish these days.

2. It's simply not true that people don't use vocabulary that's different from standard Swedish. For example some people might complain about their children's "Skitta hossor" (Standard Swedish "Skitiga strumpor".) Påg and tös is still used, especially amoung older people. I could give more examples. And these aren't words that are only used by 90 year old farmers but by regular Scanian people. /Jiiimbooh 20:03, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Summary

• User:83.145.93.242 concern with the article is the translation of Swedish dialekt to the english dialect that the sources quoted in the article actually mean dialekt to be translated as accent. The reasoning is that the use of the Swedish brytning which translates as accent would cause confusion when used in Swedish where the subject is Scanian.
• Pia was supporting the current wording of the article, and inquiring as to the reasoning for the claim the article is basically wrong.

Conclusion

User:83.145.93.242 without sources to support the statement, User:83.145.93.242 has agreed to leave the article in its current state and left a request to inspire others to investigate the use of dialekt by the article's sources.

This summary was written by Gnangarra based on the arguements and responses presented above Gnangarra 12:13, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

my reason for following the discussion was that I had just promoted the article to GA and that if the article was basically wrong or sufficient doubt over the facts presented then I would nominate it for delisting from GA.Gnangarra

Why not have a "native speaker" pronounciating skanska in the audioclip, instead of having some guy trying to sound like a scanian speaking? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.250.104.230 (talk) 23:20, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

It sounds to me as if the language or dialect group has converged with Swedish to such a point that it is now a variety of the Swedish language essentially diverging mainly in pronunciation. This is the case today with Lowland Scots, which historically had a separate orthography and grammar, but today has converged back into English as an accent variety of the English language, and for similar political and social reasons, ie change of government and state. أبو خالد إبن المهندس (talk) 20:22, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Triphthongs

Good summary of the previous discussions, Fred. You're doing newcomers and outsiders a big favor by cleaning up the talkpage. Kudos.

About the triphtongs, though. Is this something you've read or heard about or was it just a guess? I just want to make sure I didn't delete something that should've been in there.

Peter ^Isotalo 14:24, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm certain it isn't the best possible summary (very subjective thing to write of course) but I wrote what I remembered... you could probably add a paragraph if you think I have left something important out...

About the triphthongs: I read it the first time when I was in school, in a Svenska-bok in the chapter about Swedish dialects. I think it was in 7-9th grade. My experience is also in agreement with it.

--Fred-Chess 18:16, August 2, 2005 (UTC)

Do you have any examples of these triphthongs?

Peter ^Isotalo 03:30, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

I have even heard about quadruphthongs in Scanian, so the existence of simple triphthongs is nothing I doubt. // Hunef 130.242.128.85 21:20, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Triphthongs most assuredly exist in skånska ("quadruphthongs" do not.) I attended the Swedish Institute's 1996 and 1997 summer courses in Bohuslän and afterwards spent time both years in Lund, where there was a fine used book store owned by a gentlmen -- in his best years, as the Swedes say -- who spoke skånska replete with triphthongs. Finding recordings of them in the public domain is doubtless difficult, although a Swedish actress I've directed speaks several dialects of skånska as well as rikssvenka -- and unaccented English. Robert Greer (talk) 21:27, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Unbacked statements

I see nothing to back this statement up: " Although the dialect is influenced by the region's proximity to Denmark, most Danes today consider Skånska to be even harder to understand than Swedish.". In my experience (I live near Helsingør) Skånska is much more easy to understand than the other Swedish dialects and most people I know acknowledge this as well. Of course, this is just my opinion and it shouldn't be included for that reason. Neither should that comment, so I'm removing it.

I've heard that Danish people have trouble understanding Skånska. I myself (as a "skånian speaker" ;)) understand Norweigan better than Danish. /Jiiimbooh 07:22, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

You need to have references to back it up. There is no lack of references however. For example: jk-konsult: "Av någon anledning, jag vet inte vilken, har dansken svårare för skånska än för andra svenska dialekter." (For some reason, I don't know why, the Danes have more difficulties with Scanian than other Swedish accents.)

Or Oeresundsbron.com: "Skåningar bör vara återhållsamma med diftonger. Skånska är svårare för danskar att förstå än rikssvenska." (It's best for Scanians to use their diphthongs sparingly [when speaking with Danes]. Scanian is more difficult to understand for Danes than standard Swedish.)

The experience of the first poster is hardly surprising, as s/he lives close to Scania, and there are plenty of Scanians travelling around that part of Denmark.

So yes, Jiimbooh, you can put that phrase back into the text. 83.145.93.242 06:44, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

It would be better to refer to a proper study; otherwise you'll have another "he says--she says" story between business consultants, etc. The issue of "mutual intelligibility" is tangled web indeed. As shown by the Comparative Semantics for Nordic Languages (NORDSEM) project, which dealt with Swedish, Norwegian and Danish, comparative linguists point out that these language varieties are historically, lexically and structurally very similar and systematic semantic differences between them are hard to analyze: the formal semantic analytic tools that have been developed mainly for English and German may not be sufficiently fine-grained to account for the differences among the Scandinavian languages. As a matter of fact, some linguists would argue that Swedish and Danish are just dialects: mutually intelligible, too similar, not sufficiently differentiated in vocabulary, syntax, etc, etc to clearly constitute different languages, except by convention. See the more radical version of "historic linguistics" in the wikiarticle on dialects you pointed to before). It is therefore a given that Danes would understand Standard Swedish, if they put some effort into it. Perhaps the diphthongs in the Scanian dialects are troublesome to some Danes, but if so, then we need to consider whether or not Danes could understand a Visby accent better than a Göinge accent. And how about a Bergen accent as opposed to a Simrishamn accent? If it's not the diphthongs, how about a Föllinge accent and an Ystad accent? (I'm starting to wonder if this is a new slant on the accent theory, to argue that Danish dialects are becoming Swedish accents too now, by sheer exposure to Standard Swedish on TV? Or is the argument that Scanian is just as different from Danish as it is from Swedish?) :) Peace, Pia 13:51, 5 June 2006 (UTC)(Pia)

You also have more authorities like:

Nordisk Språkråd: "”'Skånska är lättare än rikssvenska för danskar.'” Detta är en skånsk lokalpatriotisk missuppfattning. Många skåningar förstår danska bättre än vad andra svenskar gör och menar därför att danskar skulle förstå skånska bättre än annan svenska. Någon riktig ömsesidighet föreligger dock inte; danskar i allmänhet anser själva att de förstår rikssvenska bättre. Rikssvenskan har ett mer bokstavsnära uttal, och det är mest rikssvenska man hör i etermedierna."

The same text is published at Kirke- Utdanings- och Forskningsdepartementet

And then you have Swedish Wikipedia, which takes up the same thing. 83.145.93.242 15:40, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes, the www.nordisk-sprakrad.no is a much better source. Very interesting. (Especially Professor Ulf Teleman and his predictions about the future of the spoken language in the region.) But about the quote you chose: I don't know anybody who is "local-patriotic", so I can't answer for what may or may not have been argued by such an individual, whether from Svealand or Scania, about the language competence of Danes. Considering that the Swedish Wikipedia article states that in modern use in Sweden today, patriotism refers mainly to groups with neo-Nazi and white supremacy tendencies, I tend to think it is put here on Wikipedia as a gross insult, which becomes active with the simple additon of [ [ wikilinking]]. Disregarding that: One would imagine that it would be more important for any type of "patriot" to stress the uniqueness of the area he/she feels patriotic about instead of its dependence on another for culture and language. And: It would only seem crucial from a centralist ultra-nationalist or patriotic view to stress that Scanian and Danish are in some way fundamentally different and that since Denmark is "the other", the alien element invading the Swedish pureness in Scania, it must be kept at bay and the historic relationship between Scania and Denmark hidden away. Neither Swedes nor Danes have had to engage in code-switching or been forced to learn (a) new mother tongue(s) so to me it is totally natural that Scanians would be more flexible and better at comprehension (as are the Norwegians, according to the report). The fact that spoken Standard Danish is much further removed from written Danish than spoken Standard Swedish is from written Swedish may of course explain why Swedes can't understand Danes and why Danes understand Swedes a little better. Since there is no written Scanian, we can't talk about Scanian in this context, of course. Best wishes and thanks for sharing these articles, Pia 18:31, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

I browsed through your last entry, but I gave up when you started talking about neo-Nazis and ultra-nationalists. If you want an article about that, I have nothing against it, but it hardly belongs in this article. Could you give a short summary which just talks about the linguistic aspects? Thanks. 83.145.93.242 06:37, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Certainly. Let me spell it out for you: The most efficient way to keep the focus on the issues is to refrain from making inflammatory and rude comments such as the one you manage to introduce above by quoting a DN journalist/Swedish language teacher who made the somewhat flippant and typically 'mass media cute and catchy' summary of the findings in the report. The person writing the first entry above stated that in his or her experience from living near Helsingør, "Skånska is much more easy to understand than the other Swedish dialects and most people I know acknowledge this as well." You labeled that opinion a "skånsk lokalpatriotisk" misconception by the use of a quote. I am pointing out to you how the Wikipedia article defines the Swedish usage of that term to show you that this type of label has no place here. Back to the real issue: the study is based on the interview of how many Danes? If 300 persons in total were interviewed in Scandinavia, were maybe 50 Danish speakers? And does that mean that we must categorically state that Danes in general have problems with Scanian and if we disagree because of personal experience such as the above, that we must be labeled? With respect, Pia 08:02, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

By the way, I'm not at all arguing against the inclusion of the results in the article about Scanian. I think that would be nice actually. Without the labels. Pia 08:30, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Continuity of ideas

The first two paragraphs of the article seem to be a bit confused in how they communicate information. Anyone mind if I attempt to edit them a little bit? P.MacUidhir 20:18, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

I have edited bits of the article, changed the order in which some ideas were presented, and revised a few other things in the first two-thirds of the article. There remain quite a few unsupported assertions within the article, mostly dealing with evidence of Skånska possessing unique dialectual elements. Is there anyone editing this article that can provide that data? Perhaps the person/people who originally inserted the data in each instance?

If anyone objects to my edits, feel free to let me know. P.MacUidhir 23:37, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

The move

I must say I really prefered the old article title, even it was slightly bulky. Considering we're encouraged to use English when possible, it doesn't make sense to use the Swedish term. Especially not when it contains umlauts that few are familiar with. I'm also fairly sure that the majority of our readers don't really know how to play .ogg-files.

Peter ^Isotalo 17:12, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

Regarding .ogg files- do you know of a popular file format that is comparable in quality to an .ogg file whilst also being free of copyright issues in using the file compression algorithm? .mp3 is certainly not a good idea. P.MacUidhir 00:57, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

"Scanian" is, per se, probably better title than "Skånska", but since we have "Skåneland", "Skåne", and other dialect as "Halländska", etc, this must be the most consistant. Fred-Chess 09:44, September 5, 2005 (UTC)

Skåne-map

Could we switch the current map? It's quite misleading since halländska and blekingska are considered separate from Scanian. And please avoid linking to Skåneland unless actually discussing the term itself. It's not in general use in Sweden and I doubt that most Swedes or even Scanians are even aware of the term.

Peter ^Isotalo 11:27, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

I switched the map back because the SIL's definition of Scanian includes halländska and blekingska, and I've said so in the text. As I understand it, the English term "Scania" usually means the area described at Skåneland rather than the area described at Skåne (Scania is a dab page that links to both). I wouldn't mind having [[Skåneland]] changed to [[Skåneland|Scania]], though. --Angr/_{tɔk tə mi} 09:51, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Bornholm

On Bornholm, the Danish language is spoken. The dialect on Bornholm is Bornholm Danish, because Bornholm is and has (almost) always been a Danish island. It has nothing to do with modern Scanian, where the dialect is a Swedish variant.

// Fred-Chess 10:53, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Actually, the Bornholm Danish is a lot more "Swedish" than other Danish dialects, which is partly due to the dialect being one of the old East Danish dialects, but also due to the heavy immigration wave in the 19th century by Swedes, mainly coming from Småland. At one time 1/3 of the population in the northern areas (surrounding Sandvig/Allinge) was, in fact, Swedish.

// Johan

Number of speakers

According to the current article there should be 80 000 speakers. Being a native Scanian myself I find that figure hard to believe. Scania itself has approx. 1.1 million inhabitants. Of course not all of these speaks Scanian, but I'm leaning towards the conclusion that there should be another zero. Remember, according to the article Scanian should also include the Hallandian and Blecingaean (and possibly Bornholmian) dialects. Any thoughts?

