Wiktionary talk:About Norwegian

Very decent
The first draft of this page looks very good, I think. It's an excellent starting point for the work that needs to be done, and it succinctly presents the most important issues that we will have to resolve before this can be put to the vote to become an official guideline. Please consider also the two previous discussion threads that have been conducted in the Beer Parlour. __meco 07:18, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Separating Nynorsk and Bokmål

 * From User talk:Kåre-Olav.

So, I can see you're starting to separate them now! I endorse an agreement between the Norwegian contributors to make all new entries like this, but not touching the old ones yet. By doing this for a period, we will be able to choose what's best. Then we can start making all entries the same. What do you think? --Eivind (t) 11:14, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, I also think the matter needs more discussion. I think the separation into Bokmål and Nynorsk is the best if we only want to cover the official forms of Norwegian. However, when considering the various norms and stages of written Norwegian (Dano-Norwegian, Landsmål, Riksmål, Høgnorsk, Bokmål and Nynorsk), that separation may be inconvenient, presuming that we want to cover all forms (as I think we should). Therefore, maybe we should consider having one header "Norwegian", and then find some way of marking the information contained in the entry as either Riksmål, Bokmål, Nynorsk, etc.


 * It would be nice if we could start a general discussion, for example on the talk page of About Norwegian. We could also make some proposals for a general layout policy, for example at About Norwegian/Layout1, About Norwegian/Layout2 etc. Kåre-Olav 11:37, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Interesting thoughts ... maybe it would be most convenient to make "Norwegian" the L2 header, and have "Bokmål" and "Nynorsk" etc. as L3 headers. I.e., to separate the entries inside the Norwegian section. I will copy this discussion to Talk:Wiktionary:About Norwegian; let's continue there. --Eivind (t) 11:44, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Proposals
So far we have three layout proposals (1, 2, 3), and I think number 3 looks best. It was made using the following principles: Maybe it is possible to leave out the tag (Bokmål and Nynorsk), supposing that a word is both Bokmål and Nynorsk unless otherwise noted. Kåre-Olav 12:08, 7 August 2008 (UTC)
 * 1) Norwegian entries have a common L2 header, "Norwegian"
 * 2) The entry word is given in bold under a L3 header, together with the gender, if a noun, and information on whether the word is found in Bokmål, Nynorsk or both. The definitions are usually common.
 * 3) The inflection is given under a separate L4 header below. We give only Bokmål and Nynorsk inflection (and maybe Riksmål)
 * 4) All examples, synonyms, antonyms etc. are identified as either Bokmål, Nynorsk or both (unless the entry word is Bokmål only or Nynorsk only, as no confusion is possible)
 * 5) Riksmål, Høgnorsk, Landsmål, Dano-Norwegian, dialect forms etc. can be treated as alternative spellings of the Bokmål and Nynorsk forms, if they exist (for example, spursmål is identified as høgnorsk, but the reader is referred to spørsmål). Alternatively, Riksmål can be treated in the same way as Bokmål and Nynorsk, since it has its own standard.
 * I really do like this idea and proposal! I reckon testing it on some different entries would be a good idea, to see how it copes with different words. I've created the templates, and . --Eivind (t) 12:07, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Maybe we could use the template? Then we would have

dfadsf

instead of

dfadsf (Bokmål)

which doesn't look good. Kåre-Olav 12:18, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Ok, that's a good idea. --Eivind (t) 12:28, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I've tested this layout on a few words (hegre, heilo, kvad, bleik). My first impression is that the label will appear all over the page (see kvad). Maybe we could use the convention that unless a word is labeled with  or, meaning that it is Bokmål only or Nynorsk only, it is allowed in both Bokmål and Nynorsk. This would save us some work, and it would make the entries look better. Kåre-Olav 12:54, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Synonyms or translations between the Bokmål-Nynorsk divide?
I would much prefer that Bokmål and Nynorsk were treated as separate languages when referring to corresponding terms in the other language. For instance, stedfortreder: has no immediate corresponding term in Nynorsk. Instead the terms avløysar:, varamann:, vikar: and fullmektig: are listed in Nils Martin Hole's Kva heiter det? Bokmål-nynorsk ordliste. Now, I suppose we would presently place these under the Synonyms header and suffix (Nynorsk) to each term. I suggest that we rather attempt to institutionalize a formula for Bokmål-Nynorsk translations that can be compared with the general formula for translations from English terms set out in WT:ELE. Note that this would not dictate that we could not continue to present compound Bokmål and Nynorsk entries where the basis form of the term equals in both languages. Also, the would entail building a consensus for an exception to the current routines which prohibits translations sections in other than English entries. __meco 16:45, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Help needed at òg
How should I go on to have the entry categorised as both a Nynorsk and Bokmål adverd via a template? --Harald Khan  Ճ  21:51, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
 * So far all entries that are equal in Nynorsk and Bokmål are considered "Norwegian", and the entry should therefore be categorized as "Norwegian adverbs". There is no need to put after the entry name either, because all words listed as "Norwegian" are both Bokmål and Nynorsk. --Eivind (t) 22:28, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Right, thanks. The policy page says something different about listing both Nynorsk and Bokmål, though? --Harald Khan  Ճ  13:02, 5 March 2009 (UTC)
 * At the moment, the "policy" is just a proposal. In reality, we still haven't figured out how to deal with the Norwegian entries (Should we have separate headings for Bokmål, Nynorsk, Riksmål, non-official forms?). Any ideas will be appreciated. Kåre-Olav 16:50, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Changing the template nn-verb
I have added some extra parameters on my test page, and I intend to add them to the real template. The new parameters are:


