Category talk:Scanian lemmas

RFV discussion: February–March 2020
We have Category:Scanian language on Wiktionary which is supposed to be a sort of historical version of the dialect spoken in the southern region of Sweden sometimes known as in English. I say historical, because most of Sweden, especially southern Sweden, speak standard Swedish today with regional accents. This category is therefore distinct from which is the modern dialect as a variation of Swedish. Sometimes however, there are duplicates, e.g. and  which mean the same thing, but where the latter is some sort of ”historical version”. In Swedish the distinction could perhaps be captured in skånemål vs. skånska.

A problem with this is that there is no real definition what constitutes the ”Scanian language” vs. ”Scanian Swedish”. One is older than the other, but sometimes there are overlaps as seen above.

Another problem is the orthography. It is based on only one source. Mikael Lucazin’s Utkast till ortografi över skånska språket (An outline of an orthography for the Scanian language) (2010). It is a personal project by a private enthusiast and is only found in this particular work. Is has since been removed from the author’s own website. It is completely unknown and has no status whatsoever. I can understand the need for an orthography, but I am skeptical towards using Wiktionary as a platform for launching one’s personal orthography. A Wikipedia proposal was rejected in 2009 partially for this reason. The orthography is also quite bizarre in its own and very etymological and it seems as if the author wishes to highlight the archaic feature of this variety by using older graphemes like ⟨æ ø⟩ and ⟨ð⟩ (which is often only there for etymological reasons, compare above). Nor is there a source for the IPA pronunciation, but it also seems to be drawn from this sole source.

It seems in general as if all entries on Wiktionary are drawn from this source, which makes it difficult to fill WT:CFI, but they aren’t sourced which makes them even harder to verify. One could perhaps verify the entries using older published dialect lexicons or older academical journals for instance (such sources are given at the end of Lucazin’s pdf), but they would not be using this personal orthography.

I don’t doubt that many of these words exist or have existed, but I would like to see whether the entries in Category:Scanian lemmas can be verified enough to warrant inclusion on Wiktionary, or whether they should be deleted. --Lundgren8 (t · c) 10:13, 17 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Closing, because it's not clear what action you want us to take. We have to choose an orthography; if this one is easily accessible, it presumably fills the need. Individual words can be checked against the kinds of resources you describe, but I think you would have to carry out that mission. As you say, there is no reason to doubt that these entries are correct, so they should be handled on an individual basis rather than mass-deleted. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 03:40, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

Response to above request

 * We have to choose an orthography


 * We do not have to choose an orthography. Some varieties do not have a written standard, but it is not the mission of Wiktionary to be a platform for launching personal linguistic hobby projects. We have to base our entries on existing credible sources, otherwise the entire project would be very chaotic.
 * if this one is easily accessible, it presumably fills the need

As stated in my request, the current orthography used is by no means ”easily accessible”. It is created by a single amateur on the internet, and its features are archaistic and conlangy. Any person from Scania who would look at these entries would at best be very confused and at worst not even recognize the word. If this single unknown pdf is everything that is needed, I could in theory create a personal orthography on say 19th century Southern American English with spellings like, very well including orthographical features foreign to the modern General American orthography (e.g. ⟨ƕæn⟩ for whine), upload this pdf to my own website, and then create entries on Wiktionary using this orthography. This wouldn’t fly on Wiktionary; the only reason it does in this case is because too few people are knowledgable about Swedish dialects. The entire thing reminds me very much of the Focurc project which is a dialect of Scots written by a single individual with an outlandish orthography.
 * Individual words can be checked against the kinds of resources you describe, but I think you would have to carry out that mission

I’m confused why I should be the one to look through old books in order to source 150 entries when they should have been sourced by the person who created them in the first place. The logic is very backwards. The action I would like to take is to delete all entries as they lack sources and lack an established orthography. The person who created the entries can launch them on their personal website and try to get it more established and then they can be readded. Varieties like Elfdalian and Gutnish have semi-official orthographies and are in a better position to be included on Wiktionary, but unfortunately Scanian is not there. I could go through the individual entries and flag every entry for deletion, but since the same logic applies to all entries, I believed it would save everybody some time to discuss them en masse.

Perhaps I should have made the request over at WT:RFDN instead? --Lundgren8 (t · c) 13:02, 1 June 2020 (UTC)
 * You make a good case for why this orthography is a poor choice, but choosing a single orthography to lemmatise on is still a good idea (presumably one from an older reference book, then).
 * The reason I said that you would be the one to do it is simple: you're interested in Scanian, you know Swedish, and you know the relevant resources, which are three things that aren't true of me, and may not be true of anyone else on this site. Of course the person who added them originally should rightfully fix them, but they're an anon who can't be contacted, and that's just how it is sometimes.
 * So why am I resistant to deleting them? It feels really wrong to delete perfectly correct entries just because they happen to be in a bad orthography if that means we won't have any coverage. If you could do the research to find out how they would be spelt in a better orthography from one of your resources and give me a list, I'll move them all without leaving redirects. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 17:26, 1 June 2020 (UTC)