// Johan

Johan, that number may accurately reflect the amount of people able to speak a Scanian which is more or less unaffected by the Swedification process, or at least demonstrating an element of resistance to a it. Regarding the various degrees of Swedification: It is often possible to establish how far the process has proceeded in seperate cases simply by analyzing the labeling and use of derogatory name for that group of speakers. A random example, one in a sea of such unreflective prejudices: Trelleborg skånska is labeled "lantlig", as in "uneducated farmer" in comparison to certain variants of Malmö skånska because it generally uses more Scanian "slang", that is Scanian words not present in Standard Swedish. The label "ädelskånska" always amuses me, is that a reaction to the labeling or the ultimate in Swedification with twist? ;) Best, Pia 19:34, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

Infobox

The language infobox should stay in this article. The infobox is designed to be used in all language articles, and its flexibility allows it to be used very widely. The infobox can be used for all languages, dialects and varieties, and is an integral part of the template agreed at WikiProject Languages. As the reason for removing it was given that the number of speakers is questioned, I have added a link to the source. If other sources can be found, they can be used. --Gareth Hughes 13:14, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

SIL's figure has no source whatsoever. It seems to be pure guesswork and no one has even attempted to define what separates these 80,000 people from the 1,1 million living in the region. I don't agree in the least that the template should be used for any dialect or variety and I have yet to see any support for this. There's no reason to keep it except to state that one single figure and keep SIL's unsupported classification tree. Until there's more substantial support for Scanian from both linguists as well as the speakers themselves as a well-defined separate entity, the infobox should not be in here.

Peter ^Isotalo 14:44, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

I suggest that the number of speakers be changed if a source is found to support a new number, as I am fully aware of the raggedness of Ethnologue's data. To call something a dialect is wholly subjective, and not being sufficiently distinct does not stop any lect from being language. The infobox is neutral: all that it says is given in the article. There is nothing in it that makes it unsuitable for the merest of idiolects. The actual reason for removing it has yet to be given. --Gareth Hughes 16:45, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

It's not a matter of finding a different figure, it's a question of the figure being bogus to begin with. There's no source given for it and there's no reason to believe that SIL has made a serious attempt at collecting those statistics. And calling a dialect is indeed subjective, but in this instance only a tiny, tiny minority considers it a separate language with virtually no support from academic linguists. And this has nothing to do with conservatism, because the consensus concerning, for example, älvdalsmål is very clear. Most linguists recognize it as a separate language and there are attempts at producing orthographic standards. No such attempts are being made for Scanian except by excentric regionalists. Including the infobox only to show off the completely hoaky stats serves no reasonable purpose and I'm removing it. I do not agree that there is any kind of consensus or practice of using the language infobox for widely recognized dialects or varieties (and certainly not ideolects).

Peter ^Isotalo 12:37, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

Peter, I'd agree with Garzo on this, on basis of wikipedia:verifiability: "the threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth!. // Fred-Chess 14:35, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

I included the 80,000 figure in the lead when I removed the infobox, so no information has actually been removed. I am, however, intending to point out in prose that SIL does not back this figure up. There's no information as to the origins of this particular fact. The verifiability policy clearly states that sources have to be reliable and credible. In this case, SIL seems to be neither.

Peter ^Isotalo 17:04, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

I see the infobox has been removed again, with the phrase see talk. I cannot see the reason given here. Peter, the infobox does nothing other than display information provided in the article. The infobox does not say how many speakers there are, but simply provides a field for that information. As you are only agrieved by this one line in the infobox, you should change it, not remove the entire thing. What you have failed to do again, is to say why the article cannot have the infobox. Don't just say something about one number you don't like, tell us really why you don't want it. --Gareth Hughes 17:16, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

I don't think that obvious and really undisputed dialects should use the infobox. I especially don't like the thought of ideolects and the like using the infobox. To me it seems like a way for language POV-fighters to blur the at least somewhat reasonable destinction that does exist between recognized language and dialects. Taking the strictly academic it's-all-subjective-attitude just doesn't strike me as being a good idea in an encyclopedia with NPOV as its main policy.

Peter ^Isotalo 19:17, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

SIL is an authority on languages, so I would suggest you take it up with them. I also think that if you say "most linguists" treat it as a dialect, it would be nice if you mentioned other respectable linguists (internationally recognized) who say that Scanian is a dialect. Not because I disagree with you, but because it would make the claim more respectable. / Fred-Chess 10:33, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

Actually, I am coming round to Peter's point of view. I maintain that the infobox is neutral, but concede that it might not be appropriate for language varieties (though I say this with caution, because I do not want to see the infobox pulled from lots of other pages). Actually, what I was trying to get Peter to say was that the infobox adds 'undeserved' respectability to the status of Scanian. That line, I feel, is non-neutral. I do hold that the popular language-in-its-own-right is entirely subjective, but would still place a more cautious threshold for an 'individual' (SIL's term) language. In these cases, the test is almost wholly socio-political, and there is plenty of precedent among linguists for recognising certain varietal lects as individual due to socio-political pressure. All of these decisions are controversial, and always so on their respective Wikipedia pages. As for SIL, we all know that it is flawed in so many places, but it gives a very useful broad-brush linguistic view. It is interesting that, even though SIL is the registering authority for yet completed ISO 639-3 codes, Ethnologue 15 published a page for Scanian with the code scy, but the SIL documentation to accompany the codes says that scy does not exist. It seems that its presence in Ethnologue is a carryover from the 14th edition, and that a decision has been made somewhere to exclude Scanian from ISO 639-3. As a native British English speaker, I know a number of dialects that are quite distinctive and have their own pecularities of vocabulary and grammar. However, due to their being completely subsumed by the standard dialect, they are little more than curiosities anymore, and are not really spoken by anyone. Relating this situation with the Swedish linguistic landscape, which I know very little about, I completely understand Peter's point of view, and agree with it. In the end, I return to the point that the removal of the infobox is normally a retrograde act, and would not be the correct choice in every article. --Gareth Hughes 11:14, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

So did that mean that you think it's justifiable to do without the infobox in this article, Gareth?

I made a few edits to the lead after pondering the content for a while. In trying to represent the Scanian-as-a-language POV, we've overlooked the fact that the term would to the majority of Swedes (and Scanians) mean the dialect spoken in Scania, and not the wider definition of SIL and the regionalists. I've tweaked the lead to reflect this fact more accurately.

Peter ^Isotalo 17:43, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Yes, you did read me correctly. I notice that Jamtska is in a similar position: Ethnologue 15 gives it a unique ISO 639-3 code, but the code can not be found in the documentation for the draft standard. --Gareth Hughes 13:21, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

Is it an requirement to be in the SIL-database to be able to utilize the language infobox? I thought that infobox was for both languages and dialects. (Although I wouldn't define scania and jamtlandic as dialects more than danish, norwegian and swedish is separated from old norse. _→AzaToth 16:44, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

I guess you are not going to get an answer. I believe the reason this box was removed and the reason for the vehement arguing against a historical view of Scanian as a language is purely political. The University of Lund has more than a million notes of Scanian words and expressions which are not subjected to scientific study because the State of Sweden does not accept that the Scanian language exists. It is obvious that some posters have a personal stake in not allowing Scanian to be recognized and thus divert funds from other minority languages which are closer to their hearts. If I understand the reasoning for erasing the box, it was based on the following arguments: 1> Scania is neither a state nor a country. However, the box remover task force has left all the other language boxes for various dead languages (that is, languages with no speakers) and many minority languages within other states, and even something as odd as Loxian. The argument that Scanian doesn't have enough speakers to warrant a box is therefore highly questionable. 2> Scanian has no standardized language or a written language. But neither does a lot of other languages with boxes. 3> Scanian is fully understandable by other Swedes. Thus the Scanian speakers can not be excluded from speakers of the Swedish language. However, the Meänkieli box has been left alone, even though the same person who removed the Scanian box states that it is not a language, but a Finnish dialect. Peter Isotalo states: "the Finnish speakers of Tornedalen (in northern Sweden) were forced by the Swedish state to use Swedish in school earlier this century that when they finally got recognition of their native language (which is really just Finnish dialect), they decided it was 'their language', which is what Meänkieli literally translates to." And the Scanians were not? How many in Tornedalen were killed and impaled for resisting this Swedification? May I point out that some sources estimate the Scanian losses to close to 25 percent of the population. That makes this statement about the Finnish speakers of Tornedalen pretty interesting: "The Swedish state screwed these people royally and the result is this sense of regionalism. It's lamentable, but it's hardly fair to blame the Tornedale-Finns for this. That Scanian or Scanians have been suppressed in a similar manner is probably not even claimed by those few crackpot separatist regionalists that do demand that Scanian be given official minority status." Apart from strong condemnation of the insults continuously forwarded by this person towards people interested in the preservation of Scanian culture and language preservation, ("crackpots" is one of the milder ones, the most common ones being references to his mistaken perception that all Scanians who consider Scanian worth preserving are separatist eccentrics), I just want to say that the region is on its own when it comes to research, not by choice, but by necessity.

If there was no vote on the removal of this box, I suggest it is reintroduced. If the consensus is that it should be removed again, let the record show that people had a say in this matter and do a proper voting process on the matter. 71.106.244.66 04:52, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

GA

Facinating read, well done to all who have edited this article, Gnangarra 13:17, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Vocabulary, "rälig"

Under Vocabulary, this statement is found: "While the general vocabulary does not differ considerably from Standard Swedish, a few specifically Scanian words exist (..) rälig, "bad" (Standard Swedish ful, äcklig, dialect Danish: rærlig)"

This statement suggests that the word rälig comes from Danish. This is misleading.

The word rädelig has been comonly used in the Swedish language, although it has fallen out of use in modern times (replaced by the German loan-word (förskr)äcklig in the rest of Sweden).

Nordisk Familjebok 1800-talsutgåva, Digerdöden http://runeberg.org/nfac/0605.html, in a statement by king Magnus Eriksson (14th century Swedish): "Vi haffuom förstondit för visso rädelig tidende.." (the rest of the quote can be found at the link).

Herman Lindqvist in Historien om Sverige supports this idea. I'm sure academic research also exists which support that this word was used in Swedish as well. My guess is that it's an Old Norse word, perhaps stemming from rädd.

Scania was ceded to Sweden before the German influence on the Swedish language. For this reason, even claiming that the Scanian use of the word comes from Danish may be inaccurate.

I have little knowledge in Danish and this paragraph is a minor point of mine, but judging from the wording of the current edit, I take it that rälig isn't used in Danish today except in some dialects. In this case it would mirror the situation in Sweden, which makes the reference to Danish a bit irrelevant; it may as well point to Swedish. There is no evidence cited in the article which claims that the use of rälig in Scanian is out of Danish influence, as opposed to Swedish influence, although either would be equally plausible I suppose. The Swedishification of Scania was probably quite thorough. Or does the writer consider Scanian a Danish accent? If so the word would have come into Scanian from Scanian, and that can't be right.

In conclusion, I find it highly inaccurate to claim that rädelig/rälig is a Danish word.

This is for someone else to pick up and consider editing the article, unfortunately I don't have the time to reseach this further myself. --Dsandlund 05:20, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

There is a lot that could be improved in that section. I have come to think of several words that are Scanian. I don't have the necessary references to back them up, but it should be possible to acquire such references... it is also the issue of current-day Scanian vs the historical Scanian -- some supports of Scanian can easily mention hundreds of words that are Scanian, but few that I would use or have heard anyone use. Among the older generation, there is some unique vocabulary -- again it depends if one should focus on the "historical" Scanian or the modern day. In some areas, Scanian is no more a dialect than it is an accent.

Some standard references would be nice; I'm sure the vocabulary section could be improved.

Fred-Chess 12:37, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Fred, as it is now, the list of words is focused on words that is used now, and in no way claims to be a complete list. I've sinced added the word "pantoffel" as an example of a more old-fashioned, but still well-known word. I think this list of four words is enough, as the aim of the list is just to give a few examples, not to teach the reader how to speak Scanian.

