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This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Norwegian language article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.

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Map

It's not explained at all why there are two shades of blue in the first map although another map explains the Bokmål and Nynorsk distribution. The latter includes neutral areas as well. These aren't present in the introduction map either. --2.245.120.30 (talk) 15:19, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Those two shades of blue are discussed in the discussion above. The map was removed earlier this year for being totally wrong, but someone seems to have put it back. Ters (talk) 15:48, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

But there IS no "discussion above" this one! GeneCallahan (talk) 14:36, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

There was, but it has been archived in the two years that has passed since this discussion took place. I think it was the discussion titled The map over "Norwegian-speaking areas" I was referring to. The map has since been altered as well. Ters (talk) 15:45, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

I don't know Norwegian, but as someone who doesn't know the language, the fact that the caption doesn't include an explanation is more confusing than the fact that the map is disputed. --2.245.120.30 (talk) 16:20, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

The map in question is on Commons, here:

• https://commons.wikimedia.org/File:Idioma_noruego.png

It was removed from the article at the end of August this year by user:Iselilja who wrote, as an edit-summary:

• Removing misleading map. Norwegians are not in minority in Northern Norway; nor are there really Norwegian-speaking minorities in Sweden (apart from recent immigrants).

Since August it has been added back in. I believe that the several comments (comment sections) above, and the edit-summary, show consensus that this map is unwanted. I'll remove it again. --Hordaland (talk) 20:39, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Descriptions of certain vowel phonemes

In the article I read:

u /ʉ/, /u/ close central rounded (close front extra rounded)

From the article on IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) I gather that /ʉ/ indeed indicates a central vowel, but that /u/ indicates a back vowel rather than a front vowel.

Furthermore, in several instances two IPA symbols are given but either only one description or two descriptions that fit only one of the symbols, for example in the case of:

e (short) /ɛ/, /æ/ open mid front unrounded

Since I am not a speaker of Norwegian, I hesitate to edit a change.Redav (talk) 07:42, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

Unreferenced sections

FYI: I have today added the {{unreferenced section}} template to several unreferenced sections in this article. Since several of these sections refer to a "Main article", I wondered if Misplaced Pages policy might consider that "good enough" as a reference, so I asked at Misplaced Pages:Teahouse/Questions (Section: ‎Use of {{unreferenced section}}). There my opinion was validated; all sections should have references. --Hordaland (talk) 08:48, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

How many speakers?

The number of speakers of Norwegian was recently changed from 5 million to 4.7 million in the infobox. Our article Norway says the population of the country is 5,214,900. So what do the other half-a-million speak? The youngest infants don't speak yet and some immigrants don't speak much Norwegian yet, but I think there can't be a half-a-million in those categories. Some Sami people, travelling people and immigrants have Norwegian as a 2nd language, but they should count as "speakers", surely. And some speakers live outside of Norway.

The 4.7 million figure comes from awl which credits ethnologue for the figure. But although the ethnologue site is dated "2016", there is no indication that that page has been updated recently.

Call it OR if you like, but I think 5 million is a more logical figure. I'm very tempted to change it back. Any objection? Or any better source?--Hordaland (talk) 06:22, 26 September 2016 (UTC)

It was I who changed it to 4.7 based on the source cited. But the CIA World Factbook gives Norway's population as 5,265,158 (July 2016 est.). It's true that it's hard to imagine a half million non-Norwegian speakers. There's a book on Google Books "Composition Linguistique Des Nations Du Monde, Volume 5" By Heinz Kloss that gives the number as 5 million. Thanks for the suggestion, I've gone ahead and implemented it. --Cornellier (talk) 11:32, 26 September 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, @Cornellier:, and I apologize for not thinking of notifying you! --Hordaland (talk) 13:58, 26 September 2016 (UTC)

Not at all, I think you did it correctly. The talk page is the best place to discuss this. --Cornellier (talk) 16:27, 26 September 2016 (UTC)

Native to "parts of Sweden"?

The claim that the Norwegian language is native to parts of Sweden has been removed a number of times, but is added back again every time. Based on what? There's a dialect continuum in certain areas along the long common border between the two countries, but the language spoken on the eastern side of the border is no more Norwegian than the language spoken on the western side of the border is Swedish, and I have never ever seen anyone claim that the Swedish language is native to parts of Norway... - Tom | Thomas.W 18:19, 26 September 2016 (UTC)

Since Sweden has acquired and kept parts of Norway in wars of old, but not (at least significantly) the other way around, it is perhaps not so strange that this only goes one way. I'm not sure to what degree what is spoken in those regions can be considered Norwegian, since Norwegian has certainly changed since those wars and those regions have certainly been swedified over time. If it is, then Danish should perhaps also be a native language in Sweden, since Scania was also lost by Denmark-Norway to Sweden at the same time. There seems to be some variation between language articles as to whether "native to" refers to current usage, or historical use. English and Spanish simply don't use this field at all. Ters (talk) 19:02, 26 September 2016 (UTC)

