Talk:Nynorsk/Archive 1

Archive 1

NPOV in the Nynorsk-article!

Edit 1: Nynorsk is not any more constructed than(as the author of the article claimed;) the danish-inspired bokmål (this is an expression of the authors POV!)

Edit 2: To report the (so-called) opinion that bokmål-writers in general consider Nynorsk to be a "rural language" can't be seen as anything but an expression of the authors POV. I know several bokmål-writers who consider Nynorsk to be a normal written language, not by any means especialy rural nor urban.

The hospital of the second largest city of Norway; Bergen (in the western parts of Norway) recently changed its official language to Neonorwegian. The University of the same city (UiB, Universitetet i Bergen) has considered Neonorwegian to be its official language for ages... One of the largest "daughter-organizations" (pardon my english) of the Neonorwegian-organization Norsk Mållag is located in the norwegian capitol, Oslo (in the eastern parts of the country.

(I realize these facts are of no consequense as to wether bokmål-users in general see Neonorwegian to be rural or not, but they are facts proving that there actually must be someone living in urban eareas of Norway considering Neonorwegian a socalled "urban language"...)

Following Wikipeida-guidelines these sentences should be removed! They are expressions of a POV. The "written language-question" is a difficult question in Norway, since the same spoken language is divided in to two different (official) written forms. The question has been argued over for a hundred years (Norway just celebrated its first hundred years of independence in 2005), and it will probably be argued over all untill English becomes the official European language ;-) But please; do not allow POV on this subject in a foreign Wikipedia, there are enough Points Of Views in Norway allready...

Thank you in advance for taking my view into consideration, and a merry christmas to all of you ;-)

62.97.219.78 05:12, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

Statistics

Detailed statistics on the use of Nynorsk and Bokmål do not belong in the article on Nynorsk. Try the same thing in the article on Bokmål to see how weird this really is.

To anonymous 80.202.248.75: In an article about nynorsk, the number of users who never or seldomly write Bokmål (7.5%) is far less important than the actual number of nynorsk users (13%).

To Nhwr: you cannot compare the percentage using nynorsk with the percentage learning it in school. The total nynorsk percentage continued to grow even after the percentage of pupils started to decline. Just think about it.

I am reverting to my latest version. If you disagree, please try to justify your contributions, and consider if it is not more appropriate to do it in the article on Norwegian language. If not, please make corresponding editions to the Bokmål article as well.

Plutix 11:14, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

First of all, the "detailed statistics" aren't included to show the number of pupils using Nynorsk, but to present the percentage of Norwegians living in Nynorsk municipalities and how that has developed throughout the 20th century. Is this really irrelevant? The data is included as a compensation for the lack of references showing that Nynorsk had a stronger hold in the middle of the 1900s compared to today. I agree that the relevance of the statistics themselves (Nynorsk municipalities instead of Nynorsk users) is questionable (although the Nynorsk version of the article states otherwise and the Norwegian Language Council includes the statistics in their information on Nynorsk), but it gives a clearer picture on the development on the usage of Nynorsk than simply not mentioning it at all, given that a section on the development of the usage of Nynorsk belongs in this article.

When it comes to the matter of presenting this development, I don't understand your argument that it is "weird" to include such statistics. The Norwegian Language Council includes it in their article. Linguists use the same kind of data when they try to predict how the usage will develop in the future. Articles on most other languages include sections on historical statistics. Or are you planning on deleting those sections as well, with the argument that it seems "weird"?

Finally, the reason why I include the statistics here and not in the main article on the Norwegian language, is that the section "Bokmål and Nynorsk" of the article refers to the articles on Nynorsk and Bokmål as the "main articles".

Your "ultimatum" that this information shouldn't be here if it isn't in the Bokmål article also, I don't think deserves any comment. Nhwr 15:34, 5 March 2007

You connect the percentage of people in nynorsk muncipalities in the 1950s directly to the current percentage of nynorsk users among the total population, but this cannot be done. In 1950 the older generations even in solid nynorsk muncipalities were probably writing bokmål because they went to school before nynorsk was adopted. Furthermore, in many of the muncipalities that have changed from nynorsk to bokmål or neutrality since the 1950s, nynorsk was recently introduced and never had a solid grip, so the contribution from these muncipalities on the total percentage of nynorsk users may not have been that big. In the following years, while muncipalities changed from nynorsk to bokmål or neutrality, bokmål users died of old age while new nynorsk users were educated. Nynorsk may have been more used in the 1950s than it is today, relatively speaking, but the numbers you have found do not tell us that. There may be numbers that do. If we look at absolute numbers, there may never have been more nynorsk users than today (600,000, 40% of which are bilingual)[1]. As a PhD student in mathematics I'm confident you understand this. :)

What I think is weird is having two sentences describing the language and five sentences discussing its number of users relative to Bokmål. This may be interesting for someone involved in the Norwegian language struggle, but is hardly of primary interest to foreign readers. It's about proportions and target audience. If you tried to do this with the Bokmål article, you would understand what I mean.