And BTW I don't really agree with your statement "In some areas, Scanian is no more a dialect than it is an accent." There are probably many things people say and never think of as being dialect. "Vars en, vars två" is dialect. In standard Swedish it's "varsin/en var, två var". The game pjätt is called different things in different parts of Sweden. "Fjor" instead of "fjol". "Bytade" instead of "bytte" is common in Scania but appears to be almost non-existant outside of Scania. Things that people think of as being dialect seems to be disappearing in just a few generations, but things that people never think of as dialect appears to be surviving also in younger generations. /Jiiimbooh 20:24, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, there have been significant contacts between Danish and Swedish for a long time, as two closely related, geographically adjacent languages, so the exact origin of a word is difficult to find. Both http://g3.spraakdata.gu.se/saob/ and http://runeberg.org/svetym/ states that "rälig", is related to swedish "rädd", (afraid) and "rädas" (to be afraid), lit. "to cause afraid-like", i.e. originally "scary", both Swedish and Danish examples are given. 惑乱 分からん 09:53, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

The wording was mine, and I hadn't noticed it had become the object of confusion. I am pretty sure the word rærlig is quite old, but I haven't investigated it further. I am no linguist. I mostly associate this word with Funish. The word also exists in other forms of Danish I have seen it spelled as both ræddelig / rædderlig / rædelig / ræderlig. If I had to chose between these, I would personally pick "ræddelig". Btw, although slightly outdated, Danish still has the word ræd which has the same meaning as rädd. Ordbog over det danske sprog might contain more information. Valentinian ^{(talk) / (contribs)} 15:13, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

The word tös is understood all over Sweden. But you should not try to use it in Denmark. There it it means a very special type of girl. --Vedum 13:31, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

I have inserted "rädelig" as former Swedish. According to SAOB (rälig) it's "etymologiskt identiskt med RÄDELIG" ("etymologically identical to rädelig", I don't know how good this translation is) so it's definitely relevant info. /Jiiimbooh 20:54, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

påg , "boy" (Standard Swedish: pojke, former Danish: poge / pog) has been change to: påg , "boy" (Standard Swedish: pojke, former Danish: dreng). Isn't it better to compare påg to pog, than to compare it to dreng? Also isn't dreng current Danish? Maybe the user changing pog to dreng didn't realize that it said "former Danish" and change it because he/she didn't recognise the word pog? /Jiiimbooh 20:02, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Dreng is the word used in modern Danish. Pog was a word used commonly centuries ago. The only instance where it might pop up in modern Danish is when a school states that it can trace its origins back to the former pogeskoler. In this particular case, the old word is normally the one used. I've updated the page accordingly. Valentinian ^{T / C} 23:46, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

SIL International

Should one really refer to SIL International's claim that Scanian is a language? The reason I mention this is because in the late 90's (or perhaps year 2000?), I succeeded to make the organization adopting Jamtlandic as a language. My point here is not to say Scanian (or Jamtlandic for that matter) is not a language, but that one may argue that the information provided by SIL International may be based on data given by people who may not be the most reliable sources. The fact that a 20 year old guy (i.e. me in late 90's) with no linguistic "weight" could make SIL International to adopt Jamtlandic as a language, which they most likely had never heard about before, without scrutinizing my (back then naïve) claims makes their information rather irrelevant.

Jens Persson (130.242.128.85 21:08, 14 November 2006 (UTC))

Jens, I don't think this article should be the battle ground for how SIL International defines languages. It needs to be fought out, or straightened out, on the SIL page itself, and more importantly, with the Wiki group concerned with linguistics, and then implemented for all Wiki language related articles that mention the SIL International classifications. I am going to remove the recently added, unsourced, comment about the SIL International definition from the Scanian article and let this article simply state the NPOV fact that Scanian has been classified as a language by SIL International---until a more general policy has been worked out in regards to SIL Int classifications. The definition of language vs. dialect is in itself POV influenced, so deleting one side is usually heavily influenced by nationalistic tendencies. Considering the recent march of a certain right-wing Swedish state-nationalist party into Scanian regional politics, that would be right up their alley. Pia 22:43, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree we shouldn't discuss SIL's internal affairs here. But exactly how important is SIL in the context? What kind of organization is it? Even though we should not discuss internal affairs of SIL, we should definitely discuss SIL as a source.

Pia, which is your agenda concerning Wikipedia and Scanian?

Jens Persson (213.67.64.22 18:37, 25 March 2007 (UTC))

Lack of empirical evidence

There is NO empirical evidence for the existence of a seperate Scanian language! The SIL International clasification is based on flawed data collection. The persons claiming Scanian to be a laguage of its own do so for ”regional patriotic” reasons not linguistic ones! They mix up words from differnt sources and just IMAGINES that they represent a single varity. They also claim Scanian to be decent of Danish: showing that they don't know what they are talking about. Originaly, there was a group of multually underastanable dialects called East Scandinavian. The dialects in the politically cental parts of Sweden was standardised into Swedish. Simultanously, the dialects spoken by the ruling classes of Denmark was standardised into Danish. Most of this process happend AFTER Scania was conquered by Sweden (1658). Thus, the claim is a lingistic anacronism.

How should we clasify present-day Scanian? Its sound system is slightly closer to Standard Danish than Standard Swedish. The vocabulary is clearly closer to Swedish than Danish. I have no reason to belive that the grammar differs more from Standard Swedish than other dialects. Consequently, Scanian is a Sewdish dialect not a Danish!

2006-11-16 Lena Synnerholm, Märsta, Sweden.

The 80 000 speakers of the "Scanian language" are not possible to identify in any way. It is a figure taken out of thin air. It is probably "constructed" in the same way as discribed by Jens Persson above. The SIL could be fooled in many ways and is not a reliable source. But, unfortunatly the WP is jammed with persons who WANT Scanian to be 1) a language of its own or 2) a Danish dialect. The truth (Scanian just being a group of Swedish dialects among many others) is not interesting for theese individuals. --Vedum 16:00, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

The 80 000 "speakers" are still mentioned in the article, but nobody seems to be interested in discussing this very dubious "fact" here. But if anybody deletes this information I am sure it will be restored in less than a day. So, somebody prefers to believe it. Is there any source at all (other the SIL), confirming this number? --Vedum 13:27, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Still no discussion here. But I made a minor change in the article (just for a test). In just TWO MINUTES it was reverted! The alarm system is efficient, congratulations! --Vedum 23:11, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Dear Vedum, I have this page on my watchlist like several hundred other pages. It is simply a bad idea to edit a referenced sentence without adding new sources or removing the original source first. The topic of the article is unimportant in this respect. I would have reacted the same way if this type of edit was made to the article about Maria Feodorovna (Sophie Dorothea of Württemberg). Cheers. Valentinian ^{T / C} 23:23, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

I personally would not consider modern Scanian to be a seperate language (or Danish) but I think it's an interesting and relevant fact that SIL considers skånska/Scanian to be a seperate language. Ofcourse the article could be updated with more sources who claim that Scanian is a Swedish dialect. /Jiiimbooh 19:47, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Does anyone have a copy of Nationalencyklopedin?

Since the article points out some different views on whether Scanian is a Swedish or Danish dialect or even a seperete language I think it would be appropriate to list NE's definition since they are generally considered to be a very reliable source, but I don't have a copy of NE myself. /Jiiimbooh 18:05, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

The "Scanian lobby"?

This discussion page is very interesting. The very small group of Scanian "regionalists" must be consisting of a buch of extremely persuasive persons. I must say, that I in some strange way admire them. They have succeded in making "Skåneland" a member of UNPO and they have also succeded in making the SIL accepting "Scanian" as a language. And they have almost taken over Wikipedia in some langauages then it comes to Scania and related topics. But they are almost unknown to the general population in Scania and even moore in Sweden as a whole. --Vedum 23:08, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, I succeeded in making Jamtlandic a language in SIL when I was a naïve 20-year-old in the 90's. It must have been even easier for a Scanian organization to make Scanian a language in SIL. Of course, SIL doesn't control the provided information. They just accept it, perhaps after confirming that the speech in question is not a ConLang.

Jens Persson (213.67.64.22 18:43, 25 March 2007 (UTC))

Linguistic description

The text about Scanian and its status throughout the centuries is very elaborated, but there is practically no description of the language/dialect in itself, only a few examples. Would be nice to have a more elaborated text on the actual speech. I am not comptetent doing this, though. Jens Persson (213.67.64.22 18:51, 25 March 2007 (UTC))

80,000?!

Who are the 80,000 persons speaking this "language". Most people who are born and raised in this province speak a regional variety of Swedish. They are about 1,000 000. But who has pointed out 80,000 of them being speakers of a language of its own? The info comes from Ethnologue. But I do not think they have "counted" these people themselves. There must be an original source for this number? Anyone who knows? --Muniswede (talk) 13:06, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

it should be "hungry" not "hungy" please fix

I fixed it, but you do know that you are able to edit articles yourself, do you? Just press "Edit this page" while reading an article. :) /Jiiimbooh (talk) 23:47, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Mikael Wiehe

I'm wondering what Mikael Wiehe's price taking of the Martin Luther King Price is doing in Scanian (linguistics). He is singing in Swedish with a Scanian accent. That info is more fit for the article of Mikael Wiehe and Scania, no offense against Scania or Scanianism whatever, but this price taking is a little too far from the topic of Scanian language. Said: Rursus ☻ 07:18, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

As you seem to know the "difference" between "Swedish with a Scanian accent" and the "real language" you could perhaps tell us about the "80,000 speakers" mentioned above. Who are they, where do they live and how do the speak? --Muniswede (talk) 10:26, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Time to remove the "80,000 speakers"

As I returned here after a couple of months of abscence I see the those strange 80,000 speakers of the "Scanian language" (out if the 1,200,000 inhabitants of the province) are still here. There are no hard evidence for the existence of them at all. Nobody knows anything about them and they are only mentioned by SIL, which is not a very good source. It is extremely easy to fool them. Someone has obviously done that. --Vedum (talk) 12:27, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Provide a source for this please? It should be clear that not everyone living in Scania speaks Scanian dialect. Traditional dialects have had diminishing numbers of speakers all across Europe - Sweden is no different, and most people in Scania speak standard Swedish, perhaps with a Scanian regional accent, but without the features of the traditional dialect. ·maunus · snunɐɯ· 09:02, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

Most people born and raised in Scania speak "Scanian", using e.g. uvular trill and diphthongs. T. But which is really the original source for those famous "80,000"? They were mentioned by Ethologue in their 15 Edition (2005), and only there. But they are not included in later editions. That means of course that SIL has realized that this was wrong and removed it. But who "invented" them in the first place. There are no other sources on the Internet than this Ethnologue 15th Edition. Until there are more reliable sources this extremely dubious information should of course not be in the article.--Vedum (talk) 09:27, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

Scanian dialect and scanian accent (use of uvular r and diphthongs) are not the same thing. And of course the ethnologues claimed number should be in the article untill a more reliable source contradicts it (or at least some published source). The SIL removed Scanian altogether, not just the number - probably because it lacks any recognition as a separate language rather than simply a regional accent and a traditional dialect.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 09:32, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

But I do not think that SIL or Ethnologue just picked the number "80,000" just out of thin air. They must have got it from somewhere. It would be interesting to know the "original" source for this very doubtful information. --Vedum (talk) 21:26, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

I have done the B in BRD and removed it, since it seems to be just a random number. There's no way to know how many speakers there are since it's not registered anywhere, and it's better to not have a number in the infobox than to have a number that is just a guesstimate. Any estimate also depends on where you draw the line between different languages/dialects in a language/dialect continuum, so there's no point in having a number if you don't know what it's based on. Thomas.W ^talk 22:37, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

That is not the B when it had already been boldly removed and then reverted. Then it is just editwarring. We use ethnologue data in all language articles even though any seaker number assigned to any language is necessarily a guesstimate. I dont see why this article should be an exception to that general rule.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 07:27, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

OMG! Is this still an issue here? I just looked into the latest version of Ethologue here: [1] and this is not mentioned at all. They talk about 5,000 speakers of "Gutniska" ("1998 S. Håkansson)" and 30,000 of "Jamska" (without a source). I agree that a mistake made by them in the 15th Edition is not a proper source. --Muniswede (talk) 08:05, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

I was asked to weigh in on this by Vedum.

I agree with the majority opinion here. Sure, there is the concept of "traditional dialects" in Swedish, but it's so dated by now, and so loosely defined that the categorization is essentially useless. I understand the underlying reasoning behind the idea of a "Scanian accent", but the term itself is misleading; native speakers don't have accents. What we're talking about here is what a lot of linguists in Sweden consider to be a regional variant of Standard Swedish, but this regional variant is what virtually everyone in Sweden today thinks of as skånska. So trying to narrow this down to rural dialects that are by now long gone doesn't seem reasonable.

And as for Ethnologue's figures, they simply aren't relevant since they appear to be pure guesswork. There's no relevant attribution to any source and Ethnologue doesn't actually engage in research of its own. The original figure of 80,000 dates back from the time when Scanian enthusiasts managed to convince SIL that Scanian was a separate language. This nonsense has been amended, so if any figures are to be used, it should be based on research on Swedish contemporary dialects.

Peter ^Isotalo 15:23, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

Peter I did not expect this degree of ignorance of basic sociolinguistics from you. No, traditional dialects and accents are well established concepts and easily defined. And yes native speakers have accents. In fact everyone ha an accent. An accent is a variety of speaking that is characterized by pronunciation and intonation differences within a single grammatically and lexically homogeneous variety. Standard varieties and prestige varieties are also accents. ·maunus · snunɐɯ· 19:00, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

And I didn't expect you to get personal.