The dialects of Swedish spoken in Jämtland/Härjedalen and Bohuslän are definitely not Norwegian, nor is the dialect of Swedish commonly spoken in Scania Danish (we're talking about areas that were annexed by Sweden more than 350 years ago). And "Native to" of course refers to areas where the language is spoken natively (i.e. as first language) by people who are not recent or fairly recent immigrants, unless you claim that Norwegian-speakers are the native (i.e. pre-Columbus) population of parts of the American Midwest (see the infobox in the article...). - Tom | Thomas.W 20:01, 26 September 2016 (UTC)

"Native to" needs a definition, and both of these statements need referencing. The numbers in the mid-eastern US is tiny, and I think to say it's native to there is nostalgic thinking. If you used the same yardstick on English you'd have to say it's native to dozens of countries. There are 5-6000 Norwegians working in the oil industry in Houston. There are three quarters of a million Britons in Spain. What does that imply? --Cornellier (talk) 22:41, 26 September 2016 (UTC)

When I look up native on this very wiki, I get two possible relevant definitions. One definition looks just one generation back, another goes much, much longer. This wiki's article for the Portuguese language follows the first definition, while the article for the French language follows the latter (with a note about current usage being different). Minor border adjustments are not taken into consideration, nor is Southern Belgium or Monaco(!). As mentioned, English and Spanish mostly avoids the issue altogether by using "Region" rather than "Native to". English uses similar wording to French, while Spanish follows Portuguese. So it does not appear to me that one interpretation is more obvious than the other, which might be why there is disagreement as to where Norwegian is native. (One could perhaps argue that Norwegian is native to Strömstad according to both definitions, but I mention this only because I find the idea amusing, not as a serious argument.) Another reason for why someone insists stating that Norwegian is native to Sweden and not the other way around might simply be editing bias. That the editor is not interested in contributing to the article about Swedish. I haven't checked the edit history. Ters (talk) 05:05, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

I think we need a good source before we even discuss adding this piece of information. I don't see any sources, so our own speculations on what could possibly be meant are not all that useful.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 06:08, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

Without sources, it should definitely be removed (as I have done multiple times). --Njardarlogar (talk) 07:38, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

Looking at the literature on linguistic minorities in Sweden I find no mention of a Norwegian minority (Finnish, Sami, Meänkieli, Romani, Yiddish, immigrant languages - no Norwegian).·maunus · snunɐɯ· 07:56, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

I doubt the Scandinavian countries would define any Scandinavian language as a minority language. The language barrier is too weak for that. I think there actually is an agreement that speakers of these languages are treated equally in some way(s). Although I've never heard them being mentioned as a minority, there might be more Swedish speakers in Norway than any other language except Norwegian and Sami. They may however not count anyway since they might still be Swedish citizens working in Norway under EEA rules. Ters (talk) 15:08, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

Very Strange Sentence

"As of June 5, 2005, all feminine nouns could once again be written as masculine nouns in Bokmål, giving the option of writing the language with only two genders – common and neuter."

First of all, typical language changes do not occur on a single day. If there was some piece of legislation passed that day, that should be mentioned here. But even if that is the case, that does not mean the language itself underwent a fundamental change that day. And the claim that nouns "could once again" be written in a particular way is not backed up by any reference to when they previously could be written that way. GeneCallahan (talk) 14:35, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

@GeneCallahan:, your reactions are reasonable! The sentence should explain the situation (better) and there should be a reference. I should imagine that Språkrådet, the official Language Council of Norway, made a decision on that day. I'll see if I can find and add a reference for that (in Norwegian) and improve the sentence. Thank you for pointing this out!

Many sections in the article are marked as needing refernces.  :(

As is mentioned in the article itself, "The now-abandoned official policy to merge Bokmål and Nynorsk into one common language called Samnorsk through a series of spelling reforms has created a wide spectrum of varieties of both Bokmål and Nynorsk." It also, naturally enough, created controversy. Users of Bokmål are a large majority and I'm sure they (correction: some of them) objected strongly to being forced to become a written language with three rather than two noun-genders whenever that occurred (prior to June 5. 2005). --Hordaland (talk) 19:19, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

I get the impression that most Bokmål users use three genders. Although the counting reform has been rather successful, I doubt "they" (this is spanning generations) started using the third gender just because of a writing reform, but rather have always used them in speech, even when they were not allowed to write them. So did really "all" Bokmål users object to the third gender in writing? Your last statement can be read that way. Or was it perhaps just a vocal minority that was used to only having two genders in their dialect/sociolect? Ters (talk) 19:58, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

Sorry for suggesting "they objected strongly" was meant to include all Bokmål users. (Corrected above.) Neither all Bokmål nor all Nynorsk users are as engaged or as vocal as some of us are, of course. I do, however, know some who never would say sola nor boka.  :) --Hordaland (talk) 16:43, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

Yes, I wasn't saying that they don't exist, I just started questioning what I thought I knew. (Personally, I'm in principle a three-gendered Bokmål user, although which gender I use for the words in question here may vary, even within the same sentence. I'm a victim of the Norwegian language war.) Ters (talk) 17:49, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

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