Talk:Unity of the Realm/Archive 1

Archive 1

Name in Faroese and Kalaallisut?

Does anyone know what Rigsfællesskabet is known as in Faroese and Kalaallisut? We could redirect to this article from those names. -- Nidator 16:13, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Map

Why the outdated map? -RudyReis —Preceding undated comment was added at 00:32, 10 October 2008 (UTC).

Rigsfællesskabet translates to Reichsgemeinschaft and Realm's Commonwealth

Rigsfællesskabet in Danish, translates to Reichsgemeinschaft in German and Realm's Commonwealth in English. In other words, the elements are Rigs, Reichs, and Realm's; fællesskabet, gemeinschaft, and Commonship in Danish, German, and English, respectively. The term Commonship best translates as Commonwealth and not Community.

ArmchairVexillologistDonLives! (talk) 06:39, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

You are right, and "community of the realm" does not sound correct. I have changed it accordingly. --Saddhiyama (talk) 09:47, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Confederation, federation, federacy or what?

Could someone please clarify for me whether the Kingdom of Denmark is a sovereign state consisting of three legally equal countries (i.e. Denmark, Faroe Islands, Greenland) or is it just that the Faroe Islands and Greenland have autonomy within the state? The Rigsfællesskabet article clearly says "It is one state with two self-governing areas, and as such it can be referred to as a federacy.". However the Kingdom of Denmark article states that the Danish Realm consists of three autonomous parts, the Denmark article gives the definition "senior member of the Kingdom of Denmark" and also the fact that there are three prime ministers in the state seems to suggest a theoretical equality between the parts as if the Kingdom was the alliance of the three "countries". ZBukov (talk) 22:08, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

The Danish constitution is that of a unitary state, which makes equality between the three parts unconstitutional. The bit you are quoting from this article seems accurate to me, and the bit from Kingdom of Denmark equally accurate if you include the "with Denmark as the hegemonial part". "Senior member of the Kingdom of Denmark" seems to be a made-up term and I am not sure what it is supposed to mean, but then again, there aren't any terms with legal status.
Don't put too much weight in the existence of three prime ministers. That just reflects common English usage for their titles, not equality. Their titles in Danish are statsminister (DK), lagmand (FO) and landsstyreformand (GL). Peter Alberti (talk) 06:44, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Dear Peter Alberti, thank you for your answer! So if I understand you right the structure of the Kingdom of Denmark is not analogous to that of the Kingdom of the Netherlands (which consists of 3 countries). So if the Kingdom of Denmark is a unitary state with two autonomous regions, can you please explain the relationship between Denmark and the Kingdom of Denmark? ZBukov (talk) 20:03, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