I haven't seen the term used with that kind of consistency, so I'm pretty skeptical to the suggestion. If you think otherwise, just produce the sources to back it up. Leinonen is quoted here but doesn't use that term.

Peter ^Isotalo 23:15, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

He says this: "The MDS analyses showed that the dialect areas that can be detected based on vowel pronunciation in modern rural varieties of Swedish largely correspond to the traditional Swedish dialect division and divisions of regional varieties of Standard Swedish." which is obviously exactly the same distinction - he just talks about reional varieties of Standard Swedish instead of "accents" , but that is entirely irrelevant. The use of "accent" in this sense comes from the British tradition of dialectology, in Danish regional "accents" of Rigsdansk are also generally called varieties, but they are accents nonetheless as they are simply pronunciation variants of the standard variety, and correspond exactly to the English accents. ·maunus · snunɐɯ· 07:11, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

Seems like Leinonen is using terms that are more descriptive and quite unambiguous. Can't think of a better argument to apply it here. And it's not exactly the first use of the concept of "regional varieties of Standard Swedish". "Accent" has a problem in that it has multiple meanings to the average reader. And it doesn't even seem to be used consistently. We could always point out that "regional varieties" is more or less identical to accent (sociolinguistics), though.

Peter ^Isotalo 17:35, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

I agree with some of what you write, but not with the most essential parts of it. Rural Scanian is very far from just a "regional variant of Standard Swedish", since it differs from Standard Swedish in everything from vocabulary and prosody to syntax and grammar. As anyone who has bothered to do some fact finding, and has spoken to people who use rural Scanian, would know. What you're doing is confusing rural Scanian with the dialect of the Swedish language that is spoken in urban areas, a dialect that has many traits of "real" Scanian but isn't "real" Scanian. Thomas.W ^talk 15:34, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

I dont knbow what is the usual nomenclature in Swedish, but in Enbglish what you call rural scanian would be called "traditional scanian dialect" and what you call urban scanian would be called a "scanian accent". This is the same way it works in Denmark and England. where traditional dialects are spoken by tiny rural minorities and most people speak one of several broad regional "dialects" or accents.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 19:00, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

Both varieties are called skånska in both Swedish and Scanian, which is probably why most people further north in Sweden (particularly in and around Stockholm, it seems...) don't know that there are actually two very different varieties of skånska, one old and one new, with the old one being far from "long gone" as Peter claims. And even "urban Scanian", when spoken among native Scanians, differs enough from Standard Swedish to be very difficult to understand for most speakers of Standard Swedish, which is why people speaking even "urban Scanian" sometimes require subtitles on Swedish TV... Thomas.W ^talk 19:20, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

Sample text, a poem by se:Nils Ludvig: http://www.medialive.se/ludvig.htm Thomas.W ^talk 19:40, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

Of course there are more "genuine" dialects spoken mostly in rural areas and by elderly people, and also more "modern" Scanian accents of "Standard Swedish" spoken by the vast majority of the population. It is like that in most provinces of Sweden. That is not a problem with me. But most of us seem to agree that the number "80,000 speakers (of the genuine dialects)" is not reliable in any way. So, it is time to remove it from the article once and for all. But it would nevertheless be very interesting to know where it stems from. Someone must have calculated and in some way or another come to this conclusion. But who and then? --Vedum (talk) 21:39, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

move

I found the old 2005 move discussion after moving this article. I'll give my reasons for moving it again in a minute. kwami (talk) 00:42, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Okay. First of all, the current title "Scanian dialects" sidesteps the issue of whether Scanian is a language in its own right or a dialect of Swedish or Danish. It is, after all, a group of dialects regardless of its higher classification. Therefore there shouldn't be any POV problems with it.

Secondly, "Scanian" isn't a linguistic term, so the old title was misleading. People have used this article to argue for making an "X (linguistics)" article for every entry X in Ethnologue that specialists in the field do not recognize as a separate language. It's just sloppy to keep going this way: a workaround for an ambiguous topic is one thing, but an inaccurate tag to be used whenever there's a hint at disagreement, rather than actually doing our job and working the issue out, is another. We're going to end up with a mess of hundreds of "linguistic" articles that aren't in any linguistic glossary. Hopefully "X dialects" won't be so attractive to this kind of over use. kwami (talk) 00:52, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

A very good step taken by Kwamikagami. --Vedum (talk) 20:11, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

I didn't quite understand the bit about "Scanian" not being a linguistic term. Could you please explain how you reached this conclusion?

Peter ^Isotalo 12:56, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

The "(linguistics)" tag is a rather poor choice, as it is in all these cases where we're using it to sidestep the issue of language vs. dialect. The word "Scanian" isn't particularly linguistic. You won't find it in a linguistics glossary, for example, and the primary use of the term is not that of linguists. Hopefully the plural "dialects" sidesteps the issue. If not, perhaps it can be moved to Scanian, and that page moved to Scanian (disambiguation). kwami (talk) 18:03, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

I always thought the parenthetical disambiguation was a good solution. "Skånska" is more than common enough in Swedish usage, even if "Scanian" might not be all that easy to find. I don't think that "(linguistics)" is as much a way of saying that it's formalized terminology, than saying to which topic the article belongs to. The parenthasis would only be a problem if the article was actually about a term, rather than a dialect or group of dialects.

Peter ^Isotalo 09:22, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

GA status

I'm trying to take part in the GA sweeps that try to check whether or not articles that have become GA before a certain span of time still meet the actual criteria. Looking at this article, I mostly wonder whether purely linguistic info should be presented in more detail. After all,

1. Scanian dialects are likely to have an inner taxonomy the is not dealt with in the article.

2. The presentation of sounds is VERY short, doesn't go into details and doesn't give examples. Given that this kind of data is usually very readily available, this might be a reason for demotion.

3. There is no info on morphology or syntax whatsoever.

4. A subset of the information doesn't have in-line references, eg sounds.

This looks like reasons for demotion, but I don't really know the subject and might be wrong. Thus, before initiating a GAR, I'd be glad to get some comments on my observations. G Purevdorj (talk) 18:55, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

GA Reassessment

This discussion is transcluded from Talk:Scanian dialects/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the reassessment.

As I noted ten days earlier,

1. Scanian dialects are likely to have an inner taxonomy the is not dealt with in the article.

2. The presentation of sounds is VERY short, doesn't go into details and doesn't give examples. Given that this kind of data is usually very readily available, this might be a reason for demotion.

3. There is no info on morphology or syntax whatsoever.

4. A subset of the information doesn't have in-line references, eg sounds.

This looks like good reasons for demoting this article from GA status. If someone is willing to address these concerns, I might try to find some other points of relevance that might have to be addressed, but for the time being this should suffice. G Purevdorj (talk) 22:45, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

I suggest that you just go ahead and demote it if you don't think it's up to the standards, since it's been well over a week. It is shockingly poor on certain linguistic aspects. The main creator of the article, User:Pia L, doesn't seem to be very active these days (one edit since October). Lampman (talk) 18:14, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, just realised that what you wrote on 1 June was not an actual GAR. So I suppose you should wait till Tuesday then, though it seems unlikely that anything will happen. Lampman (talk) 18:18, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Well, you were right, nothing happened. So I'll delist.

Scanian being the epicentre of some Swedish traits?

I just came to think about the following. In Swedish there are, among others, two specific characteristics which Danish does not possess: (1) the "thick" pronounciation of the combination sj-, and (2) the (semi-)fronted pronounciation of u. One would naïvely expect that Scanian is on a middle ground between Danish and Swedish having a "semi-thick" sj- and a slightly (semi-)fronted u. Strangely, this is not the case. Instead, Scanian dialects consistently show an even thicker sj- (resembling a German ch as in doch) than Swedish one, and the Scanian u is typically more fronted (resembling a Swedish y) than the the Swedish one. In fact, the pronounciations of sj- and u in dialects spoken in Sweden actually become more and more "continental" (i.e., less and less "Swedish") the further north you go. Hence, in the northernmost part of Sweden, sj- and u are "thin" and (near)-back, respectively, not very difefrent from Danish.

Ther question is, does this mean that Scania, despite being a former part of Denmark, has been the epicentre of traits which we today consider more or less typical for Swedish (in contrast to especially Danish)? If so, this should be mentioned in the article.

JiPe (217.208.138.58 (talk) 00:25, 27 July 2009 (UTC))

I would think the truth is more complex than that. I think those traits are isoglosses or similar. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 12:46, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

[Wow, almost exactly one year ago I wrote my original post and almost exactly six months ago since the answer by 惑乱 Wakuran.] Of course, we are speaking about isoglosses here. It's of course possible that the typically Swedish pronounciations of sj- and u originated somewhere north of Scania and that isoglosses have moved around such that it today seems like it's Scania that invented these typical traits of Swedish. Maybe dialectologists have a theory on this. But the observation of a consistent north-to-south gradient of the mentioned Swedish traits makes your mind think otherwise.

JiPe (193.10.117.248 (talk) 19:02, 2 August 2010 (UTC))

Title

Why the article title "Scanian dialect ()" ? It looks confusing. Is it a typo? 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 09:53, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

Temporary placeholder. Just needs to be moved by someone who won't break the incoming links. — kwami (talk) 12:23, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

Honestly, I don't see the reason for the move from Scanian dialects to Scanian dialect. It is technically considered to be a group of dialects, and plural should therefore be considered more correct. In modern day Sweden different dialects are sounding more and more alike, but the article also has a historical perspective. /Jiiimbooh » TALK – CONTRIBS 22:35, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Yes it is a group of dialects (or perhaps accents is a better term in English, even if we say dialekt in Swedish). There are great differences between different parts of the province. It is of course part of a dialect continuum where for instance parts of southern Småland and northern Scania have very much the same accent. The Öresund strait constitutes, however, nowadays a rather sharp limit to the Danish language spoken on the western side. This is of course a result of the strait being a political and national border for 350 years. Scanian has become more and more "Swedish". In the same way Bornholmian has become more and more "Danish", because the island remained a part of Denmark. --Vedum (talk) 18:39, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

If memory serves, I was the one to move it to the plural in the first place. Yet when I started checking sources, they all referred to the Scanian dialect, singular. However, you obviously know more about it than me. If Scanian forms a coherent set of dialects/accents, such that this group can be called a dialect, then we should use the singular, per the usual WP convention of using the singular where possible. If, however, there is no such thing as a Scanian group of dialects except in the name, then the plural would be better. My impression from the lit was the former. — kwami (talk) 22:29, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Nothing about "language" and "culture" in peace treaties.

There are some "urban legends" circulating on the Internet regarding the peace treaties between Denmark and Sweden. The most "popular" of them is: "Here did Sweden (as in 1660) agree to Scanian rights of own law, own language, own culture and own right to property". (like it is described in this article). Terms such as "language" and "culture" are not mentioned in any of the treaties. --Vedum (talk) 14:45, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

According to this article the treaty of Roskilde mentions the right of Scanians to keep privileges, laws and customs - a 16th century way of referring to what we today call "culture". Do you have a source saying that the Roskilde treaty did not mention this? ·maunus · snunɐɯ· 09:38, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

This source states that "Historically, the Swedish region of Skåne was part of the kingdom of Denmark. Under the 1658 Treaty of Roskilde, territories now included in the Skåne region were transferred from Denmark to Sweden, but Danish remained the official language until the early 19th century."·maunus · snunɐɯ· 09:45, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

"Culture" is a very broader concept. There was no meddling in how Scanians wove quilts, told ghost stories or carved flax threshing tools. The article in SvD is actually quite specific about changes in laws and various statutes. They were very important, but they should not be elevated to mean "culture" in general.

That Danish remained "the official language" until the early 1800s sounds like some sort of misunderstanding. The statement isn't qualified or explained in any way and there's no source for that claim. The article is clearly not about history and the authors are not historians.

Peter ^Isotalo 23:42, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

Here's a more sensible explanation.[2] The written standard was changed, but that meant very little to most Scanians. Not that many were literate and very little of human communication at the time was in written form. Before industrialization, not even the most determined state could impose any relevant changes to spoken language.

Peter ^Isotalo 23:55, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

And the languages are rather similar. There were not really a "written standard" up until the 19th century. The provincial law, the so called Scanian Law was in force until 1683 when it was pelaced by Swedish national law. This is often descibed as against the Treaty of Roskilde. But on the other hand in same year the Danish Code substituted the provincial laws also in Denmark. So the Scanian law was retained until 1683 both in the parts ceded to Sweden and in the remaining Danish part. So there is really not so much to argue about. In both countries the time had come for national laws for the whole country. --Vedum (talk) 11:18, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

the interminable population edit-war is back

Edit-warring over the population again base on a "consensus" to remove it ten years ago, but I don't see any consensus.