 * br-inf
 * br-pre
 * past

I am adding them, because the current template can work with neither of the three following verbs:


 * leggja [legga] (present tense legg [legger]; past tense la/lagde; past participle lagt)
 * liggja [ligga] (present tense ligg [ligger]; past tense låg; past participle lege/legi)
 * lyta (present tense lyt [lyter]; past tense laut; past participle lote/loti)

comments? --Harald Khan  Ճ  10:46, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Template:no-noun-infl
I've written a new inflection table template to be used with Norwegian nouns. It takes (almost) the same parameters as the old template, but there are some improvements: If you find a bug, please report it at the template's talk page. See examples at Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:no-noun-infl. Kåre-Olav 09:34, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
 * It looks better...
 * I abandoned the so-called genitive forms to make the table simpler (Norwegian doesn't really have a genitive after all)
 * To simplify the code, I abandoned the codes from Dokpro, and created an expanded table of codes (see the template's talk page)
 * If we adopt this template, we can make an inflection line template out of

Some unused templates
Hello! I have found some unused templates: I have dumped them into their language categories (Norwegian templates, Norwegian Nynorsk templates etc), but maybe they can be deleted as well. --MaEr 19:18, 5 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Template:no-name
 * Template:nn-only
 * Template:nn-adj table
 * Template:nb/nn
 * Template:nb-only
 * Template:nb-adj table
 * Deleted, 10 years later ... Benwing2 (talk) 15:34, 10 May 2019 (UTC)

Nynosk
All over Wiktionary, Nynorsk is ignored and only Bokmål is listed (and it is listed as 'Norwegian', not 'Norwegian Bokmål'). If Nynorsk really is there, then the alternative Nynorsk form is usually not listed (å dansa, ei lina etc). Bgagaga 22:23, 31 October 2009 (UTC) and in some places it is the other way around, like descendants of fagr

Template:no-adjective
Red link that appears in five articles. Anyone care to fix it, or remove it? Mglovesfun (talk) 11:14, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
 * fixed. Kåre-Olav 13:28, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

What an awful mess
It's amazingly difficult to cleanup our Norwegian words, because contributors use, and  interchangeably in articles. You could always start a vote to merge the three - I'm not saying it would succeed, simply that you could. Please try and stay consistent - I have the same thing when adding Old French and Anglo-Norman words, as they're essentially the same language. Mglovesfun (talk) 18:54, 2 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, Norwegian is a very messy language (We have lots of dialects, two unofficial written standards besides Bokmål and Nynorsk, lots and lots of alternative spellings and inflections, as well as an ongoing "language struggle" lasting some 130 years). Sadly, since there are very few (0?) active Norwegian contributors here at the moment, the debate on how to format Norwegian entries has died away. Kåre-Olav 22:17, 2 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Personally I follow what I was told above under "òg": So far all entries that are equal in Nynorsk and Bokmål are considered "Norwegian", and the entry should therefore be categorized as "Norwegian adverbs" and create entries under the headers Norwegian Bokmål and Norwegian Nynorsk where the meanings (and etymologies) differ. I like this approach because we avoid unnecessary duplication, while at the same time we let the differences shine through.
 * By the way, I see that it is my mess that you've been cleaning up; I've since changed my layout to what I described above.
 * And while we're talking about mess, the category Norwegian nouns, which contains 2,212 entries at the moment, contains quite a few Bokmål-only nouns, and many entries that are similar in both language forms only contains the inflection in Bokmål. Without proper guidelines yet, it is not tempting to start cleaning the mess - we need to define what actually is mess. --Harald Khan  Ճ  17:09, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Interim solution
I think we should establish an interim solution; as it is now it feels like anarchy reigns for the Norwegian entries. I've grown increasingly fond the the three code solution, and would like to propose it as an interim guideline. It doesn't feel like too much is happening in this debate, and I cannot imagine that this is going to change in the foreseeable future - so here we go:


 * , corresponding cateories and the  header are preserved for words that have both the same emytology and meaning in both languages.
 * Example: The word 'her' ("here" or "army" (Nynorsk only)) has two possible etymologies in Nynorsk, Old Norse hér and herr. In Bokmål there is only one possible etymology, hér, and only "one" meaning, "here". Therefore there should be a common Norwegian entry for the meaning "here", and a separate entry under the header   for the meaning and etymology that is only found in Nynorsk, "army".