I have tried hard to keep your statistical data while rewriting the paragraph, but it just doesn't make sense. May I suggest that you write something about the geographical distribution in stead? The number of muncipalities peaked in 1953 and the number of schools peaked sometime during the war. This does say something about the popular and political support for nynorsk, but please don't connect it to the number or percentage of nynorsk users unless you find new data to back it up.

Plutix 18:01, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Missing

What this article singularly fails to do is give the slightest indication of what the distinguishing features are of Nynorsk or to what extent it differs from/resembles Bokmal. A non-Norwegian speaker will leave this article absolutely none the wiser. Vauxhall1964 (talk) 01:45, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

The geography of Nynorsk

I added information on Høgnorsk and cleaned up a few other details, such as mentioning that Nynorsk is most common to the northwest. --Mike 05:16, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

If not directly false, I believe that's rather inaccurate. I'll get back to this as soon as I have time, if someone else doesn't fix it first. --Eddi (Talk) 09:12, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

My understanding as a non-native speaker of Norwegian has been that Nynorsk is most prevalent in the northwest. I have seen this in published articles on Nynorsk in Danish, Nynorsk, and English though the most ready reference on the web I could find just now is:

"Nynorsk dominates in the communities lining the fjords on the west coast of Norway and in the mountain districts of inland Norway."

in an article by one Professor Eyvind Fjeld Halvorsen at a guidesite to Bergen. [2]

Truly, this is not to say that Nynorsk is limited to these areas and I will amend the article to indicate such. Ivar Aasen was from the West and while he did a great deal of research all over Norway, I understand that the roots of modern Nynorsk are heavy on the dialects of Western Norway. My intention was, to the non-speaker reading in English to understand that Bokmål has always been more of an urban language and Nynorsk more rural. I don't think anyone would argue against that point, but I agree that it was confusing that I indicated Nynorsk to be exclusive to the north-west. And I apologise for any confusion.--Mike 06:44, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

Seems like a good article, although I haven't had the time to read all of it. Perhaps it is possible to interpret the article differently depending on whether you are a Norwegian or not, i.e. depending on your level of background knowledge of the Norwegian language situation and language history. Anyway, my primary objection would be the lack of emphasis on the inland mountain regions in addition to the west coast, while you're quite right in that Nynorsk is more of a rural language. It looks better now, but just to be sure I'll try and engange some editors who are experts on the Norwegian language. --Eddi (Talk) 22:15, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

You're very right that I should have mentioned the inland mountain areas too. Because I am Faroese and not Norwegian, I agree that I may not have a native's perspective and certainly that perspective is essential to this article. And we certainly need more people with expertise contributing to this article.--Mike 01:45, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

I will look at this article again. What is lacking is a presentation of the fact that Aasen got large parts of the words in nynorsk from eastern and northern Norway. A problem is that since nynorsk today is mostly used in western norway, people think that Aasen intended nynorsk to be based on western norwegian dialects. He didn't.

I have numreous maps that outine in detail which municipalities constitute "Nynorsk Country" (as analogous with the Gaeltacht) — both core and periphery — but I don't know how to upload them. Maybe someone else can do that? =J //Big Adamsky 20:18, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Excuse me but there is no such thing as North-Western Norway. there's Eastern Norway, Southern Norway, South-Western Norway and Northern Norway... North-West is physically impossible. That's kind of irrelevant to the article nonetheless though... just had to say that! Gilraen690 17:53, 22 January 2007 (UTC)Gilraen690

North-West Norway (Nordvestlandet) is the northern part of West Norway. It is probably more loosely defined than West Norway, but in general it consists of Møre og Romsdal and Sogn og Fjordane. Fjord1 Nordvestlandske uses the term in its company name and it is in general widely used in Norway even if Gilraen690 thinks it is impossible or has never heard of it. Inge 10:28, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

While its indisputable that nynorsk is most heavily used in Møre og Romsdal and Sogn og Fjordane (and especially the latter), lets not forget Hordaland and Rogaland in this. These four municipalities has 70 % of the nynorsk writing people in the country (according to latest research, I don't have the source right now). The dialects here are also very much more tied up to nynorsk than it is of bokmål.