The 14th ed. of Ethn. had "1,500,000 (1998 Scanian Regional Institute)".

The 15th ed. had "80,000 in Sweden (2002)", but also listed Bornholm in Danmark.

By the 16th ed. the ISO code had been retired, and there was no entry.

— kwami (talk) 03:58, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

Kwamikagami Why don't you read the discussion above before starting an edit war over it? Consensus is to remove it since A) Ethnologue don't tell us what it's based on (there are no official statistics) and B) the number 80,000, or any other number for that matter, can't be found anywhere else, and not even Ethnologue include it any more. So don't add it back again. Thomas.W ^talk 05:01, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

I did read them. There is you and Vedum say you don't believe the figure just because you don't, and the linguists here pointing out how ignorant your comments are. That's not a consensus. We have a source for the population, so unless you have a source that the figure is wrong, we will go with that. Ethnologue doesn't include it any more because the ISO code for Scanian has been retired. Your straw-man argument has been debunked several times but you keep repeating it, suggesting that you don't have a legitimate argument to support your POV. — kwami (talk) 16:08, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

Kwamikagami You just proved that you did not read it properly, because if you had you wouldn't have claimed that I removed it because of some POV. What I wrote was the direct opposite to what you seem to believe, since I said that I feel the figure is too low, not too high, but that since we don't have any better figure and don't know what the Ethnologue figure is based on it's better to not have any number there at all. BTW, do you always rush into discussions feeling you know best, better than anyone else, or is it just here? Thomas.W ^talk 16:20, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

I know you think it's too low. That's why I pointed out that the 14th ed. of Ethnologue had 1.5M, which they corrected to 80k in the 15th. What does that have to do with disproving sources? You have no source to suggest that the given value is incorrect. It may be, I have no idea, but IDONTBELIEVEIT is no better a reason than WP:IDONTLIKEIT. — kwami (talk) 16:28, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

And a few regular editors here agreeing that it's better to not have any number at all in the article than to have the Ethnologue number trumps you not believing it. A fact that unfortunately doesn't seem to stop you from reverting ad nauseam. Thomas.W ^talk 16:41, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

THERE IS NO AGREEMENT! Where do you get that idea? Your opinion is just that: an opinion. It's not "consensus" and it's not "agreement". There is a world outside your own head. You and Vedum do not like the figure because you do not believe it, based on your personal expectations, but your comments above suggest you do not know what you're talking about. Maunus and I want to follow sources (I really shouldn't speak for Maunus, but that's what his edit restoring the figure suggests). Vedum deletes the figure, Maunus reverts Vedum, you revert Maunus, I revert you: there is no consensus, no agreement, just an edit war over whether the only sourced figure we have should be used. I see no problem following WP policy until you or Vedum can present a reasoned argument that the figure you do not like is actually inaccurate. — kwami (talk) 19:46, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

• In case anyone is interested there is more about this on User talk:Kwamikagami#Totally unacceptable edit summary. Thomas.W ^talk 19:57, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

Here are the arguments for deletion so far this year in the edit summaries:

• Ethnologue themselves has removed it [or] Not even Ethnologue reconizes them anymore [or] They admitted it was a mistake.

No, Ethnologue removed the entire language. The figure went with it. There is no edition of Ethnologue where they retained the language but rejected the figure, nowhere they said the figure was in error. The figure that they indicated was a mistake was the one for 1.5 million, when they replaced it with 80 thousand.

• It has NO reliable sources.

I admit Ethnologue isn't the greatest source. But it appears to be all we have here. And no cogent reason has been given to believe it's wrong.

• A dialect can not be a dialect of another one.

Of course it can. Editor does not understand what a dialect is.

• More than one million persons speak this dialect/accent.

A dialect and an accent are not the same thing. As pointed out before, there could be very different numbers of people who speak Skanian vs those who speak standard Swedish with a Skanian accent. Also, Ethnologue corrected their figure from 1½ million to 80 thousand, so they do indicate that was a mistake. (Speculating here, but perhaps this is a difference between 1.5M Skanian accent vs 80k Skanian dialect?)

• Removing random number.

No evidence provided that the number is random.

• There's no way to know how many speakers there are since it's not registered anywhere.

There are lots of ways to estimate populations of speakers.

• My personal impression is that the number is too low.

Your personal impression is not evidence, and not a legitimate argument for WP.

As Maunus put it, please argue your case with sources instead of editwarring to remove sourced information. — kwami (talk) 20:08, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

As this number (80,000) has no reliable sources whatsoever it should not be inte article. Not even the Ethologue (in the one edition where it was mentioned) could present a real source. In the 14th edition (1,5 million) they gave "Scanian Regional Institute" as a source. WTF is that?? There is no such "institute". --Vedum (talk) 21:43, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

Presumably the "institute" reported that number, and they corrected themselves with the next edition. But Ethnologue is of course a source. Unless you have evidence that the number is wrong, it stays. — kwami (talk) 23:35, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

There has to be EVIDENCE that this number is CORRECT! Even Ethnologue has dropped it (and Scanian as "language" all together). They were fooled. This "institute" has never existed. This nonsense has to be stopped! --Vedum (talk) 06:51, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

This is wrong. A reliable source is evidence, in so far as wikipedia is concerned. Whether or not you believe it to be correct is irrelevant. It is however possible to make an editorial decision to exclude a figure that we find likely to be spurious. And I could be convinced that this might be warranted here. Except that I have not seen any coherent argument for why the number shouldnt be trusted - except for the argument of those who dont distinguish between the accent and the traditional dialect.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 12:25, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

Well I surely distinguish between the accent and the traditional dialect, but still feel the Ethnologue number shouldn't be trusted, since we don't know what it's based on... Thomas.W ^talk 12:30, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

Skepticism is good to be sure. But it is not an argument. And it is not reason enough to exclude this information from the only entity in the world that actually specializes in researching and reporting speaker numbers for the world's minor languages.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 12:34, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

Under normal circumstances I wouldn't question it, but reporting 1.5 million in 1998 and 80K in 2002, with no explanation for either figure, makes me doubt the quality of their research in this case. Thomas.W ^talk 12:39, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

That certainly suggests a probable change in criteria from an inclusive to a conservative one. And sure it would be nice to know the criteria. But adding the number doesnt mean that we mean to claim that it is Gods truth - just that it is the figure given by Ehtnologue. The figure is for example also reported by [The Cambridge Handbook of Endangered Languages, who simply state that "ethnologue lists a population of 80,000". Ethnologue figures are never exact or fully reliable, but they give basic ballpark figures, and they help us compare populations across languages. I dont see why presenting their figure of 80,000 should be considered unreasonable for that purpose. At least untill a better source supersedes it.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 13:00, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

There are no official statistics about the use of dialects or accents in Sweden. The administrative unit Skåne län (almost equivalent with the province) has almost 1,3 million inhabitants. About 18 % of them are foreign-born, mostly speaking Standard-swedish with an foreign accent (in Swedish "brytning"). People from other parts of Sweden living in Scania seldom acquire the local dialect. On the other hand Scanian-born persons living in other parts of the country mostly retain their way of speaking. So, an estimation could be something around 1 mllion speakers. How many of them are using more "original" rural forms? I do not think they have been "counted". But the number is probably diminishing, due to urbanisation, mobility &c. But why "80, 000". It could be 100, 000 or 25,000 or whatever. There is no number with a great consensus about it. So, "80,000" should not be treated as a "fact". And the "original" source is still unknown. --Muniswede (talk) 09:32, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

You are engaged in OR. If you have a better published source, great, but WP is an encyclopedia and so follows sources, not your estimation of WP:TRUTH. — kwami (talk) 17:44, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

@Maunus: Heard back from SIL. They say the figure was taken from an email message sent 2/10/2003 from Malte Lewan Neelsen:

The population is 1,617,000 (2002 Dec 31), but the number of speakers is much less. Most speak Swedish today. Noone has calculated the number of speakers, but the linguist Kjeld Kristensen has written (Dansk for svenskere, 1995) that about 5% of the Danes speak local languages and since Scania demographically is very similar, then that could mean that about 80 000 speak Scanian.

So it's a very rough estimate, but that's true for most of the language and dialect populations on WP. Really, a large number of language estimates we use are based on nothing better than this. That unfortunately is simply the state of knowledge at present. — kwami (talk) 17:42, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

Very interesting. The "source" is apperently Mr Malte Lewan [[3]]. He is not a linguist or scientist of any kind, but a "regionalist activist" who in 2002 registred his own political party, Sv:Skånefederalisterna. This party got 0.03% of the votes to the regional assembly and was soon dismantled. The "source" is therefore far from "neutral" but has a strong own agenda. Thank you for this information! "80,000" is a guess from a layman (who himself admits that "noone has calculated the number of speakers") based on dialect speakers in another language! Obviously too much even for SIL; it was removed already in the next edition. But it made great damage and is still circulating, more than 10 years later! --Vedum (talk) 21:27, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

As far as I understand it the "King of Skane" was the source of the 1,5 million figure, and Kjeld Kristensen was the source of the more conservative estimate based on Danish traditional dialects.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 07:29, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

If you wish to challenge the validity of the source, then let's discuss that. But cut the bullshit. You know full well that Ethnologue never rejected the figure. If your purported reasons are lies, it's going to be hard to take your claims seriously.

Meanwhile you have no consensus to delete sourced information. — kwami (talk) 22:00, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

SIL/Ethnologue was apparently ashamed, being fooled twice. In the Edition of 2000 they reported a "language" called "SKÅNE" with 1,500,000 speakers and a very obscure source ("Scanian Regional Institute"). Then they got an e-mail from another layman and regional activist who "estimated" the number to 80,000 and so they put THAT number inte next edition (2005). No checking up whatsoever! They deleted this "language" altogether in the 2009 Edition when they realised it was a hoax! They perhaps "never rejected the figure" but they do not mention this bullshit anymore! If you look above under "SIL International" you can see that it was very easy to fool them. Jens Persson admits he did that when it comes to Jamtlandic. --Vedum (talk) 22:23, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

They deleted it because the language was argued to be fully mutually intelligible with Swedish. Which it of course isnt, as anyone who has seen Snaphanerna knows. The argument that it was fully mutually intelligible was the state's response to petitions of Scanian nationalists to have Scanian given protected minority status.It was the Swedish state that objected to Swedish regional varieties being assigned language codes as a part of their attempt to thwart the Scanian petition for protected status with EU. ·maunus · snunɐɯ· 07:33, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

It might help to incorporate the 80,000 speakers figure in the text of the article. How would you phrase it? Would you say that it's a rough estimate? Would it be acceptable to qualify it as a "rough estimate" in the infobox? Alakzi (talk) 22:37, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

It is not even a "rough estimate". We now know how it was "created". It has no scientific value whatsoever. --Vedum (talk) 06:28, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

It was created through an comparison with the estimate of the number of speakers of traditional dialects in Denmark. And yes, it should be included in the text, there are about a dozen reliable sources using the number and referring to Ethnologue - so it needs to be there. The question is whether it should be excluded from the infobox. I have not yet seen a valid argument that it should.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 07:29, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

That it is such a highly questionable "fact" must be seen as a valid enough argument not to put it in the infobox. It can be mentioned somewhere in the text, but only with the whole bakground. But, it is so embarrasing for SIL and Ethologue so I think it better to just forget it altogether. --Vedum (talk) 08:43, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

I have no idea how something can be embarrassing unless in the face of contradictory facts. Where are they? You are simply assuming it is wrong.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 09:02, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

There are no reliable numbers for speakers of any dialects in Sweden, as far as I know so there are no "contradictory facts". But the very fact that Ethnologue just had this number in ONE of their editions and not in the 16 other editions must be an evidence that they have realized it was not true. Why did they delete this "language" all together if they still believe that it is a language with 80,000 speakers? This discussion tends to be utterly tiresome.--Vedum (talk) 09:26, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

It doesnt become less tiresome due to your reluctance to present arguments or evidence for your claims or to consider the arguments of others. The code was retracted because SIL did not want to give language status to Scanian, since this was a hot political issue, and the Swedish government was argueing that Scanian was not a minority language but a dialect, because if it were a language the EU might have granted it protected status. To make this less tiresome I suggest we all present our arguments in the RfC below so that a closer can determine whether to include or exclude the figure based on the relative strngths of the arguments.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 12:55, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

RfC: Question of inclusion of Scanian population figures from Ethnologue

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

The consensus is against inclusion for both. The majority opinion is that the information has reliability issues. AlbinoFerret 22:41, 15 October 2015 (UTC)

---

This RfC asks the following questions:

1. Should the infobox include the ethnologue's 2002 population estimate of 80,000?
2. Should the general text include a discussion of the population estimate of 80,000, including the questions of its validity based on reliable sources?

