Talk:Brännboll

Swedish terminology
Given that the game is played in several countries under different names and using different terminology for the elements of the game, why is it relevant to mention the Swedish terminology in the article? It seems the article should be de-regionalized.

Article name
Is brennball really a good title for the article? My search on google on "brennball site:.com" gives exclusively German sites, and some Wikipedia mirrors on this article. I think this should be moved to Brännboll. Any objections? -- Elisson | Talk 18:41, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * No objections Actually I have objections. Could you please check with the naming convention first? I know some english people prefer to avoid umlauts (I prefer to avoid it in French names!), so please check the naming convention first. "Brannball" would perhaps be a more "international" name. --Fred-Chess 18:53, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * The Wikipedia naming convention on the matter mentions nothing of umlauts. There are several articles including å, ä and ö (Knäck, Malmö, Skellefteå, Anders Jonas Ångström, Filmjölk and so on) so I don't see any reason to not include the ä in brännboll. And as I've seen no international version of the name (both brannboll and brannball give very few hits on Google), I would prefer brännboll. -- Elisson | Talk 20:49, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * Had one been available, an English name should have been used and would have avoided the issue of the diacritics which some people around here dislike. But as there seems to be no English name for the game, I agree that the Swedish name with diacritics should be used; any other form will basically be a neologism. Brennball may possibly be a German form. Uppland 21:16, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)

As there seems to be no more objections, I'm moving it. -- Elisson | Talk 21:38, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * Why is this article under the Swedish name? Sweden is a bigger country than Denmark and Norway, but smaller than Germany.--Batmacumba (talk) 13:28, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

Is there no english name for this sport?
This exact game is also being played in Denmark, under the name "rundbold" (meaning "round ball", wow), and as it appears, in Germany and probably other countries. If there's no english name of the game, what then? The article could just as well have been named "rundbold". Marc K 14:20, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Is it *exactly* the same game? There *is* a pitcher in rundbold, IIRC. --Palnatoke 11:19, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
 * You're right, but the pitchers main objective is to receive the ball and yell "stop" (or something similar), just as the "burner". Normally people get the option to throw the ball up in the air themselves, if they prefer that. I don't know if that option is part of the "official" rules (I bet there are some sort of rundbold-klub in Denmark that can provide us with that information). However, you're right that the games differ in this respect, but since this difference is so small and people often throw the ball themselves, I don't think it is big enough to percieve the games as being different. Marc K 13:26, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
 * And players 'die' in rundbold when they would be 'bränd' in brännboll (assuming the article is correct) and innings continue until 3 player are dead (or 'out') not a fixed period of time. 83.72.136.244 20:52, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Tjejbollträ?
I have never heard the use of this word, where I come from everyone says "kärringracket", so I will change that Drogo 22:54, 2 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Well, I could easily imagine people/children calling it a "pige-bat" ("girl bat"), wich would translate into "tjejbollträ", I guess. But now, this again shows the problem of giving the article a regional bias. If people would agree, that this article is explaining not only "brännboll" but also "rundbold" (ie. that the two games are the same), I suggest the article become anti-regionalized. I also suggest we use english translations for things like the "tjejbollträ"/"kärringracket"/"pige-bat" and explain the connotations. Luckily this part (about the flat bat) is virtually unimportant and nonessential to the article. Marc K 00:26, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Added 'disparagingly' to clarify the usage of this term. -- Popoi 18:33, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Oh and Mark, in my very humble opinion brännboll is a very amateurish game, it's kindof like the local kids playing football in a parking lot using a couple of sweaters to mark goalposts. The part with the flat bat is very important. I think every Scandinavian who grew up playing brännboll encountered both the bat, as well the disparaging connotation.

Not to include it would be like writing an article on craps and not mentioning snake eyes.

-- Popoi 18:40, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Differences to German "Brennball"
German "Brennball" is different from all the other types of Brännboll mentioned here: You have a pitcher standing next to a ring with a radius of 50 centimeters (this is called "Brenner") on the ground. The pitcher must throw the ball in the Brenner. Everyone who is not standing on a base (there can be as much bases as one wants) is burned ("verbrannt", if it is translated word by word it means burned away). There is a time limit in Brennball or the sides swap after everyone of the Offensive has thrown the ball once. Yes, they throw it. They don't have bats. Usual you use volleyballs or soft balls. Players don't even have to throw the ball. They are allowed drop them at the home base (this can be smart but it doesn't have to). The bases around the field mark the field's end. When ball hits the ground first, it mustn't be outside the field (everyone who doesn't stand on a base dies instantly if the ball hits the group outside the field). Every burned opponent is a point for the defense. Every player getting around without being burned both is one point for the offense. A home-run is 3. In addition, there's another game in Germany called "Tiger-Brennball". I don't remember much of this. It is quite rare but normal Brennball is played very often at German schools. --90.128.97.1 19:29, 6 September 2007 (UTC)


