Talk:Old Gutnish

5000 speakers

5.000 speakers? Where can I find these and converse with them?

I would like this also, suspecting the language has been extinct for more than a century. Maybe someone should call Ethnologue and ask them where to find those 5,000 speakers. --Fred-Chess 17:40, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

"Modern Gutnish"

Please stop trying to keep an article at Gutnish language, complete with a quite misleading infobox. Even SIL has withdrawn its support of this as a separate language in the 15th edition of the Ethnologue. It is considered a dialect of Swedish according to NE, just like Scanian. An article title like "Gutnish language" seems to be either POV or original research. Since the article contains no references of any kind, please provide sources to support the statement or elaborate on the matter here before reverting again.

Peter ^Isotalo 21:43, 12 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, I created an article at Gutnish language (again), before I realized that there was a discussion page and an article had been there before. Still, I am not altogether convinced that Gutnish is simply a Swedish dialect. I am quite good at Swedish and have been to Gotland myself, and what I gathered there is:

In Gotland everyone knows standard Swedish, as it is required by law, but some still speak Gutnish. It is distinct from the Gotlandic dialect of Swedish.
I listened to the radio in Gutnish, and it was very different from any Swedish I've ever heard; It also seemed to be much closer to Icelandic than Swedish is (I'm Icelandic, so I should know), meaning that they must have preserved more of Old Norse than mainland Swedes.

I must ask you: Have you actually studied (or even heard) Gutnish? -- Krun 16:24, 26 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I've never even been in Sweden but I once had a someone from Gotland in my class. Even though he didn't speak any Gutnish he said that it is really a distinct language from Swedish. According to him, there are still some people in the countryside who speak it but most others speak a Swedish dialect influenced by Gutnish. --Chlämens 23:34, 27 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Guys, please read my post. I've provided Swedish language referencess that consider it merely a dialect of Swedish, SIL has actually withdrawn its eariler support of it as a separate language and I can find no references that support your claims. Either provide sources to support the concept of a modern, living Gutnish language that isn't considered a dialect of Swedish or leave it as a redirect. Hearsay from non-speakers, extrapolations and guessing isn't verifiable.

And I have to correct a few claims:

Standard Swedish is not required by law. Technically, it doesn't even have legal official status. It's only de-facto official and the use of dialects is generally encouraged by local government. Standard Swedish because it's a common national standard, not because people are being forced to learn it.
What is refered to as "Gotlandic" and "Gutnish" are one and the same. In Swedish the equivalent terms are gotländska and gutniska and both refer to the dialect of Swedish that is technically a descendant of Old Gutnish. There is no such thing as a dialect of Gotland that is historically separate from Old Gutnish. This is really no different from Scanian, which historically is a form of Eastern Danish, but is today considered a form of Southern Swedish.
Any similarity between Gutnish/Gotlandic and Icelandic are most likely coincidences. First off, it's East Scandinavian, unlike Icelandic, which is West Scandinavian. Furthermore, the diphthongs of Gutnish developed from long vowels similar to those found in Danish and Swedish and are not remnants of the Old Norse diphthongs like those in Icelandic, Faroese and certain dialects of Norwegian. With the exception of some dialects spoken on Fårö, the verb conjugations have collapsed in a fashion similar to the other Mainland Scandinavian languages and the grammar is not as complicated as that of Icelandic.

Finally, I'll link you to SweDia, a dialect project that has collected numerous samples of Swedish dialects from 100 different locations in Sweden and Finland. Please note that älvdalsmål is included among these, even if it's considered a separate language by most Swedish linguists today. Here's the link to the page on dialects spoken in Gotland. Just click the towns and the various links to get to the sound samples. Now please keep in mind that even though I speak Central Swedish and have been raised in Stockholm with only a minimum of socializing with Gotlanders, I have no problem at all understanding all but a select few, obscure local colloquialisms in any of the recordings. Otherwise it's just as similar to Stockholm Swedish as regional variants of American English.

Peter ^Isotalo 21:03, 11 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

"Furthermore, the diphthongs of Gutnish developed from long vowels similar to those found in Danish and Swedish and are not remnants of the Old Norse diphthongs like those in Icelandic, Faroese and certain dialects of Norwegian." (Peter Isotalo)

This is simply wrong, Peter. It is correct though that all long vowels - except Old Gutnish long a - have become diphtongs, but it is not correct that the Old Gutnish diphtongs have vanished or got "spoiled". In fact, Gutnish is the scandinavian dialect which has the best preserved old diphtongs. Modern Gutnish, like Old Gutnish, has the diphtongs ai, au and oy. Icelandic has in fact a collapsed system where ei (Modern Gutnish ai) and ey (Modern Gutnish oy) are pronunced the same, though kept apart in the orthography. Note also that Icealandic and Faroese have secondary diphtongs as well, so the diphtong system of Modern Gutnish is quite similar to that of those languages. (Both preserved and newly developed diphtongs).

Author: Jens Persson, jepe2503 at hotmail dot com . (14 Dec 2005)

categorize

Change cat to Swedish dialects: AFIK, Gutnisk is not a current language spoken in Sweden. (it is either an extinct language or a dialect). // Fred-Chess 16:40, 15 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]