I can informe that the Sogn og Fjordane fylke ("region") is the only fylke in Norway where all municipalities have chosen Nynorsk as their administative writing langue. Followed by Hordaland fylke where all municipalities have chosen Nynorsk, exept tree who are nutreal. 193.217.125.207 (talk) 23:52, 28 February 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.217.125.207 (talk) 23:42, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

North?

Not that it's a very big point, but Buskerud, Oppland, Buskerud and the Agders are hardly northern counties. The Agders are known as Sørlandet. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.81.255.254 (talk) 09:50, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

The text doesn't state that. It talks about the northern parts of those counties. __meco (talk) 09:53, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Neonorwegian?

I wonder why you use the word Neonorwegian instead of New Norwegian. I thought the last one was the correct, but they might both be... Vemund 18:43, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

The correct terms to use in English according to Norsk Språkråd is Norwegian Bokmål and Norwegian Nynorsk. The translation of nynorsk to New Norwegian or Neonorwegian is kind off misleading. It is called Nynorsk because it is the decendant of Gammalnorsk ("Old Norwegian") and Mellomnorsk ("Mid Norwegian"). Not because it is a new Norwegian language. In addition the translated version of bokmål: Book Language is very uncommon. So for purposes of discussing Norwegian language it would be better to use Bokmål and Nynorsk. Most people interested in the subject will know what that is and if not it's not difficult to find out. Inge 12:30, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

It's not the descendant of anything; it's a patchwork of Norwegian dialects, mostly Western ones. Claiming anything else will result in an edit war, I can assure you that. --Joffeloff 15:30, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

There is nothing controversial about what Inge wrote. The development phases of the Norwegian language are called "gammalnorsk" , "mellomnorsk" and "nynorsk". The nynorsk writing norm got its name (from the Norwegian parliament), logically enough, because it is the writing norm that is based on the spoken language of the "nynorsk" development phase. These terms are equivalent to the English terms Old English, Middle English and Modern English, so the most correct translation of the name "nynorsk" itself is Modern Norwegian. The article should obviously continue to be called "Nynorsk", or Språkrådets "Norwegian Nynorsk", but an explanation of the history behind the name, with the translation "Modern Norwegian", should be included instead of the rather misleading translation "New Norwegian". Threatening editing wars is hardly constructive behaviour. -- Nidator ^{T / C} 14:51, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

The translation "New Norwegian" or "Modern Norwegian" is both misleading translations. I can't see why the translation "New Norwegian" is used, when the reference translates Nynorsk as "New Norse". Ricmik 09:06, 23 November 2009 (CET)

Dubbed

"No major cinema or dvd release has been subtitled or dubbed in nynorsk."

I took away dubbed. Nynorsk is a written language only, and thus it is impossible to dub something in nynorsk. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.16.185.118 (talk) 15:53, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

This is plain wrong. Every language can be spoken, even if pronunciation is not standardized. Plutix (talk) 05:45, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

I was under the impression Nynorsk is different than Bokmål in the same way the Simplified are different from Traditional Chinese characters: you can't "dub" something in either, only Mandarin (in this case, Norwegian). ALTON .ıl 19:46, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Nynorsk and bokmål are distinct Scandinavian standard languages that can both be spoken. The articles explain this. Plutix (talk) 20:26, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

I see this ("There is no codified standard for spoken Nynorsk,...") but it really needs to be emphasized then that it can be spoken. The lead needs to reflect this, rming things such as "regardless of [spoken] dialect" and the emphasis on "written" as its only difference from Bokmål, which would only be appropriate if they only different in writing. ALTON .ıl 21:35, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Do the changes help? Also see bokmål. Plutix (talk) 12:40, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes, thanks. Although I could not have been the only one to reach that conclusion; I wonder why it was left like that for so long. ALTON .ıl 03:09, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Capitalization of the 1st letter in Nynorsk/nynorsk

I do apologize for my ignorance, if it has been explained or discussed before, but I have a question: why is Nynorsk sometimes written with the 1st letter capitalized, and sometimes not? It may look inconsistent, altough I may see a reason for this.

If "Nynorsk" is a language, then according to the English grammar rules it should be written with the 1st letter capitalized, i.e. "Nynorsk".

However, if "nynorsk" refers to the manner or style of writing, then it could possibly be written in small letters, i.e. "nynorsk". Or am I wrong here? (English isn't my native language, either...)