 * "Brennball", as it's called in German, Spanish, and English according to this German website - http://www.brennball.de/english/index.htm, is described as a Swedish game popular in Germany. The Swedish version of the site calls it Brännboll, as this article.  It seems to be the same game? Hakluyt bean (talk) 19:58, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Norway?
Never heard this name in Norway. However, there is a related equivalent dødball. Punkmorten (talk) 09:52, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
 * I played slåball in Norwegian primary school the very year this comment was made! Ved havet ≈ (talk) 23:39, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

In American Upper Midwest?
"Branboll is enjoyed by elementary schoolchildren in the American Upper Midwest (particularly Minnesota), due to the area's large Scandinavian influence." -- Having grown up in Minnesota, and attending K-12 here, neither I nor anyone I know well enough to ask has ever heard of Branboll. 20:27, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

English translations
I've done a light rewrite of this article, and given it a new image (it had an annoying spelling mistake). As the act of being burned is roughly equivalent to being out in baseball I've decided to call it "out" (catching out, outing plate, etc), and explained the name in the opening paragraph. This will hopefully confuse non-Scandinavians less when their Scandinavian friends decide to show them how awesome brännboll is by linking to this article. EditorInTheRye (talk) 22:21, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

How does this differ from Rounders?
I don't see a substantial difference between this game and rounders. In fact even my dictionary suggest rounders as a translation of the Danish rundbold. I suggest to merge this article contents into rounders. In kind regards, Heb (talk) 09:44, 3 April 2013 (UTC)


 * These are two different games, with different history and names, using two different languages. Even within Rounders there are different rules depending on national associations, which have to be carefully explained. There are no national associations for Brännboll. Leave Brännboll as it is - merging the two articles would cause confusion. Hohenloh + 14:22, 3 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Could you elaborate a bit on that? It's not like Brännboll go much into details on it's history, and when I look at the commonalities of the two rule-sets of rounders, it still pretty much looks like the same to me. --Heb (talk) 08:54, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
 * If you want to nitpick at rules differences I found plenty:
 * Throw ball to batter vs batter starting out with ball when batting
 * Leather ball vs tennis ball
 * Only one person allowed per base vs unlimited
 * People starting at the out bases (I couldn't really work it out?) vs everyone lining up and waiting to bat
 * Defined requirements for bats vs just get a couple of bats including a cricket bat style one for less skilled players (it's a game, not a sport, remmeber? everyone should have fun!)
 * Innings defined by number of outs vs time
 * Points are only scored by the inning team in rounders (unsure about this one, again it wasn't very well explained) EditorInTheRye (talk) 19:38, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I guess it comes down to substantial and my experience with the Danish version of it being being a bit more loosely defined (such as there is no actual demand of the ball being a tennis ball or who throws the ball). --Heb (talk) 15:23, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I think you've also got to consider the cultural differences here too, this really fuzzily defined article on brännboll is quite a good example of how the Germanic bit of Europe sees ball and bat sports. In fact, the average Scandinavian will have a really hard time understanding the rules of baseball, let alone cricket. Brännboll is as complicated as ball and bat sports get over here, and I think it would be wrong to try to coerce all the content in this article into a real sport when it in reality is more of a game we play because nobody really takes ball and bat sports seriously here, it misrepresents how we feel about these kinds of sports. Also, covering less strict variants of a more defined game is not unheard of, see Variants of association football, for example. EditorInTheRye (talk) 09:22, 12 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I agree, the articles should NOT be merged. Eltirion (talk) 08:37, 16 August 2013 (UTC)
 * As there appears to be no consensus for merging, I have removed the notice. —Wiki Wikardo 05:20, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

Pronunciation
I'm no linguist, but shouldn't the pronunciation be [ˈbrɛnːbɔlː], rather than [ˈbrɛmːbɔlː]? Feels like although people may sometimes pronounce it the latter way colloquially, that the proper, articulated pronunciation should be the former. I have changed it in any case. Kimspindel (talk) 19:51, 5 May 2015 (UTC)