Survey

• Yes and Yes. All population estimates for languages are rough and error prone. The 80,000 based on an analogy with the estimated number of speakers of Danish traditional dialects - Denmark being demographically similar to Scania. There are no sources providing other figures. There are multiple sources reporting the number (without claiming that it is correct, but simply noting that the ethnologue gives the figure) including the Cambridge Handbook of Endangered Languages. If the figure is good enough to be reported by linguists writing in peer reviewed handbooks and journals then it is also good enough for Wikipedia.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 07:39, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

• No and No. We now know that this "estimation" was not made by professional scholars. It was e-mailed to SIL by a layman. SIL did not check it up (as little as they checked up "1,500,000 speakers" of the former Edition) but put it into the 2002 Edition. But already in the next Edition they had realized that this was not sustainable so it was deleted from later editions. We should NOT contribute to the proliferation of such dubious information.--Muniswede (talk) 08:01, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

• Of course "no" and "no". I do not think I have to repeat the arguments any more. --Vedum (talk) 13:15, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

• No and No. Ethnologue's population counts seem to be a product of guesstimates and are subject to glaring errors, as I witnessed myself -- see e.g. Talk:Serbian language#Number of speakers. Yes, they do issue corrections, but there is sufficient reason to doubt this particular one, as evidenced from the discussion above, and the proven source of that figure (e-mail from a single person with very rough guesstimate). Inclusion and selection of sources is subject to editorial consensus; while we should not contradict the sources, we are at liberty to omit them in case of reasonable doubt as to their veracity. Just because we have a source (proven to be error-prone) is not a sufficient reason to include it, in itself. No such user (talk) 15:38, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

• No and no. Ethnologue doesn't even list Scanian separately anymore, so its status, along with any population figures, has been downgraded. Ethnologue (any edition) is no longer a reliable source for Scanian (other than its listing as a dialect of Swedish) because it is not treated as a separate language. In general, only the most recent edition of Ethnologue should be used. --Taivo (talk) 22:52, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

• No and potentially yes: We use current sources; out-dated editions of sources like this are unreliable by definition since they've already been surpassed by newer data and replaced by newer editions based on that data. It could be reasonable to discuss the discrepancy in the figures somewhere in the article, if there's a consensus that explaining the discrepancy between different estimates is encyclopedically useful. PS: Ethnologue sounds like it is at least partially user-generated content, so it may not be a reliable source at all. At best it seems to be a tertiary source that should be used cautiously and replaced or at least augmented where ever possible with actual secondary sources. This is true of tertiary sources generally speaking. As another example, I encounter this issue a lot with the DAD-IS database (of livestock breeds), which is compiled rather uncritically from a wide range of regional sources, many of which are dubious. Citation to it is probably better than nothing at all, but should be replaced by secondary references when possible (or at least the addition of them, even if the DAD-IS citation is also retained), with a preference for data reported in secondary sources when they conflict with the tertiary one. A similar case is the CIA World Factbook; it's okay to use it in absence of other sources, but it frequently conflicts with more in-depth works on the countries it covers only in summary, often using unidentifiable source materials. The principle problems with tertiary sources are a) they date quickly (and often contain data that is already outdated by the time they even publish it), and b) we usually have no clear idea what their inclusion criteria and editorial processes are (though this is sometimes less of a concern, e.g. with modern, major encyclopedias and dictionaries, which usually include a foreword or appendix describing their process, sourcing, etc.). [unsigned by User:SMcCandlish]
• No and no. I was asked by a friend to look at this problem. I wrote to "Ethnologue" and got an answer. My conclusion is that this figure is guesswork and should not be used in the "Infobox". IF it is placed in the article its origin must be declared. --Andhanq (talk) 21:06, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
• No and no per Muniswede and SMcCandlish. FoCuS contribs; talk to me! 00:06, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

Discussion

• Muniswede (talk · contribs), it is incorrect as far as I can read from the SILs email to Kwami that the 80,000 estimate was emailed by a layman - it was made by a linguist. Also it is clear that the code was removed due to both political pressure from the Swdish government and to concerns of mutual intelligibility with Standard Swedish, not due to any considerations of the reliability of the speaker figure.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 08:04, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

It has nothing to do with "mutual intelligibility". Danish, Norwegian and Swedish are mutually intelligible, but still three different languages. Scanian is not a language at all but a variety of Swedish (a dialect or accent or whatever the term is). SIL just believed in the e-mail and did not check it up. The person, who sent the e-mail is not linguist, but known for his regionalist dreams.--Muniswede (talk) 08:26, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

Which email sent by which person? The author of the email sent by SIL to Kwami states that the estimate is based on Kjeld Christensens estimate of speakers of traditional dialects. And yes it has to do with mutual intelligibility, because that was the criteria that was used by the Swedish government to deny Scanian minority status under EU legislation - and that was the reason the iso code was removed as can be seen here [4]. (Danish, Swedish and Norwegian by the way are not mutually intelligible in real life - but at best partially intelligible - the intellgiibility of the scanian regional variety with standard Swedish is of course much higher than that of Danish and Swedish - though the intellgibility of traditional scanian with standard swedish is quite low[5]).·maunus · snunɐɯ· 08:35, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

@Muniswede:, the second part of your argument is nonsense. The entry was not removed because the population estimate was not sustainable, but because the ISO code was retired. The one has nothing to do with the other. — kwami (talk) 00:56, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

• The repeated claim that SIL was "fooled" with either the 1,5 mio or 80,000 figure, or both, is based on an assumption that the numbers are incorrect or that they should have "been checked". Since no other entity has ever published speaker numbers for Scanian there is no basis except for OR for claiming that they are incorrect, and since the SIL states clearly that the recent number is an estimate based on the Danish dialect situation there is no need for the number to "be checked". Hence the claims of "SIL having been fooled" are invalid, and simply based on some kind of personal intuition or skepticism.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 08:40, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

• I would also note that excluding the figure from the body of the article means disregarding a handful of reliable sources that comment on the figure. This would require a better rationale than "I don't like it".·maunus · snunɐɯ· 09:05, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

Does the last edition of Ethnologue report the figure? If it does not, I wouldn't include it here. --SynConlanger (talk) 12:00, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

Why? The figure is mentioned in handbooks and literature. That they have since chosen to remove the classification of scanian as a language with a code for political reasons does not make the speaker figure unreliable.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 12:22, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

What do you mean "political reasons"? What is your source for that odd statement? The figure is "mentioned in handbooks and litterature". Maybe, but the source is always Ethnologue's 15th Edition. And their source is an e-mail from a person called Malte Lewan. That's it! He is the root for all this. The latest edition is presumably also the most updated. --Vedum (talk) 12:45, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

Where is the evidence that this Malte Lewan sent an email saying 80,000? I havent seen it here. I have seen the contrary, namely an email from SIL saying that the estimate was based on Kjeld Kristiansens book and estimate for speakers of traditional dialects. I have presented the evidence that the SCY code was retracted ndue to pressure from the swedish government above. This is also discussed in Spolskys book on language policy which also mentions the 80,000 figure.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 12:53, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

Just look a little bit up this page. I can copy it here: "@Maunus: Heard back from SIL. They say the figure was taken from an email message sent 2/10/2003 from Malte Lewan Neelsen"

Malte Lewan (I think he has dropped "Neelsen" by now) is the man behind all this. So much trouble just because of an e-mail from him to SIL. And later they just dropped the whole shit, without explanation. But what "pressure" could the "Swedish government" put on SIL? Sending "Coq Rouge" to kill someone in SIL? :-) I do not think the goverment is interested in this bullshit at all. --Vedum (talk) 13:12, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

This link connects Malte Lewan to "Skåneländsk Samling", a fringe nationalist "club" with, as of May 2014, 27 members, while this link shows that he's not a linguist. Thomas.W ^talk 14:58, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

• What is this absurdity? No, Scania was not delisted as a language for political reasons, it was delisted because it did not full fill the 639-3 language criteria [6]. Specifically the Scanian dialect is functionally understandable by most Swedish speakers without having to learn Scanian and Scania shares common literature and a common ethnolinguistic identity with central Swedish. As other editors have pointed out, there's absolutely no basis for the 80,000 figure and no, taking 5% of the population and guessing they're speakers of the dialect is not a basis. It's also quite frankly inherently futile to try to create any kind of figure on the number of speakers of a dialect. How many words exactly of that dialect do you need to speak before you count as a dialect speaker rather then a language speaker? If any number was to be used the most logical one would be the population of Scania because it provides an upper bound that can be used consistently across all dialect pages. Zironic (talk) 15:52, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

Welcome, Zironic. Nice to see a new user here in this debate and not have two fight this nonsense (almost) alone. The absurd allegations about "political pressure from the Swedish government" sounded of course totally insane. But, frankly, I did not know anyhing about what it could be. As far as I know the SIL is a NGO (Non-Government Organization) and they got at least no funding from the Swedish government, that could be withdrawn. But, as you said above it had to do with "language criteria" and not "politics". The sad thing in this story is that SIL at that time was so extremely easy to fool. I do know if we can trust their figures at all anymore. As nobody knows the number of dialect speakers it is of course better not to mention a number at all.--Muniswede (talk) 19:00, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

Moreover, let's remember this: Wikipedia:WikiProject_Languages#Interpreting Ethnologue data. (OT: why on Earth is "Ethnologue" always in italics???) If the last edition does not report the figure and the previous ones were base on a pers. comm., I'd avoid altogether using the figure: Ethnologue should be treated as a secondary source (it is indeed), so figures from the primary sources must be given. --SynConlanger (talk) 19:09, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

Why do people keep repeating this nonsense? The last edition did report the figure. The last edition to have an entry for Scanian was the 16th, and the figure they published was 80k. Now, you can argue that Ethnologue data cannot be trusted, but anyone who says that Ethnologue rejected the figure or did not report the figure is either incompetent or a fraud. All you have to do to verify it is follow the link in the reference.

BTW, I wrote the "interpreting Ethnologue" essay that you cited. I'm well aware of the unreliability of their data. But can we debate the reliability of the data rather than making all these idiotic straw-man arguments? As for the figure in the primary source, that is the same 80k. If the opinion of the professional linguists here, such as Maunus, is that this estimate is unreliable compared to the estimates we use for thousands of other poorly attested languages, then I'll drop my opposition. But as long as professional evaluation is that the figure is comparatively reasonable, we need to reject WP:Randy in Boise and reflect the literature. — kwami (talk) 20:18, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

Which is the primary published source stating the figure? Ethnologue figures are ok if we don't have any better, but it should be superseded by other sources when available. My understanding is that the 18th edition does not report any figure because Skanian is no longer included. Since editions are to be considered corrections of the previous ones I'd say the previous ones should be discarded, as with any other database like work. Unless the source is published, in which case we can cite it independently. I personally believe we cannot rely on personal communications cited in Ethnologue since we don't rely on them in general AFAIK, unless published. --SynConlanger (talk) 20:39, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

These are two unrelated things. The "correction" there is that they no longer accept Scanian as a language. That has nothing to do with the various data they have for Scanian: where it's spoken, how many speak it, who recognizes it, which script is used, how much of the Bible has been translated into it, which sources document it: none of that is rejected when an ISO code is retired. — kwami (talk) 21:38, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

The primary source is an e-mail from a non-professional who made his own "estimate", based on the assumption that 5 % of the population in a given territory (in a neighbouring country) speak a genuine dialect. This sounds really like an ultimate example of "original research". --Vedum (talk) 20:51, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

You have it exactly backwards. Please read WP:OR. The sources we cite will have original research: that's the whole reason we cite them. Every book, magazine article and newspaper report we cite has engaged in original research and synthesis. By your logic, we are forbidden from using any sources at all. Instead, it is us here on WP who are forbidden from engaging in OR. — kwami (talk) 21:38, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

Name it whatever you want. But it is still "private" research made by a non-professional based on an assumption made by another author and valid for another country. Why is Scanian "deleted" from newer editions of the Ethnologue? Zironic has alredy explained it, but I can repeat it: it does not fulfill the 639-3 language criteria i.e. it is not a language. That has nothing with "politcal pressure" (please tell us what that is supposed to mean) to do. --Vedum (talk) 22:03, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

But what does that have to do with anything? Whether it fulfills ISO requirements for a "language" has nothing to do with whether the population estimate is accurate. — kwami (talk) 01:00, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Maybe it could be regarded as two different things. But together they make the 15th Edition of Ethnologue even more unsuitable as a source. And we now know how this "estimate" was created. Not by a professional, not published anywhere before its "creator" e-mailed it to SIL. It is NOT a reliable primary source. --Vedum (talk) 07:01, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

• A private unpublished email does not constitute a relyible primary source IMHO. It could have been Chomsky or Haspelmath themselves writing it --SynConlanger (talk) 22:26, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

Which is why we rely on WP:secondary sources to evaluate primary sources for us. — kwami (talk) 01:00, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

• @TaivoLinguist: @SMcCandlish: I do not follow your arguments.