I know that I am touching a possibly heated debate, as to whether it is a language, or not. (Well, my personal opinion is that there is only one Norwegian language, the Norwegian language, which has 2 official standards: Bokmål and Nynorsk.)

But still, even under this consideration, I would perhaps change the capitalization of some of the initial letters. However, being such an ignorant and uninformed layman, I wanted to avoid vandalizing the page the article, so I opted to ask in the discussion section first.

I hope I didn't offend anyone, I sincerely didn't mean to; please forgive me if I did, and accept my most profound apologies, please. --78.99.197.229 (talk) 22:08, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

"Nynorsk" should be written with the 1st letter capitalized. I'll correct this immediately.

Linguistically speaking, there is no doubt that nynorsk and bokmål are varieties of the same language, namely Scandinavian, and clearly, both these varieties are Norwegian as they have no widesperad use outside Norway. On the other hand, there is no doubt that the differences between Nynorsk and Bokmål are significant, and there is nothing in the dicitonary definition of language that prevents one from calling these varieties languages. They even have separate ISO 639 langauge codes. I don't see any problems with the article related to this. I'm not sure you do either, but if you do, please explain what you mean. And don't be afraid to step on toes. Plutix (talk) 22:07, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

As nynorsk and bokmål are Norwegian words, not English, one could argue that English capitalisation rules do not apply, and that they should be lowercase. But there are probably equally good arguments for capitalising them. Either way, so long as it's consistent, I don't mind. SNALWIBMA ( talk - contribs ) 07:51, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

fixed spelling mistakes

The past tense of skrive is skrev, it's irregular. Also, there is more than just -et as an ending, there's also -te (as in likte), -de (as in prøvde), and -dde (as in hadde).

http://mylittlenorway.com/2009/06/norwegian-lesson-130/ http://www.stolaf.edu/depts/norwegian/grammar/past-tense.html http://www.linguata.com/norwegian/norwegian-verbs.html

Added those to the refrences, but cited two for the first and the other for the second change. However, all are identical and address both issues. Å skrive is also an irregular verb, so it might not be the best in comparison. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.189.37.229 (talk) 21:10, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

You compared different tenses, the inflection of the word skriva/skrive goes as follows:

Bokmål: skrive - skriver - skre(i)v - skrevet

Nynorsk: skriva/skrive - skriv(er) - skreiv - skrive/skrivi

Futhermore, the point of that section was to illustrate one of the more systematic differences between Bokmål and Nynorsk, which is that many t's have been removed in modern Nynorsk; another example is Nynorsk anna (originally annat) versus Bokmål annet, and ope (originally opet) versus åpent. --Harald Khan Ճ 09:21, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

Yes, it's quite obvious what the section was trying to say, but it doesn't change the fact that it was bad info. Use a regular verb, or better yes, use the past perfect but write it correctly. Saying that the only way to form the past participle ending for bokmål is with -et is wrong. It needs to be reworded to explicitely say you are only talking about one possible past participle ending. It also doesn't change the fact that the past perfect tense needs to be written with "hadde" in front. Otherwise, it's just the past tense.--109.189.37.229 (talk) 16:44, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

The verb "skriva/skrive" follows a certain pattern with some other verbs, like (with the Landsmål t in parentheses) "vera - vore(t)", "skjera - skore(t)", "bera - bore(t)", with many more. Thus it is actually not a too bad word for demonstrating a particular difference between Bokmål and Nynorsk; one problem is though that the equivalent Bokmål forms sometimes do not end with "-et", e.g. "være - vært". I am not sure what you mean by "hadde", you cannot put "hadde" in front of the past tense, e.g. "hadde skreiv", that's incorrect Norwegian. "Hadde" is for the past participle only. I have not defended the original wording of the text in the article, I just pointed out that you had compared two different tenses when you made your edit. --Harald Khan Ճ 20:45, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Not the past tense, the past perfect tense. "Skrevet" isn't past tense in bokmål, that's "skrev". "Hadde skrevet" is the past perfect. So, if you want to use "skrevet" for comparision, you must use the proper past perfect form (hadde skrevet, not skrevet) with its nynorsk equivalent. Skrive is a bad verb to use altogether since it's irregular. There are plenty of regular verbs that can illustrate this point.

