Scanian (linguistics) Totally Explained

Everything about Scanian Linguistics totally explained

Scanian (or skånsk) is a closely related group of dialects which formed part of the old Scandinavian dialect continuum, spoken mainly in the province Scania in Southern Sweden. It is by most historical linguists considered to be an East-Danish dialect group,, but due to the modern era influence from Standard Swedish in the region and due to the fact that traditional dialectology in the Scandinavian countries normally have not considered isoglosses that cut across state borders, the Scanian dialects have normally been treated as a South-Swedish dialect group in Swedish dialect research. However, many of the early Scandinavian linguists, including Adolf Noreen and G. Sjöstedt, classified it as "South-Scandinavian", and some linguists, such as Elias Wessén, also considered Old Scanian a separate language, classified apart from both Old Danish and Old Swedish.
Scanian was previously classified as a regional language by SIL International, but before the latest update, the Swedish representative to ISO/TC-37, the technical committee overseeing ISO 639, required that Scanian be removed from the ISO/DIS 639-3, the draft just prior to the final draft FDIS, or a positive vote from Sweden wouldn't be forthcoming. The prior identifier ISO 639-3:scy, as used in the Ethnologue 15th edition, is reserved for Scanian, and may become active again if a request is submitted to have it reinstated during the annual review process. Within the previous SIL International classification of Scanian were the dialects in the province of Scania, some of the southern dialects of Halland (halländska in Swedish), the dialects of Blekinge (blekingska in Swedish) and the dialects of the Danish island of Bornholm (bornholmsk in Danish).

Status

Scanian is considered a separate language mainly from a historical or cultural point of view and isn't regarded as a separate language by the Swedish government. However, a few Scanian regionalist debaters express the view that Scanian is a suppressed minority language, and that it therefore should be considered an official minority language. In its classification of Scanian as a language, SIL International has included the traditional dialects of the larger, transnational, historical region where Old Scanian is assumed to have been spoken. According to the previous SIL International classification, there were 80,000 people who spoke the Scanian language in 2002, within an area which in Sweden (Scania, Halland and Blekinge) has a total combined population of about 1,6 million people. The boundaries established in traditional Swedish dialectology as a delimiter for the South-Swedish dialect area (Sydsvenska mål in Swedish) are approximately the same, and also include within its classification most of the historical Skåneland region, but with the exception of Bornholm and with the addition of the old border region in southern Småland.
   The four provinces (Scania, Blekinge, Halland and Bornholm) were united under the medieval provincial Scanian Law (Skånske Lov) and acted as a unity through the Scanian Thing (assembly), (þing in Old Norse, ting in Scandinavian languages), which was one of three governing assemblies in Denmark responsible for the election of the Danish king. The four Scanian provinces paid homage to the king as a unity.
   With the establishment of the Scanian Academy and with recent heritage conservation programs, funded by Region Skåne and the Swedish Government, there's a renewed interest in the region for Scanian as a cultural language and as a regional identity, especially among younger generations of Scanians. Many of the genuine rural dialects have been in decline subsequent to the industrial revolution and urbanization in Sweden.
   The population of Skåne County consists of around 13% of the total population in Sweden.

History

Swedish and Danish are considered to have been the same dialect, Old East Norse, up until the 12th century. However, some scholars speculate that there might have been certain dialect differences within the Nordic language area as early as the Proto-Nordic period. The term Swedish isn't mentioned specifically in any source until the first half of the 14th century,
Scanian appeared in writing before 1200, at a time when Swedish and Danish had yet to be codified, and the long struggle between Sweden and Denmark over the right to claim the Old Scanian manuscripts as an early form of either of the two national state languages has led to some odd twists and turns. Two Scanian fragments dated to around 1325 were initially claimed to be (younger) Old Swedish, but further research in modern times has claimed that the language wasn't Swedish, but Scanian. During the 20th century the fragments were thus relabeled early Old Danish by Scandinavian linguists, and as explained by Danish linguist Britta Olrik Frederiksen, the fragments are now thought to "represent as such a newly claimed territory for the history of the Danish language". Like the Scanian Law, one of the fragments, a six-leaf fragment (catalogued as SKB A 120), is written in the runic alphabet. The place of writing, according to Frederiksen, has been tentatively identified as the Cistercian monastery at Herrevad Abbey in Scania. The fragment contains a translation of Mary's lament at the cross. The other fragment (catalogued as SKB *A 115) is a bifolium with just over a hundred metrical lines of knittelvers, a translation from Latin of the apocryphal gospel Evangelium Nicodemi about Christ's descent into hell and resurrection.

