Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Differences between the Norwegian and Danish languages

 This page is an archive of the discussion about the proposed deletion of the article below. This page is no longer live. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page rather than here so that this page is preserved as an historic record. The result of the debate was - kept - SimonP 15:32, Jun 15, 2005 (UTC)

Differences between the Norwegian and Danish languages
Wikipedia is not a general knowledgebase. There is nothing in this article that couldn't (or shouldn't) be described in either Danish language or Norwegian language or for that matter North Germanic languages (a.k.a. Scandinavian languages). And there's really nothing that is significantly more important in the differences between Norwegian and Danish, than, say, between Swedish and Norwegian or for that matter any other combinations of closely related languages.

Peter Isotalo 19:11, Jun 1, 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep, useful comparison of two closely related languages. Kappa 19:57, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep, totally in agreement with Kappa. It's factually correct, well written, and of interest. UkPaolo 19:59, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep. This is a lovely article.  --Tony Sidaway|Talk 20:29, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * Is there in fact any article that could not be kept as long as people deem it "useful"? The issue is how all five Scandinavian languages are related to one another, not how each individual language is similar (or dissimilar) from one of the others. This is just a lot of very redundant information that should be described in Scandinavian languages. To try to get this to a discussion of principles rather than alleged usefulness: do you really mean that if someone were to create articles for all possible combinations of Scandinavian languages, you would accept them all as valid and enyclopedic? / Peter Isotalo 20:37, Jun 1, 2005 (UTC)
 * Note: There are only three Scandinavian languages: Danish, Norwegian and Swedish. Also, the relationship between Danish and Norwegian is of special interest because modern Norwegian is developed from Danish (they were almost entirely the same written language until 1907).
 * (Sub-) articles on various combinations of closely languages would certainly be very useful to some readers, and I don't see what harm they would do to anyone. Kappa 05:00, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * Any article that isn't 100% false, blatantly POV of purely offensive does no harm, but it means one could include almost any piece of general knowledge at all. I'd say it's harmful to the overall quality of our articles. Why do you think "Wikipedia is not a general knowledge base" is in the official policy? Peter Isotalo 18:21, Jun 2, 2005 (UTC)
 * "Wikipedia is not a general knowledge base" is there to stop people adding random trivia. This article is beneficial to the overall quality of wikipedia. Kappa 17:02, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * This is the linguistic equivalent of a physics article titled differences between vanadium and chromium. It is linguistic trivia, but for some reason people seem to think that the academic standards for language articles should be kept firmly at a grade school level. Really, it's that silly. / Peter Isotalo 22:08, Jun 6, 2005 (UTC)
 * Merge good information, but it seems silly to have it in a seperate article. Oracleoftruth 20:48, Jun 1, 2005 (UTC)
 * Merge where? RickK 23:20, Jun 1, 2005 (UTC)
 * Agree with Peter--merge. Meelar (talk) 21:02, Jun 1, 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep Notable difference. Klonimus 21:31, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * Merge. - Mustafaa 21:51, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * Merge whre? RickK 23:20, Jun 1, 2005 (UTC)
 * North Germanic languages, of course. Were it not for nationalism and orthography, the Mainland Scandinavian languages might be considered mere dialects of one another today. And, mind you, the information in this article is of very low linguistic value; it has been written by someone of very shallow knowledge of even basic linguistics. The section on prepositions is not particularly representative and includes blatantly false info including info on the combined definite artilces/demonstrative pronouns under "Prepositions". On top of this I just noticed that the info on the use of the Danish definite article are just plain false. "Den" is in this case a combined demonstrative pronoun and definite article, but Danish uses the same definite endings as in Norwegian and Swedish except that the syntax is slightly different; Swedish and Norwegian use the definte suffix -n/-t in situations where Danish does not. As an example, the word bil is inflected identically in singular definite/indefinte in Swedish, Danish (and Norwegian?); bil, bilen ("car", "the car"). The differences could really be described in just one paragraph and without redundant examples, and could be generalized to include far more dissimilarities at one time. / Peter Isotalo 04:06, Jun 2, 2005 (UTC)
 * keep this please !Yuckfoo 22:20, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * Merge into Norwegian languages. &mdash;Simetrical (talk) 22:32, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep, nice article. RickK 23:20, Jun 1, 2005 (UTC)
 * Merge and redirect to Scandinavian languages. The raison d'être of that article is to explain why the three North Germanic languages Danish, Norwegian and Swedish are mutually intelligible (and thus, in practice, how they differ). The information is good though, merging could be done just by adding a new header to Scandinavian languages. Salleman 00:15, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep. Informative useful article that functions well as a specific sub article of Scandinavian languages. -- Decumanus 00:33, 2005 Jun 2 (UTC)
 * Keep, encyclopedic. ElBenevolente 02:45, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * Merge and redirect to Scandinavian languages per Salleman. carmeld1 03:04, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * Comment - Norwegian, Danish, and Swedish are the prototypical examples of how the distinction between languages and dialects is often arbitrary. Those three are considered separate languages, but are all mutually intelligible. We should, therefore, have some discussion of the relationships between the languages.  If this article is kept, I would definitely hope to see similar articles comparing Danish and Swedish as well as Norwegian and Swedish.  Alternatively, a single article comparing all three would be fine.  As yet another alternative, all such comparisons could be merged onto the page Scandinavian languages.  Since I have no real preference between those options, no vote besides the probably unnecessary "do not delete". -- Jonel 03:54, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep - and compare Differences between Scottish Gaelic and Irish. --Angr/undefined 05:48, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep This cannot easily be merged into any single other article, and is sufficiently detailed to merit its own. Xoloz 06:58, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep. Norwegian and Danish are so close that an article comparing the two is justified. Sjakkalle 06:59, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * Rename, title is too verbose. Radiant_* 09:02, Jun 2, 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep too much to merge. JamesBurns 11:28, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep, and expand into a general table of differences betwent the Scandinavian languages. Hornplease 17:31, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep, there is already an extensive article about this sort of comparison between American and English.     16:53, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * Strong keep. As a non-native Scandinavian (as distinguished from Nordic) speaker, I understand the differences between Swedish and Norwegian/Danish, but so far, Norwegian and Danish themselves have seemed completely identical to me. This article must be kept as a source of information of their differences.   &mdash; J I P | Talk 17:10, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep - Some may find it trivial, but it's noteable and useful information and isn't harming anyone. WINP.  Blackcats 00:10, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep - I find myself baffled when I encounter a text in either Norwegian or Danish. Though as a suggestion, maybe including differences with other Scandinavian languags too? Just a thought. --Chris 04:00, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * This page is now preserved as an archive of the debate and, like some other VfD subpages, is no longer 'live'. Subsequent comments on the issue, the deletion, or the decision-making process should be placed on the relevant 'live' pages. Please do not edit this page.