It's confusing to talk about an improperly written past perfect verb and then talk about a past tense verb. --109.189.37.229 (talk) 09:55, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

I replaced it with "kaste", not entirely sure the landmål is correct, but at least now we've got one verb tense we're talking about and the correct form of that verb tense. If you don't like the verb, please don't revert it. Find something else that has a reglular past tense so there's no longer a mix of improperly written past perfect and past participle. --109.189.37.229 (talk) 10:16, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

You wrote "It also doesn't change the fact that the past perfect tense needs to be written with "hadde" in front. Otherwise, it's just the past tense." Which implies that you may put "hadde" in front of the past tense; which one often may not. Also, there originally was not necessarily any past tense in the article. skrevet had, though, been translated into 'wrote', but naturally it should be 'written'; and I fixed that. We do not need to write "hadde skrevet", there is no point in that as the "hadde" bit adds nothing.

Lastly, please see my explanation above why the verb "skriva/skrive" should be included. IIRC there are only two types of verbs that are interesting for the section, and that is the class of the verbs "hoppa, kasta, angra etc" and the set of verbs "skriva, skjera, bera etc". A similar or better explanation could be added to text along with some information on the Old Norse origins of these t's, though I don't feel awefully inspired right now. --Harald Khan Ճ 15:21, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

1. 1:"Which implies that you may put "hadde" in front of the past tense; which one often may not. "

In front of the past perfect tense, yes, you do. You can use the participle formation of the verb as an adjective, but that's not the "past participle" tense. That's also not what this paragraph is about, we are talking about various past tenses not a verb used an an adjective.

I've already cited sources that confirm this, if you think I'm wrong, please find something that says otherwise.

1. 2: Again, it's confusing to mix verb tenses. It really doesn't help the reader understand the point of these examples if you're going to use examples from two different tenses. I understand you find "skrive" interesting, but that isn't enough of a reason to include it. Like I said previously, if you don't like the verb I chose to replace it with, find another that doesn't have an irregular past tense. --109.189.37.229 (talk) 12:42, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

I don't get what you are trying to say with the past perfect tense; but I don't see how it is relevant to the article either way (you earlier wrote "It also doesn't change the fact that the past perfect tense needs to be written with "hadde" in front.", but I cannot see the past the perfect tense mentioned in the article).

Skriva is more than just "interesting", it is representative for one out of perhaps two in total sets of verbs in Nynorsk which are relevant for the section - there is really no doubt whether or not it, or a similar verb, should be mentioned alongside the kasta class. I think the section is poorly written as it is now, but the examples would illustrate the point most excellently if they went a bit more into detail. The kasta class is represented in this grammatical table as the v1 class, whereas words like skriva are not represented by any class because they have a slightly more irregular inflection; yet all their past participles end with -e in Nynorsk, and used to end with -et in Landsmål. I.e., the way these t's have been dropped for these verbs is entirely regular. --Harald Khan Ճ 15:04, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

"but I cannot see the past the perfect tense mentioned in the article)"

No, we see the "participle" form of skrive (half of one of the perfect tenses or used on its own as an adjective) incorrectly labled "past participle".

Now, one solution would be to rewrite that section to talk only about participles. That would certainly rectify the current problem and we'd be uniformly talking about the same part of speech (the easiest solution is simply finding a verb of that class with a regular spelling). However, until an agreement is reached, I see no sense in such a lengthy edit.--109.189.37.229 (talk) 16:35, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

Wait, so you are saying that Nynorsk skrive/skrivi (or Bokmål skrevet, if you like) is not the past participle? The grammatical table I provided above call those verb forms form "perfektum partisipp", and a Norwegian to English dictionary here translates "perfektum partisipp" into "past participle". --Harald Khan Ճ 17:29, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

Here's the problem, you have to look at English language verb charts to see the correct identification of each verb conjucation in the English language. I'm not disupting what they're called in Norwegian, but that's not their name in English. With perhaps a few anomolies, you'll never see the name "past participle" on an English language verb chart of verb conjucations. Here's a third example: http://www.verbix.com/webverbix/go.php?T1=skrive&D1=25&H1=125&imageField.x=0&imageField.y=0

As written in the English language, it's the participle unless you want to add the appropriate modal to it.