 * , corresponding cateories and the  header are preserved for words that do not share the etymology, spelling and meaning of any Nynorsk word.
 * Example: The word 'ikke' ("not") stems from Old Norse ekki and shares the etymology and meaning of Nynorsk 'ikkje'; but has a different spelling and therefore belongs under   while 'ikkje' rests under.


 * , corresponding cateories and the  header are preserved for words that do not share the etymology, spelling and meaning of any Bokmål word.
 * Example: The word 'røyr' (with the meaning "groin") comes from Old Norse hrœrar; a mytology that (apparently) does not exist for any Bokmål word, thus it is already clear that this word should have an entry under.

Last comments: There is alot of mess out there that I belive should be cleared ASAP, because it gives imbalanced impressions regarding both Norwegian vocabulary and grammar - and I don't think that is a good thing. (on a related note, the way the translations are suggested sorted here on WT:ANO is a bit problematic because it doesn't work with the translation tool)

Comments? Essensially what I want is a "mandate" to start cleaning up the many Norwegian entries that we have, but also to prevent new ones from adding to the chaos. --Harald Khan  Ճ  22:11, 25 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I have no knowledge of the subject other than reading the Wiktionary. Anything that's consistent would be better than the free-for-all we have now. Mglovesfun (talk) 22:18, 25 March 2010 (UTC)


 * From a linguistic point of view, the hybrid or interim solution is attractive. Why not include Danish as well, as there are many words that are common to Nynorsk, Bokmål and Danish. And even Swedish, Faroese, and Icelandic. However, the existing mechanisms in Wiktionary have no working support for hybrid relationships between languages. For example, we need to link to her and there can't be more than one language name for a section. A lengthy discussion in February and March 2011 on WT:BP resulted in a vague consensus in favor of separating ==Norwegian Bokmål== (lang=nb) and ==Norwegian Nynorsk== (lang=nn) and to slowly abandon ==Norwegian== (lang=no). There is now a Frequency lists/Norwegian and some historic statistics for the Scandinavian languages on Wiktionary talk:About Swedish. --LA2 01:29, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Words that predate Dano-Norwegian?
What should be done with words that predate or fall outside Dano-Norwegian, but are not Nynorsk either? If there is no separate Norwegian header, how can they be entered? Should we use a separate language like Old Norwegian or Middle Norwegian? 15:43, 20 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Do you have an example? Old Norwegian is one of the forms of Old Norse, and between Old Norse (1300s) and Landsmål (1800s); Norwegian was more or less extinct as a written language (covering the entire span of Middle Norwegian, and more). --Njardarlogar (talk) 17:01, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
 * I don't have examples, but I'm sure they exist. Are there any texts at all from that era that are not recognisably Danish? 17:05, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
 * I am not sure. The official language was (eventually) Danish; and even Danish had very little "standardisation" at the time. The Nynorsk dictionary does contain Middle Norwegian (mno) as etymology, although there seems to be an overlap with Old Norse. IIRC some Old Norse was still written in beginning the Middle Norwegian time period; so I wonder if that is what the dictionary refers to as "Middle Norwegian" rather than a real reflection of what the spoken tongue had evolved into. --Njardarlogar (talk) 17:19, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
 * My main concern is what should happen with words that are not Old Norse, Bokmål or Nynorsk, but somewhere in between. 17:23, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
 * The dialects would fit this criterium. I have personally suggested that they should appear under the header ==Norwegian== . It's an inconvenient solution, but if a language has more than two written standards, what can you do? If you are really strict about it the other way, all the Scandinavian languages (Danish, Norwegian and Swedish) should appear under the header ==Scandinavian==.
 * In many ways though, the Norwegian dialects form written "standard(s)" of their own. An illustrating example below for all my points above


 * (my dialect) Ka e ditta?''
 * (Nynorsk) Kva er dette?
 * (Bokmål) Hva er dette?
 * (Swedish) Vad är detta / Vad är det här?
 * (Danish) Hvad er dette?
 * (English) What is this?


 * So as you see, the Norwegian dialects can be as different from standardised Norwegian as they are different from both Swedish and Danish. --Njardarlogar (talk) 18:05, 20 February 2013 (UTC)