Talk:Elfdalian

Why was the talke page not moved?
Now as "Elfdalian dialect" has been moved here, to "Elfdalian", the old talk page was not moved, but still exists at Talk:Elfdalian_dialect. Does anyone here know why that was not done? Can we fix it ourselves? (As far as I can see, the talk page was moved when "Elfdalian" was moved to "Elfdalian dialect" a couple of weeks ago.) Felix ahlner (talk) 12:22, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

Morphology
 I appreciate your efforts to make the paragraphs clearer, and generally I think you have succeeded. However, using the plural "separate definite articles (as in English)" is a little inaccurate or misleading since English has only one definite article ("the"). Can you either use the singular "a definite article" or "one or more definite articles" before "as in English"? CorinneSD (talk) 20:45, 14 July 2014 (UTC)


 * I was writing with several occurrences in mind, but I get your point. It's now fix-ed.
 * Peter Isotalo 20:54, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

Conservatism
So, this language is very conservative. Is it more conservative than Icelandic, which is generally considered the most conservative of the Germanic languages, maintaining intelligibility with Old Norse? Correctrix (talk) 05:36, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
 * By and large, it's much less conservative. (But arguably more conservative than German, at least in its more-or-less standardized form.) However, in complicated things like languages you can always find details that go against the general pattern. Such details in Elfdalian vs. Icelandic are e.g. the nasal vowels or the "w" sound. (With respect to ”w”, English too is more conservative than Icelandic.) 83.248.231.252 (talk) 02:38, 6 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Another such detail is the quantity (length) of stressed syllables, where Elfdalian has largely stuck to the liberal medieval rules, whereas Icelandic has joined most of the other North Germanic dialects in evening it out. On the other hand, Elfdalian (along with other northern Scandinavian dialects, more or less) has adjusted unstressed syllables to the stressed ones in a rather complicated pattern also involving vowel shifts, and Elfdalian has also reduced its endings quite far, even if (up to the latest developments) maintaining a lot of grammatical distinctions between them.
 * (Note that I don't bother to give sources at this place, so check for yourself if you wish. Just a quick answer to a common question.) 83.248.231.252 (talk) 13:53, 6 June 2015 (UTC)
 * While the conservativity of Standard Icelandic may to some extent be artificial, it is clearly the most conservative North Germanic variety overall (despite innovations in the phonology). In comparison, Elfdalian is not quite as conservative – but it is heavily divergent from more mainstream Norwegian or Swedish dialects. However, many dialects in Norway and Sweden – especially more marginal ones like Gutamål (let alone its Fårö dialect), dialects in Norrland, Finland and Estonia, and rural dialects in Norway – have retained striking archaisms, such as remainders of the dative, diphthongs (in East Norse), or three genders, as well (this was even more pronounced in Ivar Aasen's day, while many of these archaisms and divergent traits have now gradually disappeared). In this context, Elfdalian is not quite as unusual as if compared only to the standard languages, but it still has striking – archaisms – and innovations! – apparently found nowhere or almost nowhere else in the Scandinavian dialects, such as the nasal vowels, several of which are clearly old where they occur (though they have also arosen secondarily in many cases). The diphthongisation of old long í, on the other hand, is a striking innovation, and apparently unique in Scandinavian. So, in short, it's complicated. (Oh, and the w of Elfdalian is only a spelling convention after the model of Early New Swedish – it's not really pronounced differently from Modern Swedish v.) --Florian Blaschke (talk) 22:28, 27 January 2016 (UTC)
 * By the way, even Standard Swedish is rather conservative – it remains close to Old East Norse, overall, especially from the point of view of historical phonology; only morphological simplifications (loss of nominal case forms and verbal person/number inflection, mainly) make it seem much more like Danish now than like Icelandic. But if you restored the plural forms of the verb – which were still retained in the Early New Swedish period –, and artificially re-introduced the nominal case forms of Old Swedish, the way they would have developped phonetically (for example, usually nom. sg. -er, gen. pl. -a, dat. pl. -om), and are still preserved in some fixed expressions and place names, and threw out most of the (Low German, High German, Latin, French, English) loanwords and replaced them with puristic neologisms, Swedish would look a lot more like Icelandic – even more so than Nynorsk, which was based on the same idea, basically (though not quite as radical). --Florian Blaschke (talk) 22:38, 27 January 2016 (UTC)