Language politics

After the Treaty of Roskilde in 1658, the Danish region consisting of Scania, Blekinge and Halland (collectively known as Skåneland) became a Swedish dominion, but was allowed to keep its old privileges, laws and customs. However, from the 1680s, a process of Swedification was introduced, including a switch of languages used in churches and restrictions imposed on cross border travel and trade. A similar change occurred within other newly acquired provinces along the west coast and along the border with Norway, although these provinces were incorporated into Sweden proper earlier than the Scanian provinces. The situation in Scania was unique from a linguistic point of view; modern sociolinguistic studies often approach it as a way to study the roots of linguistic nationalism. As pointed out by the Norwegian scholar Lars S. Vikør, professor, Nordic and Linguistics Studies, University of Oslo, in the 2001 book Language and Nationalism, the "animosity between the two countries [Swedenand Denmark], and the relative closeness of their standard languages (dialectal differences within each of the two countries were greater than the two standards), made it imperative to stress the difference between them in the standardization process". According to Vikør, the "Swedish treatment of the Scanians perhaps shows [that] the most important element of the [linguisticnationalism] ideology is the desire to stress the difference from another linguistic entity that in some way may be considered threatening or challenging one's own autonomy."
In Scania, the Swedish government officially limited the use of Scanian in 1683 by nullifying the self-rule granted in the Treaty of Roskilde and the Malmö Recess, where Scania had been granted the right to a certain degree of autonomy including preservation of its old laws and customs. Scania became fully integrated into the Swedish Kingdom in 1719, and the assimilation has accelerated during the 20th century, with the dominance of Standard Swedish language radio and television, urbanization, and movement of people to and from the other regions of Sweden. Bornholm was once part of Skåneland, but rebelled and returned to Denmark in 1659. The Scanian dialect of Bornholm remained in use as a functioning transitional stage, but Standard Danish soon became dominant in official contexts and the dialect is thought to be disappearing.

Historic shifts

The gradual transition to Swedish has resulted in the introduction of many new Swedish characteristics into Scanian since the 18th century, especially when it comes to vocabulary and grammar. In spite of the shift, Scanian dialects have maintained a non-Swedish prosody, as well as details of grammar and vocabulary that in some aspects differ from Standard Swedish. The prosody, pronunciation of vowels and consonants in such qualities as length, stress and intonation, has more in common with Danish, German and Dutch (and occasionally English) than with Swedish. The degree of contrast between Scanian dialects and standard Swedish is sometimes in the popular press compared to the differences between British English and Australian English. However, as pointed out by the researchers involved in the project Comparative Semantics for Nordic Languages, it's difficult to quantify and analyze the fine degrees of semantic differences that exist between the Scandinavian languages in general, even between the national languages Danish, Swedish and Norwegian: "[S]ome of the Nordic languages [..]are historically, lexically and structurally very similar.[...]Are there systematic semantic differences between these languages? If so, are the formal semantic analytic tools that have been developed mainly for English and German sufficiently fine-grained to account for the differences among the Scandinavian languages?"
The characteristic Scanian diphthongs, which don't occur in Danish or Swedish, are in popular belief often seen as signs of Scanian natives' efforts to adapt from a Danish to a "proper" Swedish pronunciation. However, linguists reject this explanation for the sound change; at present, there are no universally-accepted theories for why sound changes occur.
Research that provide a cross-border overview of the spectrum of modern dialects in the Nordic region has recently been initiated through the Scandinavian Dialect Syntax Project, based at the University of Tromsø in Norway, where nine Scandinavian research groups collaborate to systematically map and study the syntactic variation across the Scandinavian dialect continuum.

Historic preservation

Scanian once possessed many unique words which don't exist in either Swedish nor Danish. In attempts to preserve the unique aspects of Scanian, these words have been recorded and documented by the Institute for Dialectology, Onomastics and Folklore Research in Sweden. Preservation is also accomplished through comparative studies, such as the Scanian-Swedish-Danish dictionary project, commissioned by the Scanian Academy. This project is led by Dr. Helmer Lång and involves a group of scholars from different fields, including Professor Birger Bergh, linguistics, Professor Inger Elkjær and Dr. Inge Lise Pedersen, researcher in Danish dialects. Many specialty Scanian dictionaries have been published through the years, including one by Dr. Sten Bertil Vide, who wrote his doctoral thesis on the names of flowers in Scanian. This publication, and a variety of other Scanian dictionaries are available through the Department of Dialectology and Onomastics in Lund.
The words and pronunciation differ around Scania, as they were sometimes only spoken by a small number of people in remote villages. Villages close to the sea, for example, such as Falsterbo and Limhamn, had many unique words connected to fishing. Most of these words no longer have any use in the spoken language.