Taivo, you say Ethnologue (any edition) is no longer a reliable source for Scanian (other than its listing as a dialect of Swedish) because it is not treated as a separate language. What does that have to do with the population estimate? How are estimates reliable if a lect is given an ISO code, but become unreliable if the code is revoked? What does the one have to do with the other?

SMcCandlish, you say out-dated editions of sources like this are unreliable by definition since they've already been surpassed by newer data. But that's not the case here. Because the entry was retired, it was never surpassed by newer data.

You know I'm not one to defend the reliability of Ethnologue. But I'm puzzled as to why so many of the arguments here that the data is inaccurate or unreliable have nothing to do with the accuracy or reliability of the data. — kwami (talk) 01:09, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Note that I said, of old-edition sources, that they're unreliable "since they've already been surpassed by newer data and replaced by newer editions based on that data", not "since they've already been surpassed by newer data directly contradicting the original data line-by-line". Another way of looking at this: Reclassifying Scanian as a dialect rather than an independent language is new data. Merging Scanian into Swedish, as part of a dialect continuum, means that any figures about alleged speakers of Scanian as a language are meaningless. By way of analogy, the merger of several alleged separate species (A, B, C) with another species (Z) invalidates previous attempts to estimate the population of A, B, and/or C vs. Z. The question becomes meaningless. At some point we may have new data that estimates the number of speakers of each dialect of Swedish, accounting for intergrading where necessary, but we don't appear to have that at present. (In the analogy, it would be between populations A, B, C and perhaps D, probably defined as subspecies, all within species Z.) As I already suggested, if we have different RS producing conflicting figures, then it might be an encyclopedic exercise to explore and explain that conflict. This might arise if some sources are still treating Scanian as an independent language. It might also be the case for any number of other reasons, e.g. self-selecting census data versus more objective means of data collection, or whatever. My point was "don't rely on old editions of works that have been replaced with new ones", and "what the sources are/say is an external matter, distinct from the internal matter of whether WP should explain any disagreement in the sources." PS: This is independent of the issue that the Ethnologue speaker-population estimate appears to have been questionable to begin with. We don't cite a source as reliable after its reliability has been shown to be dubious.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  02:00, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Once language status has been removed from a variety in Ethnologue, then the former data for that speech form is no longer maintained. While that doesn't make a prima facie case for unreliability, it means that the reliability of a source is no longer being judged in Ethnologue. So if there are more up-to-date numbers for Scania, we don't know based on Ethnologue because they stopped looking. --Taivo (talk) 02:48, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Hallo everybody! I am mostly active on the Swedish Wp (some 19000 contributions since 2006). But sometimes I have also guested en-wp (for instance the article on left- and right hand traffic). I have followed this discussion for a while. I must say I find it incredible that such a "non-question" can genrate so much feelings. In order to find the "truth" how "Etnologue" or "SIL" (the same thing, or what) had come to this absurd conclusion. I wrote them an e-mail. I am now waiting for an answer. But I now can see that someone has already contacted them and got info about the "number of speakers". And it does not sound very trustworthy. How could such an organisation as "Etnologue" just take a private email from an unknown person for granted? I asked them some more questions and I hope Iwill get an answer from them. If I can obtain any more interesting information from them I will return here. I hope this could be solved soon. --Andhanq (talk) 07:47, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Indeed I don't understand all the fuss myself. The primary source (secondary in Wiki slang) is unpublished, so it doesn't qualify as reliable. The secondary source (tertiary in wiki slang) = Ethnologue doesn't cite that primary anymore, so we have to look for another source. Spolsky, Bernard (2004). Language Policy. cites Ethnologue for the number of speaker which is cited as 1,5. I wonder where that figure comes from since we are talking of 80k... (@Andhanq: SIL is "a faith-based [christian] nonprofit organization" while Ethnologue is a language database. 😊 ) --SynConlanger (talk) 09:24, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

That is the real problem and tragedy. Real scientists, like Bernhard Spolsky in this case, use Ethnologue as a source without checking Ethnologue's own sources. A bit more of source criticism is highly recommended. It this way such absurdities can find a way into the academic world a become "the truth". --Vedum (talk) 11:22, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Yes, it is a tragedy. As for Wikipedia. My personal view is that Ethnologue should not be cited as a source of information: only its sources should, if any. But that is not the issue here. As I said, the source I indicated above states that the number by Ethnologue is 1,5 millions. This is a secondary citation: the information of 1,5 million speakers can not be found in Ethnologue. So we should not include it here in Wikipedia. This is my view given WP:RELY and the paragraph on interpreting Ethnologue data. I think that a deep discussion (once again) on using Ethnologue should be conducted in order to state clear rules (not only general guidance) on its use. Once the rules will be settled there won't be possibility for edit-wars or discussions like this, I think. If we decide Ethnologue is ok, with any of its editions, it'll be so. It will be otherwise if otherwise stated. The discussion should involve both the Linguistics Project and the Languages one, IMHO. That's all folks. I'm leaving this discussion, knowing that you'll find a way to settle it. 😊 --SynConlanger (talk) 11:50, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

This is not, of course, the place for an overall discussion of how to use Ethnologue. Most sources use Ethnologue's data appropriately since the overwhelming majority of its information (and it has much more information than just speaker numbers) is reliable. But, of course, as here, problems with the source of data do crop up. But the problem was in a past edition. It has been corrected in the current edition and is no longer there. Isn't that what sources are supposed to do? When data are found to be invalid or questionable, they are corrected in subsequent editions. The current edition of Ethnologue has removed the population figure. And, come on, people, this is no "tragedy". No one has died. No children have been murdered or abducted. No cities have been destroyed. Those are "tragedies". Ethnologue posting an incorrect population figure several years ago is no tragedy. --Taivo (talk) 13:15, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

I am sorry. Compared with other things going on in the world today I can agree that "tragedy" is too strong an expression, of course. But it is a problem for this type of encyclopedic projects that such nonsense is circulating on the internet. --Vedum (talk) 13:54, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Any info of any kind that is put on the 'Net will always stay on the 'Net, because there's no way to get rid of it, the real problem is people who see anything published by Ethnologue as gospel, do anything to keep it in the articles (including repeated edit-warring with insulting edit-summaries), and don't give the proverbial rat's arse about the opinions of other editors, as if they owned the articles. Thomas.W ^talk 14:35, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Like all reliable sources, no matter how reliable, there are and will be errors in Ethnologue. As with all reliable sources used in Wikipedia, Ethnologue must be used judiciously and weighed against all the other reliable sources. Ethnologue, at least, has an active process that will correct errors and a fairly regular process of issuing updated editions. --Taivo (talk) 16:04, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

I think and hope that every new edition of Ethnolugue is more accurate than the former. I think they have been just too credolous. Someone sends them a letter or an e-mail with some information about a language and they just accept it. That was the case with Scanian being accepted as language in the first place with 1,5 million speakers (more than the whole population av Scania) and a few years later reduced to 80,000 speakers. But, probably they have learnt by their mistakes. I think we can use Ethnologue as a source in the future. But if someone suspects that a figure (or something else) is bogus try to double-check it. --Vedum (talk) 20:02, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

I have now recieved an answer from the Managing Editor of "Ethnologue". It is about the same as some already have written about here. The 1,500,000 figure came from something called "Scanian Regional Institute" which sent it to them in 1998. I do not really know what this "institute" is or was. I checked someting called "Solid info.se". They have an entry for an "Ideell förening" which has been deregistered (avregistrerad) since 2009. This must have been some kind of private "club". The address is in a suburban area of Falkenberg. A family of five persons live there. The 80,000 figure came from a Malte Lewan Neelsen who sent them an e-mail in february 2003. As described above it was Mr. Lewan Neelsen's own calculation based on an assumption in a Danish book, that "5 % of the Danes speak local languages". This is naturally not acceptable source for the number of speakers. It should not be in the article. --Andhanq (talk) 20:56, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Some of the opposing comments above are rational, but some are utterly irrational and I'm surprised people keep repeating them. The rational argument is that Ethn. was credulous when they accepted the estimate of 80k, so we shouldn't follow them. Some of the irrational arguments are that when a lect is classified as a "dialect" previously reliable population estimates somehow become unreliable (that is just as nonsensical when speaking of species demoted to subspecies as languages demoted to dialects), or that since Ethn has stopped looking for new sources, their old source is now unreliable (dated, yes, but we have lots of dated sources). As for the fact that the primary source being unpublished, that is irrelevant. This is why we use secondary sources: they evaluate the primary sources for us. When we evaluate the primary sources ourselves, we are engaged in OR. Now, we may agree that the quality of the data is such that OR is justified in this case, but we shouldn't pretend that it isn't OR. — kwami (talk) 01:31, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

It's been obvious for years that Ethnologue is a crappy source for speaker figures. We know for a fact that they report pure guesswork as facts. There's not even any indication of any consistent method. They don't subject their primary sources to even a minimum of scrutiny. That should be a red flag to anyone, and no amount of citation will improve the situation. If peer reviewed works cite sources uncritically, even when they are widely known to be bad, it doesn't whitewash the crappy sources. But it does lower credibility of the peer reviewed works. Unreliable guesstimates remain unreliable guesstimates, no matter how many times they're repeated. Peter ^Isotalo 13:16, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

Actually, making such a comment shows an anti-Ethnologue bias which is not universally held and in some respects is completely false and insulting. Like all reference works, including the beloved Britannica, good scholars can find errors in about five minutes. Don't get me started on the bull-oney in some of their linguistics articles and some of the horrendous decisions they made on who to write certain articles. Ethnologue isn't perfect, but it's no worse than any other work that seeks to cover the same scope of information with limited resources. Tertiary sources should always be double-checked for accuracy. And Ethnologue is better than most in correcting errors when they are brought to the editors' attention (with reliable sources). --Taivo (talk) 16:53, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

I agree. The number of egregious errors in the EB is astounding. Taivo's being a bit generous: it doesn't take a good scholar to spot an error, nor does it take five minutes. I've been highly critical of Ethnologue here because of the number of wikipedians who accept it without question, but I've also been impressed with their attempts to improve reliability in the past few years. (Though of course that won't affect this case.) — kwami (talk) 21:17, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

So the argument for Ethnologue is basically "we could do worse"? And kwami, if you have criticized use of Ethnologue "without question", why are you immune to that same criticism? In edit warring over the infobox in this article, you clearly made that very mistake.

I tend to avoid general tertiary sources and I have not argued their merits here. The obvious alternative to me is more reliable and stringent secondary sources, preferably ones that actually explain their methods one way or another. When it comes to infobox figures, I believe they should only be stated when there's a reasonable amount of certainty. If not, it should be left blank and be expanded on in prose. We should never include facts just because we can.

Peter ^Isotalo 13:32, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

When did I say I was immune? Of course we debate whether the source is reliable enough to use. I just get annoyed when intelligent people say idiotic things. Make a rational argument, and I will discuss it rationally. Say something idiotic, and I will dismiss it as not worth considering. My objections above have all been against idiotic statements. — kwami (talk) 06:02, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

My argument about not using older editions of Ethnologue is not "idiotic", Kwami, and was presented with reasonable justification. You may disagree with it, but just because you disagree doesn't make the argument "idiotic" any more than your argument about being able to use any edition is "idiotic". I ignored your previous characterization of it as "utterly irrational" as an example of your habit of hyperbole when you are losing an argument. The fact that Ethnologue stops checking and updating information about a speech form once it has been demoted from language (with ISO code) to dialect (without ISO code) is not something "utterly irrational" or "idiotic" to consider without comment. --Taivo (talk) 07:16, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

That's not what you said. You said that Ethnologue is not a reliable source if an ISO code is retired. As it stands, that is idiotic. The sources they used are no less (or more) reliable just because someone decides that a variety is not a distinct language. If [sco] were retired, the census of Scotland would not suddenly lose its credibility. You are of course correct that Ethn. stops maintaining and refining their estimates once a code is retired, but that wasn't the argument I was rejecting. — kwami (talk) 21:23, 12 September 2015 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Neutrality reminder

I'd like to stress that there has been no consensus that this article is only about the "traditional dialect" as defined by Swedish linguists. To the vast majority of Swedes, and Scanians themselves, skånska is not some obscure form of Scandinavian that is literally incomprehensible to other speakers of Swedish. These dialects are pretty rare today overall. To the vast majority of all Swedes, and Scanians themselves, skånska is the same thing as what linguists defined as regional variants of Standard Swedish.

