Talk:Westrobothnian

This is an article which cites very few sources and which includes a mixture of facts and personal opinions. Most basically - is the word "westrobothnian" used in any literature whatsoever? It is also strange to include dialects (according to what literature is this a "language"?) in both Västerbotten and Norrbotten, since they are quite different. Moreover, the history of the area is described in a questionable way. Colonization by Germanic settlers during Viking age is conceivable but not at all proven, especially for Norrbotten. That the Hanseatic league should have been active in the area is pure invention. As to the description of modern history, it is flawed. And although I live in the area, I haven't noticed that "students are encouraged to study whatever local form of Westrobothnian that is spoken in their home-town". Where do such studies take place?

I find it hard to improve this article. I thought about marking it with a template for deletion, but after having read the instructions, I concluded that this might not be appropriate. I'll add a template for the need of additional citations instead. But really, I think the whole article needs to be rewritten.--Skogsfrun (talk) 05:38, 3 May 2011 (UTC)


 * After following a wikilink, I realized that large parts of the article comes from Kalix language - another questionable article, which has existed more or less in the same form Swedish Wikipedia but which has not survived the discussions there.--Skogsfrun (talk) 05:44, 3 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Why would you want to delete an article on a language? That's exactly what it is - a brief description of a language, what's wrong with that? The individual data may be wrong or unsourced, but I don't see why this article shouldn't exist.
 * Whether it's a language or a dialect is largely a political matter (as is in case of many dialects/languages) and as such should be of no importance whatsoever. Politics change, the fact that real people speak this language/dialect and/or its variations doesn't. --109.196.118.133 (talk) 15:30, 9 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Can you verify that "real people speak this language/dialect"? I live in the region, and I can't. Of course there are dialects spoken in the region of Westrobothnia, but since they are quite different in the north and in the south, they are normally not clumped together like this. I still haven't seen any English source where these dialects are collectively called "Westrobothnian", and I don't think Wikipedia is the place to create such a label. If the article shall be kept, please give such a source.--Skogsfrun (talk) 11:35, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

I came across this page through a link from Wiktionary. It seems someone is very active in documenting this (alleged) language.2001:700:301:D:0:0:0:12F (talk) 08:01, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

Number of speakers?
The number of speakers of this dialect is in the infobox set to "5,000-100,000" (a very broad span, indeed). Here Ethnologue is not involved as a source. Is this reliable? --Vedum (talk) 11:07, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

Unrecognized language tag
This text is all over the article and obscuring the contents of the tables. Please could someone fix it as I do not know how to. 92.2.204.198 (talk) 08:00, 6 December 2017 (UTC)

I really have no idea what happened and would like to know what's going on before I clean up after whoever did this. — Knyȝt (talk) 11:48, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

Incorrect dialect?
In the Modern history section, this is stated: "It is still being considered an incorrect dialect of Swedish by many." Question: What is an incorrect dialect? Is it the (false) stance that every dialect is incorrect when compared to the standard language? Or is it some strange view on some dialects being more correct than others? ("All dialects are equal, but some are more equal than others.") Fomalhaut76 (talk) 12:17, 1 June 2018 (UTC)


 * my best guess is it means something along the lines of "considered an 'incorrect' form of swedish by many [non-linguists]", if that makes more sense. the way it's currently phrased is indeed so vague as to be virtually meaningless (who thinks what, exactly?), and there's no source to consult for clarification, so it should perhaps be removed (although there may well be a valid point to be made about attitudes/prejudices towards language/dialects). k kisses 16:23, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

Overhaul required
This article is sorely lacking in citations and seems to make a lot of claims that it can't actually back up, including the actual use of the term "Westrobothnian".

I think the issue of the article needs to be addressed before grappling with the rest of the text. What English-language sources out there actually use the term "Westrobothnian"?

Peter Isotalo 11:15, 15 May 2021 (UTC)

Motivation for redirect
This article has been tagged for problematic sourcing for almost a decade now. There have been very straightforward requests to provide references that the term "Westrobothnian" is actually used by linguists. The traditional classification of Swedish splits this into at least two or three categories. I've conferred with linguist acquaintances and the only published use of "Westrobothnian" seems to exist is a somewhat offhand reference by Östen Dahl. And this is merely a summary of the traditional dialect classification of Swedish.

The article as a whole is written on the assumption that this is somehow a cohesive language (not just a grouping of closely related rural dialects). Something like 95% of the content is simply unreferenced, and the passages that actually have sources state tangential facts or attempts original research by drawing quite far-fetched conclusions. For example, the reference to Rietz regarding the "complete loss of a final vowel in some long-stem words" doesn't prove anything. Rietz merely gives an etymology for the example words, not the defining characters of this or that dialect.

For this reason, it should be redirected to Norrland dialects. There is plenty of room to explain the views on classification there. If anyone wants to create articles on the specific local dialects, that's not a problem. But trying to establish made-up dialect groups along with unrecognized claims of separate language status is simply misleading and subjective.

Peter Isotalo 09:12, 16 July 2022 (UTC)