The link you provided is a definition of the perfect tense, incidentally. That's all perfect tenses. The perfect participles are different, as the defintion points out. --109.189.37.229 (talk) 18:41, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

Note that the list you link to lists up perfect forms, I would like to see a list where "skrive/skrive" is listed up without the auxiliary verb "ha" - we are naturally not interested in auxiliary verbs in this section. There is is another participle in addition to the past participle, we also have present participle (skrivande). As far as I can see, the word past participle is not uncommon in English, and it appears to me to be nothing but the same word as "perfektum partisipp". --Harald Khan Ճ 19:15, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

Just a suggestion: I saw your dispute listing at the Third Opinion project and considered answering it, but I am, frankly, totally clueless as to the proper answer. I did some searching for you and I've found a user, Trondtr, who has userboxes on his user page and talk page that say he is a native speaker of Nynorsk and Bokmål, that he has a level-3 ability in English and, most importantly, that he is a professional linguist. He has edited one or more Norwegian language articles. It's been a few months since he has edited here, but he has an active email link. You might contact him and see if he might help here. Best regards, TRANSPORTERMAN (TALK) 19:22, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

I am in the same boat as TransporterMan; I saw your report on the third opinion page and would very much like to help, but I think I'm simply just unqualified to render any kind of opinion about the dispute. I have no doubt that my bumbling around would hurt rather than help. :) I would add one suggestion to TransporterMan's excellent one above, which is you might find some help at the Reference desk for language issues. There are many knowledgeable people there who can possibly help you. — e. ripley\^talk 14:47, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Well, now there are three third opinions saying they cannot discern the right answer. Perhaps one of you could state what is at issue in a single sentence. Are you arguing over what the past tense of skrive is in Nynorsk? Are you arguing over past perfect in Bokmål? Are you arguing over which verbs best illustrate the differences between Nynorsk and Bokmål? Give us a little help if you could. RJC ^Talk_Contribs 17:39, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

This is how the anonymous editor explains the dispute. Personally, I feel that the whole section should be rewritten before any eventual third opinion is truly useful (I also feel that the debate is pretty messy and I have problems relating it to the information in the article..); though indeed a linguist could perhaps bring the debate to a quick end in many ways. --Harald Khan Ճ 18:23, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

This whole discussion is getting very confusing, but at least I might try to shed some light on parts of it. The big problem, I think, is that there are many versions of grammatical terminology in existence, not just in different languages, but in one and the same language. I remember my frustration when I started at university, and suddenly the grammatical categories we had learned at school had entirely new names. At school I learnt that Norwegian (both nynorsk and bokmål) had a whole bunch of grammatical tenses, including "presens, futurum, preteritum, perfektum and pluskvamperfektum". However, on an academic level, i.e. at university level, it is considered that Norwegian has only two tenses: Present tense and past tense. All the rest are compound tenses. On the "Third opinion" page, this assertions is stated:

"I've cited sources that show that to correctly write the past perfect tense of a Norwegian verb, "hadde" must be added to the front."

Well: If you add "hadde" in front of the past participle form, you get the pluperfect, also called past perfect, which in Norwegian is called pluskvamperfektum, from Latin plus quam perfectum. Note that Wikipedia's article on participle mentions both past participle and present participle in modern English, the exact same distinction exists in Nynorsk.

In other words: To correctly write the past perfect tense of a Norwegian verb, "hadde" must be added in front of the past participle.

The term "perfect tense" is mentioned somewhere in the above. Norwegian has no grammatical "perfect tense", only present (e.g. skriv) and past (e.g. skreiv). Perfect and pluperfect in Norwegian are compound tenses, formed with the modal verb ha and the past participle, which is not a finite verb.

When Harald Khan writes "you cannot put "hadde" in front of the past tense," he is absolutely correct. When the anonymous editor writes ""Hadde skrevet" is the past perfect", he is right, but note: Past perfect is not a grammatical tense of the verb.--Barend (talk) 19:08, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Pronunciation of Nynorsk and Bokmal

Is Nynorsk pronounced (in English) newnorsk, noonorsk or neynorsk? What about Bokmal? An IPA entry is needed for both. Brutal Deluxe (talk) 00:07, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

I gave it a try here: http://www.zshare.net/download/89786446d41bde89/. First nynorsk, then bokmål. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.9.50.192 (talk) 21:09, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Pronunciation of Nynorsk

Does anyone know how to prononce Nynorsk (with IPA), the y, for example.--Staatenloser 16:04, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

The y in Norwegian words is like the ü in German words. I'm not particularly good with IPA, but I'll try without diacritics: (a) central or Western Norwegian with rolled R: [nynorsk], (b) Western or Southern Norwegian with fricative R: [nynoxsk], (c) Eastern or Northern Norwegian: [nynoʃk]. Norwegian spelling follows pronunciation to a large degree. --Eddi (Talk) 23:04, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

I used you answer for the French wiki. Pronunciation, then : IPA: [nynorsk, -ʀsk, -ʂk] — Staatenloser