Modern history

General public and academic interest in protecting the Scanian dialect or language was first established in the early 19th century with the advent of folkloristics and romantic nationalism in Scandinavia (see for example Norwegian romantic nationalism). According to Dr. Helmer Lång, associate professor, Comparative Literature, Lund University, Scanian and the folklore of the region hadn't been given proper attention because the Swedes considered them Danish, and the Danes, on the other hand, avoided dealing with this area which they'd lost.
An early advocate was Henrik Wranér (1853-1908) who wrote books on Scanian (Kivikja Snackk..., 1901). His contribution was manifested with his Selected Works (Valda Verk) which was published in 1922-23. His primary successor was Axel Ebbe (1869-1941), who wrote Rijm å rodevelske in Scanian along with a witty translation of the Bible (Bibelsk historie, 1949).
The Scanian movie actor Edvard Persson, active during the 1930s and 1940s, was one of the first nationally recognized artists to sing in Scanian. More recently, radio voices Kjell Stensson and Sten Broman have popularized the dialect.

Today

There are a sizable number of singers and other celebrities who speak Scanian and use it in their professional life. Artist Mikael Wiehe, voted "Scanian of the Year" in 2000, explained his relation to Scanian by referring a "love, knowledge of and pride in Scania's history and uniqueness": "To be a Scanian, to love Scania, to take an interest in its history and to cherish its uniqueness [...] has helped me to understand and respect other people's love for and pride over their native area. [...] In the same way, I love the Scanian language. Not because it's better than other languages, but because it's the language I express myself best in. This love for my native region and my language has given me a security and confidence which has made it possible for me to go out and explore the world without fear." Wiehe received the Swedish Martin Luther King Award of 2005 for his work at home and internationally for peace, freedom, justice and solidarity. Hans Alfredson, a popular showman, producer, singer and performer during the last 50 years, has produced several movies with Scanian dialogue, including the internationally recognized movie "The Simple-Minded Murder", starring Scanian-speaking Stellan Skarsgård who grew up in Malmö. Thomas Öberg, the singer of Swedish rock group bob hund, is a notable speaker of Scanian, who also sings in Scanian. The rock artist Kal P. Dal, considered a cult favourite in some areas, Björn Afzelius, rock artist Peps Persson and the band Joddla med Siv are also popular examples of Scanian artists. The folk-singer Danne Stråhed is very popular in some regions, not the least due to his trademark song När en flicka talar skånska ("When a girl speaks Scanian"), which is composed - words and music - by another popular Scanian Michael Saxell, who also wrote Scanian classic Om himlen och Österlen, which has been recorded and sung by many Swedish artists including Jan Malmsjö, Lill Lindfors, Östen Warnerbring, Lasse Stefanz, Sanna Nielsen and the composer himself. Henrik Larsson, declared one of Sweden's best football players by the press, also speaks Scanian and was voted Scanian of the Year 2006. Also football star Zlatan Ibrahimović speaks Scanian and rapper Timbuktu raps in Scanian.
Recently, several humorously written Scanian dictionaries have been published. As there's no Scanian language standard, the choice of words to be included is always under debate.

Sounds

Scanian realizes the phoneme /r/ as a uvular trill, [ʀ] in clear articulation, but in everyday speech more commonly as a voiceless, [χ] or voiced uvular fricative, [ʁ], depending on phonetic context. This is in contrast to the alveolar articulations and retroflex assimilations in most Swedish dialects north of Småland. The realizations of the highly variable and uniquely Swedish fricative /ɧ/ also tend to be more velar and less labialized than in other dialects. Though the phonemes of Scanian correspond to those of Standard Swedish and most other Swedish dialects, long vowels have developed into diphthongs which are unique to the region. In the southern parts of Skåne many diphthongs also have a pharyngeal quality, similar to Danish vowels.

Vocabulary

Scanian used to have many words which differed from standard Swedish. In 1995 Skånska Akademien released Skånsk-svensk-dansk ordbok, a dictionary with 2,711 Scanian words and expressions. It should be mentioned however that not all of these words are in wide use today. While the general vocabulary in modern Scanian doesn't differ considerably from Standard Swedish, a few specifically Scanian words still exist which are known in all of Scania, occurring frequently among a majority of the speakers. These are some examples:

påg, "boy" (Standard Swedish: pojke, former Danish: poge / pog)
tös, "girl" (Standard Swedish: flicka, Danish: pige or tøs)
rälig, "disgusting", "ugly", "frightening" (Standard Swedish äcklig, ful, skrämmande/otäck, former Swedish rädelig, dialect Danish: rærlig)

There are other Scanian words that are well-known in Scania but could be considered old-fashioned or extremely rural in general usage:

pantoffel or pära, "potato" (Standard Swedish: potatis, Danish: kartoffel)

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