I didn't say the Kingdom of Denmark is a unitary state, but that constitutionally it is a unitary state. It used to be the case that the Danish parliament had the technical right to revoke the Faroese and Greenlandic home rule acts, but with the relatively recent Greenlandic self-government act, the population of Greenland have been recognized as a people under international law. This means that if the Danish parliament were to dissolve the Greenlandic self-government, it would be a matter for the United Nations, and it therefore no longer makes sense to me to call the Kingdom of Denmark a unitary state. (And arguably, that has been the case for a while before that.) That the kingdom isn't a unitary state anymore, is because of changes entirely outside the constitution and that's why the structure of the constitution prevents the three parts from being fully equal.
I don't know enough about the Kingdom of the Netherlands to say whether it is the same structure, but it makes sense to me to refer to the Kingdom of Denmark as 3 countries, as well. But country seems such a vague term that that doesn't convey much information to me.
Regarding Denmark and the Kingdom of Denmark, Denmark isn't defined anywhere as a separate legal entity within the kingdom. The best way of explaining it that I can think of right now is that Denmark is the part of the kingdom that doesn't have autonomy, so the government of Denmark is the government of the Kingdom of Denmark and strictly speaking there is no relationship between Denmark and the Kingdom of Denmark. In practical terms, in some cases (usually the case for e.g. foreign affairs) Denmark and the Kingdom of Denmark will be the same thing and in other cases (e.g. legislation on many topics) Denmark, the Faroe Islands and Greenland will be separate entities with separate parliaments etc.
Is that helpful? Peter Alberti (talk) 20:41, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Yes, it is very helpful indeed! Thank you very much for the explanation! My immediate motivation for inquiring is that I regularly edit and maintain the list of state leaders articles and when I happened upon the Kingdom of Denmark article (as a separate one from Denmark) I restructured the country's entry (see Denmark in the 2010 list). My idea about the governmental structure based on the Kingdom of Denmark article was that there is the Queen as head of state and under her there are three theoretically equal countries each with its own prime minister with no central government or administration above them and that they just take care of their common competencies through the organs of the largest country of the three, Denmark. But maybe reality doesn't match my idea so I would need correction or confirmation. And to get back to the most practical detail, should I - in your opinion - remove the "Denmark (autonomous region)" line from the List of state leaders entry and put down Margrethe and Rasmussen as head of state and government of the Kingdom and leave the Faroes and Greenland as autonomous regions within the state (rather than constituent countries that structurally make up two thirds of the state)? ZBukov (talk) 21:59, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Since the Kingdom of Denmark is the sovereign state, not Denmark, it seems surprising and potentially misleading that the full standard state data in the right hand side box (most notably the state leaders) is in the Denmark article and not in the Kingdom article, the latter only containing a meagre selection. Even the Faroe Islands article holds more information than the Kingdom. And this is rather inconvenient because for the sake of accuracy I feel I should change the link from Denmark to the Kingdom where the sovereign state is referred to. ZBukov (talk) 22:21, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I think you should remove the "Denmark (autonomous region)" line and present Lars Løkke Rasmussen as the head of government of the kingdom and leave the Faroe Islands and Greenland as autonomous regions as you said. That would the political reality better.
I agree that the kingdom article leaves something to be desired and that the Denmark article could use a fine touch as well. I have no good solution for that which doesn't involve a lot of article writing and I am not much of a content contributor. Peter Alberti (talk) 18:02, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

The Kingdom of Denmark (i.e., Kongeriget Danmark) seems to be divided up into three Provinces,

(i). the Province of Denmark (i.e., Provinsen Danmark),

(ii). the Province of the Faroe Islands (i.e., Provinsen Færøerne),

(iii). the Province of Greenland (i.e., Provinsen Grønland).

This is what is appears to be with the Rigsfællesskabet (i.e., Realm's Commonwealth, or Reichsgemeinschaft). Is this true?

ArmchairVexillologistDonLives! (talk) 06:10, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

The term provins (or province) is never used in Danish and I don't recall seeing it used in English before, either.
As the lead section of the article says, the term Rigsfællesskabet refers to the relationship between the government of Denmark and the two North Atlantic home-rule governments, not to the three parts as a whole. (And in that sentence, Denmark is synonymous with the Kingdom of Denmark.)
Minor nitpicking: the -et suffix in Rigsfællesskabet puts the word in the definite form just like "the" does, so "the Rigsfællesskabet" is a grammatical error and you should use either the Rigsfælleskab or Rigsfællesskabet. Peter Alberti (talk) 16:59, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Hello Peter Alberti.

Thank you very much for you kind reply, and explaination of Danish language spelling. I appreciate the knowledge very much. I am studying the Indo-European languages on my own, with a particular concentration on the Germanic languages branch.

So the Kingdom of Denmark has its Parliament (Folketing, formerly Rigsdagen) does this mean that the Parliament of Denmark rules the whole thing, but there are the Home Rule devolved Parliament of the Faroe Islands and the Home Rule devolved Parliament of Greenland that have certain local powers? ArmchairVexillologistDonLives! (talk) 17:50, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

You're welcome and yes, that's accurate. Peter Alberti (talk) 19:01, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Translation of Rigsfællesskabet

The term Rigsfællesskabet has the following components,

(i). Rigs

(ii). fællesskab

(iii). (et)

Now, we have,

(i). "Realm's"

(ii). "fellowship" ... "commonship"

(iii). gender ending, and the definite article "The".

So assembling the components we have The Realm's Commonship or The Realm's Fellowship for Rigsfællesskabet. The word Commonship can translate as either Commonwealth (i.e., Commonrealm) or Community. The more appropriate translation here is Commonwealth.

So we have Rigsfællesskabet translating as The Realm's Commonwealth or The Commonwealth of the Realm.

ArmchairVexillologistDonLives! (talk) 03:51, 25 July 2010 (UTC)