Quote from the French wiki: "[le nynorsk] est plus pratiqué à l'oral." This is wrong - Norwegian nynorsk is one of Norway's written languages, and is, as Norwegian bokmål, not spoken by anybody. I'd recommend clearly indicating this, as well as including that the different spoken dialects are more or less variants of nynorsk and bokmål (and maybe the fact that nynorsk was built on Norwegian dialects). Ilmarinen 19:17, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Well.. Dialects of Norway aren't "variants of nynorsk/bokmål"; rather the oposite... But the fact that no-one actualy speaks the exact form of any of the two written standards is probably true ;-)

Rewriting :

Le nynorsk est une des deux formes écrites légales du norvégien et représente autour de 10 % des documents à caractère administratif. Staatenloser 04:50, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Of course, you are completely right - saying it like that would make it much clearer :) Ilmarinen 18:31, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

Excuse me, but saying that no one speaks New Norwegian is like saying no one speaks English! Of course, they don't pronounce it as it is written, but in six municipalities, NN is the officially language, and in large parts of Finnmark and Troms, NN is the spoken Norwegian. Vemund 18:51, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure if I follow your arithmetics. Of the municipalities that have chosen an official written standard, 160 have chosen bokmål and 115 nynorsk, while 158 have made no choice or have chosen to be neutral, and accept either form of Norwegian in written communication from the state. Additionally, Northern Sami in 6 municipalities and Finnish in 1 municipality are co-official languages. Among the counties, 2 have chosen bokmål, 3 nynorsk, and 14 are neutral [3]. --Eddi (Talk) 21:20, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

I ment the spoken New Norwegian. And my purpose was really to point out that: (quote) "Norwegian nynorsk is one of Norway's written languages, and is, as Norwegian bokmål, not spoken by anybody." is wrong! I do not doubt the realness of your facts, though!

Vemund 21:59, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

You may have a point, but I didn't understand your intentions earlier. I would suggest, however, to just replace "not spoken by anybody" with "spoken by only a few". --Eddi (Talk) 22:41, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Yes, that sounds reasonably (as long as no one think a few means a few persons...)

Vemund 22:51, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

The use of NN was about 48% in Troms before ww2, but has not been used officially in Troms since 1967. The spoken Norwegian in Troms is wariants of Nordlandsk and the isolated dialects of Bardu and Målselv. In many municipalities in Finmark, Bokmål is the spoken Norwegian, because many people use Sami or Finnish/Kvænsk at home, and learn Bokmål in school, these are the only ones who speak somewhat standardised Norwegian(Bm/Nn).--Njård 02:49, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Indeed. But do not forget what this discussion is about: Is there anyone in Norway speaking Nynorsk (with certain accent, of course)? Yes! I redraw my state I made where I claimed that NN was frequently spoken in the northern parts of Norway. The dialects there are reminds of NN in accent, yes, but it is in Vestlandet NN is spoken among the people as their daily tounge. It is also here the inventer Ivar Aasen comes from, so geographically it makes sense. Most Norwegians speak dialects, not the exact BB or NN. But some do. And they count! Vemund 18:54, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

No, I do not think they count! First of all "everyone" in Norway speaks Norwegian, some of those write in NN and some in BM. The difference between written and spoken language is sometimes small but important eventhough. Pronunciation, grammar and vokabulary varies greatly from place to place. The only ones who can claim to speak NN or BM is those who are oblighed to because they are news-presenters in NRK, and even those have dialectical varietys. Your statement abouth Vestlanders use NN as their daily tounge, makes no sense. Who are those Vestlanders? People from Haugesund? Førde? Sogn? Ålesund? All of those mentioned above use their own dialects. One of the reasons people often asosiate western dialects and Nynorsk is the fact that a mayority of NN users are infact from Vestlandet. Their NN is thus spoken with a western acsent, but a NN user from Trøndelag or Valdres or Nordland, vill of course read the same tekst with their own acsent respectviely.--Njård 20:51, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

You go to Vestlandet. You hear what they speak. It is in fact NN with slightly accent (variation from place to place). I'll tell you the difference between those who speaks dialects and those who speaks NN or BM with accent: Let's take a random Norwegian dialect, say Solung. (Which is spoken in parts of Østnorge.) Neither the words nor the accent is the same as in any of the two main forms of Norwegian (i.e. BM/NN). In vestlandsk (some types), the words are the same as in NN, but the pronociation is somewhat different from place to place. In Oslo, they speak BM with a Oslo-ish accent (those who comes from Oslo, have parents that comes from Oslo etc.). The question in this conversation is wheter or not NN is only a written language or also a oral language. I say the last-mentioned is correct! Vemund 18:07, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

The Norwegian Y is not like the German ü. The Norwegian U is pronounced the way the German ü is pronounced.