 * I can agree with much here, but not all. Among other things, if or insofar as the w is pronounced as v, that's a quite recent novation (and probably from Standard Swedish), and diphtongization of long i (like most other traits that separate Elfdalian from Standard Swedish) also occurs in the surrounding dialects. And, independent of that, in Gotlandic. 151.177.62.155 (talk) 20:47, 11 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Examples of [w] can be heard e.g. here (knowing full well that a Youtube video is no scientific proof): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nrbebx-pUU 151.177.62.155 (talk) 21:22, 11 April 2016 (UTC)


 * It is well known that languages that are lying on their death bed, so to speak, can undergo changes at a much faster pace than any language would under normal circumstances. Although I have never been in Älvdalen, it seems obvious to me that Elfdalian is changing at a pace similar to what Robert Dixon found in the Australian language Dyirbal as it was approaching extinction. The Swedish Wikipedia article mentions the stages in Elfdalian language change described by Piotr Garbacz, where changes that took centuries for Standard Swedish or English are happening over decades. There is going to be tremendous confusion if on the one hand we have people here talking about the conservatism of Elfdalian as described by Lars Levander 100 years ago (which was indeed quite conservative, even when compared to other Swedish dialects of that era) and on the other hand people talking about the way teenagers speak in the area in the 21st century. (talk) 22:03, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

Diphthongs
As far as archaisms are concerned, the article leaves an important point unanswered: what realisations does Elfdalian have for Old Norse ei, au, ey? Are they still distinct from reflexes of é, and œ, as in Western Scandinavian varieties? CodeCat (talk) 23:03, 6 November 2015 (UTC)
 * While all these diphthongs were monophthongised much like in East Norse, the reflex of au (o) is distinct from that of ey, while those of ei and ey are (like in Swedish) not distinct from the reflexes of é and œ respectively, as explained in the ref I added (Kroonen). --Florian Blaschke (talk) 22:13, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

Two discussion pages
May be worth noting that there is also another discussion page: Talk:Elfdalian dialect. Just for the record, preferably: the (currently) last entry there is from 2013. 83.248.231.116 (talk) 12:19, 6 June 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
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Talk page from before page move
I've moved the old talk page (Talk:Elfdalian_dialect) to Talk:Elfdalian/Archive 1, and added the appropriate archive navigation templates. rchard2scout (talk) 22:39, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

Old Norse nasal vowels
See First Grammatical Treatise... -- AnonMoos (talk) 17:02, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

Ǫǫ
I have removed these two letters from the description under the table of letters, as thery do not appear in the table itself, nor in any other sources known to me, either in Wikipedia (many language versions) or out of it. If someone would like to reintroduce them, should give a source for this information. noychoH (talk) 08:26, 29 May 2020 (UTC)

Requested move 20 May 2023

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: Not moved (non-admin closure) ExtorcDev (talk) 11:26, 27 May 2023 (UTC)

Elfdalian → Elfdalian language – Elfdalian is a language on it's own, not really a dialect of Swedish. Karamellpudding1999 (talk) 14:06, 20 May 2023 (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.
 * Opposed as per Naming conventions (languages) ("Articles on language varieties (i.e. languages, dialects or sociolects) can be titled with the bare name of the variety where this is unambiguous (e.g. Bokmål) or where it is unquestionably the primary topic for the name (e.g. Arabic, Kannada, Arvanitika)." Bokmål, Inuktitut, and Inuinnaqtun are all languages that don't have the unnecessary word "language" added. "Language" should only be added where necessary. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Huliva 18:47, 22 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Opposed per ‎CambridgeBayWeather. --TylerBurden (talk) 23:32, 22 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Oppose. It is as it is precisely so that we do not have to declare it one or the other in the title. Srnec (talk) 01:54, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

Pitch accent
Does Elfdalian have pitch accent, like standard Swedish? If it does, it needs to be in the phonology section. If it doesn't, it's also worth a mention since that would be very unusual for a Nordic dialect in Norway or Sweden. Steinbach (talk) 21:08, 27 June 2024 (UTC)