With that in mind, the bickering about the infobox is quite pointless. What you should focus on here is to describe what is actually recognized as Scanian, from the perspective of both plinguists and the general public. If you exclude reliable information on either the traditional dialect or the regional variant/accent, for any reason, you're going against WP:NPOV. If you push either definition as more relevant (like adding clearly dubious figures in the infobox), you're giving it undue weight.

Peter ^Isotalo 13:33, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

The article is about whatever we say it's about. Since this article started out as the Scanian language, and has been moved to the Scanian dialect, it clearly is not about the accent. We can either have two articles on the dialect and the accent, or have two sections in a single article, but it's not a violation of NPOV to have an article on a specific topic. — kwami (talk) 21:08, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

I agree with Peter Isotalo when it comes to the defintion of skånska (or värmländska, östgötska or whatever regional variant of Swedish). It seems that the problem with the "number of speakers" is solved. We should not state any number as nobody knows. It is certainly not the 1,5 million and not the 80,000 found in two editions of Ethnologue. But I also think that the whole article needs an overhaul. Both the present situation (an accent of Standard Swedish) and history (being part of the Scandinavian dialect continuum and the Danish time) could presented in the same article. One problem could be that Swedes normally make no difference between dialect and accent (in the same language). "Accent" for us is "brytning" (as in "English with a French accent", not "English spoken in Yorkshire"). So we call Scanian a dialekt when we really mean the accent.--Vedum (talk) 22:09, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

Since this is the English language Wikipedia we use English words/terms, and in this context the English word "accent" means "dialekt" in Swedish, while the English word "dialect" is most correctly translated as "bygdemål" in Swedish. And as everyone who is familiar with Scanian well knows there's a big difference between "Skånsk dialekt" and "Skånskt bygdemål", with the former being mutually intelligible with Standard Swedish but the latter only partially so, if at all. So the correct translation into Swedish of the article title, "Scanian dialect", is "Skånskt bygdemål", which limits the scope of it. Thomas.W ^talk 09:23, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

Thomas, just stop arguing your own favored interpretation of this topic. It's exactly that kind of attitude that brought on the infobox dispute. Either you have English-language sources about Swedish dialects that unequivocally support your stance, or we'll have to work towards compromises and expressing nuances. Just don't try to make this into a debate that has to be "won".

In disagreements like this, the obvious choice is to look at the terminology used in available sources. We can also elaborate that terminology further by referring to articles like accent (sociolinguistics). But there's absolutely no need to steamroll each other's perspectives here.

Peter ^Isotalo 13:08, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

Btw, this article used to be at the even more neutral disambiguation title Scanian (linguistics) to circumvent the debate over language vs dialect. When it was moved, though, there has never any extensive discussion, much less consensus, about whether it was supposed to be about just the traditional dialect or the regional variety, or both.

Peter ^Isotalo 13:41, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

And before that it was at "Scanian language". The dab "(linguistics)" is how some articles once avoided the sociolinguistic problem of whether a lect was a dialect or a language. The wording and the use of an ISO code since 2005 indicates that the topic of this article was the dialect/language [scy], not the accent. Of course, we can cover both, but we don't use info boxes for accents. — kwami (talk) 22:05, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

The point is that there has been no discussion whatsoever about dialect vs regional variant until now. More importantly, there seems to be no problem with covering both in the same article.

Peter ^Isotalo 22:47, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

I doubt there's been any discussion on what the Swedish article should be about either, but that doesn't mean there's no consensus that it should be about Swedish. It doesn't matter what skånska means to Swedish speakers. This article is obviously about the Scanian language/dialect. But of course it wouldn't hurt to discuss the Scanian accent as well. We would need to if only to clarify the distinction. — kwami (talk) 05:53, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

Most of the sources in this article are in Swedish so what "skånska" means to Swedish-speakers is obviously very relevant. Again, I don't see any point in trying to trump or belittle other persectives. This is clearly an issue of synchronic vs diachronic. An overwhelming majority of speakers of "skånska" (in the way Swedes actually use the term) don't speak an archaic dialect incomprehensible to other Swedes. That should be an important consideration in this case. Otherwise the article is going to be focused on the preferred POV of a minority of language buffs and nostalgic regionalists.

Peter ^Isotalo 21:18, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

To have an article on a regional accent (the currently Swedish meaning of skanska) in the English Wikipedia seems to me to be a waste of space, but an article focusing on the old dialect (which appears to be dying out) would be very useful, especially since it was once listed as a separate language in Ethnologue. As long as the first paragraph of this article makes that distinction perfectly clear, and as long as the Swedish-speaking editors here are careful to distinguish the two in their editing and evaluation of the Swedish sources, I don't see a problem. This certainly wouldn't be the only place in the English Wikipedia where English-speaking editors must rely on the evaluation of sources that are not written in English. --Taivo (talk) 21:56, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

"A waste of space"? I'm quite the history buff myself, but that seems like an antiquarian's perspective on language. There's absolutely nothing "wasteful" in describing living language variants, especially if "Scanian" is presented as a direct translation of "skånska" in the lead. We're not discussing some forgotten minority language here either. It's just an example of the same natural gravitation towards standardization that exists in all major languages backed by an advanced nation-state. Scanians certainly seem to have been very vocal on Wikipedia about their perceived plight, but there's no evidence that Scanian is more oppressed than any other local or regional dialect in Sweden.

And a word of caution here: a sharp distinction between how the English and Swedish terms are defined could become quite complicated. It would go far beyond how Ethnologue attempted to define the term "Scanian". Strictly speaking, it would mean a fairly contrived separation of sources written in the different languages, and I doubt that would actually be manageable in the long run. The end result would probably just be plain ol' POV-forking.

Peter ^Isotalo 22:36, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

I think you have become confused between the English and Swedish terms and what we are actually discussing here. The original problem is that Ethnologue seemed to be getting confused between discussing a disappearing language/dialect that was quite distinct from standard Swedish and giving population figures for the modern population of Scania which, by and large, speaks standard Swedish with a regional accent. We don't have articles on the "Utah accent" here in Wikipedia, even though that's an English language form and has been described in the literature. Perhaps part of the problem is that you are refusing to use the English language terms "language", "dialect", and "accent" in describing what you are talking about and are relying on a faulty equivalence to Swedish terms. This is the English Wikipedia and as long as you continue to argue with English speaking linguists about how to describe a speech form in the English Wikipedia, then I suggest you drop the reliance on Swedish terms and translate into appropriate English language terms. It is no insult to modern Scanians, who speak an accent of standard Swedish, to have an article describing a nearly-extinct, very distinct, dialect/language form that was found within their borders any more than it is an insult to English speakers to have articles on nearly-extinct speech forms in America. That's the point here. If all you want to do is describe the Scanian "accent", then I don't think it's noteworthy, but if you want to describe the Scanian "dialect" that is more noteworthy since it has (in the past) been described as a separate language and not just an accent. --Taivo (talk) 23:29, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

There's no confusion here. It's a matter of priorities. You believe the regional variants aren't "noteworthy", but that's not something inherently neutral. You just seem less interested in that aspect of Scandinavian languages.

If the perspective you assert is the consensus view, the article will require a lot of clarification. For one thing, we need to be clear that we have absolutely no reliable information on how many people, if any, actually speak these dialects. It would have to be treated completely separate from contemporary Swedish. Any references to Swedish dialects should also be overhauled. We'd have to have a very thorough look at where the line between dialect and is drawn among scholars.

As for the status as a separate language, it all goes to a single source, Ethnologue. And they backtracked. If the same criteria had been applied to other rural dialects, Sweden and Finland would have dozens of additional languages. This has more to do with political aspirations of an extremely vocal minority of Scanian regionalists than linguistic criteria.

Peter ^Isotalo 05:31, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

Ignoring the implied personal attack in the first paragraph, I agree with your second paragraph. And I'm not claiming that "old Scanian" was a different language at all, but that it has been treated as more than an "accent" by sources. And it would have to be part of the discussion to determine exactly what those sources are and what exactly they say. Accusing Ethnologue of making something up or exaggerating the situation based on political motivations that you oppose is simply lazy. Is there a difference between the modern Scanian accent and the older, more distinct, Scanian dialect? What do the sources say? --Taivo (talk) 05:53, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

I don't see any indication that Old Scanian has been described as an accent. On the contrary, there seems to be plenty of agreement that it is a Scandinavian dialect quite separate from what later evolved as the national languages. But that goes for all traditional dialects. Pretty basic stuff in the history of national standards.

As for sources, why not check some of those cited here yourself? Or some of those discussing dialects in Swedish language?

Peter ^Isotalo 17:21, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

Stop debating and start checking facts

I just followed up the following statement in the article:

Scanian is considered a separate language mainly from a historical or cultural point of view and is not regarded as a separate language by the Swedish government.

After actually checking the source, I immediately revised it. Spolsky (2004) is the main source, and he implies[7] that the Swedish government simply ignored a request by "a Scanian ethnic organization" that the 1.5 million (!) speakers of Scanian ought to to have minority language status. So basically an argument based entirely on the bogus information accepted by Ethnologue back in the early 2000s.

The bizarre twist is a reference to Hallberg's article in Språkvård (3/2003). Hallberg goes into quite explicit detail about the politicized campaigning of Scanian regionalists to promote Scanian back in the late 1990s. So it's much exactly the same thing I and several other Swedish-speaking editors have been saying here for quite a while. And this source was used to back a blatantly misleading claim that Scanian actually is recognized as a separate language by linguists. Which it clearly isn't. To underscore my point here, here's a quote from Hallberg's article, translated into English for the convenience of the non-Swedish-speaking editors who have argued so passionately about the merits of Ethnologue:

"There has never existed any clearly delineated or defined Scanian."

Hallberg criticizes the campaigning by Scanian regionalists, not because he rejects the importance of Scanian as a dialect, but because he believes it was misguided, uninformed and overly aggressive and that made it more difficult to focus efforts on actually preserving and documenting the traditional dialects in Skåne.

I urge those who have been active on this talkpage to engage in more fact checking and less debate. There's every reason to believe this article still has major problems.

Peter ^Isotalo 18:45, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

The "language versus dialect" issue is a dead horse here, and has been for a while, so you can stop beating it. You continue to misrepresent the whole issue about Ethnologue. The point wasn't that Ethnologue is always right or that it was even right in this case, but that your blanket disrespect of it as a source based on this particular error was misguided. They have corrected the error. Moving on, I edited the paragraph about Ethnologue because since the early 2000's Ethnologue's list of languages is a mirror of the ISO 639-3 standard. They are independently administered within the SIL organization, so it is more accurate to refer to the former listing of Scanian under ISO 639-3 rather than Ethnologue. (Population numbers, etc. are from Ethnologue, but we've already agreed that the pre-2009 population numbers were bogus.) And I'm still not clear about whether there has been work in Swedish on describing the historic dialect of Scania (not the Scanian accent of standard Swedish). The quote from Hallberg seems to indicate that there was, but it's not been described. --Taivo (talk) 19:17, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

This article should be about the Scanian dialect, not about whoever campaigned for whatever status, and your opinion about them, Peter. Your undiscussed rewrite of the status section is non-neutral, and the long passus about campaigning is giving that campaign undue weight. Thomas.W ^talk 19:21, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

By all means, criticize. And neutralize whatever you feel is problematic. When an editor makes an "undiscussed rewrite" it's usually considered a way to move things forward. The point here was to focus your attention on the actual article text. So focus on the article text. Even if we're all in agreement about the language vs dialect issue, the article certainly didn't reflect that.

Peter ^Isotalo 20:39, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

Dialect vs Accent

There appears to be a lot of confusion here, especially by editors who are not native to Sweden so I think it's worthwhile to ensure that we're all on the same page. An accent is commonly defined as a distinctive mode of pronunciation, a German who learns Swedish will speak Swedish with a German accent for instance. A dialect is commonly defined as having a vocabulary and grammar distinct from the rote language. Both modern Scanian and ancient Scanian contain a notably distinct vocabulary even if the modern one isn't necessarily large. For perspective for most non-Swedes you can compare Scanian and the other regional dialects of Swedish with Scottish. While for most intents and purposes, Scottish is English with an accent, it does contain a unique vocabulary and grammatical constructs and the amount of difference between Scottish and English isn't a binary border but rather a continuum based on how rural you get. With that in mind I don't think trying to distinguish the Scanian accent from the Scanian dialect is in any way useful, in fact in a cursory search, I can't find any source that refer to any of the Swedish regional dialects as accents. Regardless if you're talking about the modern or ancient varieties, they appear to be unanimously described as dialects. Zironic (talk) 08:53, 10 September 2015 (UTC)