I say you are wrong...--Njård 23:08, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

The Norwegian version of Wikipedia seems to support my view. Under "tysk språk"/"German language (http://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tysk_spr%C3%A5k#Uttale, it says: "Ü is pronounced much like Norwegian u" and "Norwegian y does not exist", just like I said. That ü is pronounced like y is just a nasty habit many German-learning Norwegians have picked up, since its just a lot easier than pronouncing it correctly.

"The Norwegian version of Wikipedia"? Is this supposed to be a bad joke or something? Let me remind you that there actually are two norwegian wikis, and both nynorsk and bokmål are both equally norwegian! I, and others, do find claiming otherwise rather offensive. This "war" between our wikis is silly and should stop! but it wont as long as the bokmålswiki is claiming superiority. --AndersL 10:47, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

That was very clumsy of me. I meant the "bokmål" Wikipedia, although I would write "Norwegian Wikipedia" even if I gathered the information from bokmål or nynorsk. Sorry about that. I use nynorsk myself in all regards, so this was surely not an attempt to claim superiority for the bokmål Wikipedia. I see your point though: Wikipedia.no shouldn't link to the bokmål version, since nynorsk is indeed equal to bokmål.

I have known both (Oslo) Bokmål (which I capitalize by way of adapting it for English use) and German for decades, and likewise have been trained in phonetics and other areas of linguistics since about 1980, and my best understanding of these pronunciations is that Norwegian long <u> as in du (angle brackets <> to show orthography) is actually a diphthong – [ʉy] or [ɨy] – or even occasionally a triphthong, [ɨʉy]. The tongue sweeps from (not the very back, but more of) a central position, [ɨ] or [ʉ], to a true front-vowel position, [y], and optionally may begin in a fairly unrounded state (hence the possible [ɨ]), but ends up not only more fronted, but definitively rounded ([y]) as well. This is different from German long <ü> as in üben, which is a "pure" vowel (basically no movement of the tongue is permitted) and actually does approximate Norwegian long <y> [yː] (where ː, sometimes also written with an ordinary colon :, indicates length; forgive me these details — in the States knowledge of the IPA and accompanying marks like ː is confined to specialists! — You probably grew up with them? If so, please excuse me).

Norwegian short <u> as in full, on the other hand, does closely resemble German short <ü> as in dünn, which approximates the "open" (="lax") front rounded vowel [ʏ], which is the rounded counterpart to German/English short <i>, [ɪ] (also written [I]). (Alternatively, Norwegian short <u> could be a little more central, [ʊ̈].) — IfYouDoIfYouDon't (talk) 10:52, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Written language

"Spoken in Norway and by people in Norwegian settlements in the United States" "Total speakers 6.3 million"

This is very wrong. As it has been mentioned before, this is ONLY a written language. No one speaks Nynorsk. Not in Norway, and deffinetly not in the US. Regular Norwegian is spoken by only 4.7 million people, so the statement that 6.3 million speak Nynorsk is ludicrous. Masselass (talk) 11:49, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

As far as I understand, the word "Nynorsk" (New/modern Norwegian) has two different meanings. The original meaning is the modern stage of Norwegian, as opposed to Middle Norwegian ("mellomnorsk") and Old Norwegian ("gammelnorsk"). However, after one of the two official standards of Norwegian changed name from Landsmål ("Country Language") to Nynorsk, the term Nynorsk has by most people primarily been identified with this written language. AS to the number 6.3 millions, this seems very strange to me as well. --Oddeivind (talk) 20:40, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

At the beginning of the article Nynorsk is clearly defined as a written language. However some of the complications referred to later in the article arise in spoken dialects, and the article loses focus for that reason. Some editing is required for consistency. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.45.82.185 (talk) 22:48, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Definition of Nynorsk

If Nynorsk is one of two official written standards, as the article states, where is the document that defines it? a reference to that would remove all argument. If there is Language Council, how are their results disseminated?

Many people in the South and West speak local dialects and we are told Nynorsk is based on many of those dialects and others. How many people speak standard Nynorsk (as distinct from dialects) and what does standard Nynorsk mean? does it have any meaning?

Nynorsk is taught in schools in Oslo, so are there any textbooks? are there any spoken Nynorsk examinations or are they all written exams? this article has the potential for a lot of improvement :) tusen takk alle sammen! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Historikeren (talk • contribs) 20:40, 2 September 2013 (UTC)