How do I find out more? – Read the 400 words on this page. Perhaps you want to follow the links. Or write on Facebook (upper right hand corner), or send me a message on the Contact page .

What is this? – This is a web site about revitalising a Scandinavian language.

If you have come here because you have googled “Jan Arvid Götesson” and you are not interested in this web site about dialects, please click

If you have come here because you have googled “Jan Arvid Götesson” and you are not interested in this web site about dialects, please click

If you have come here because you have googled “Jan Arvid Götesson” and you are not interested in this web site about dialects, please click

If you have come here because you have googled “Jan Arvid Götesson” and you are not interested in this web site about dialects, please click

Welcome to my page about the northern varieties of the South Swedish tongues!

Welcome to my page about the northern varieties of the South Swedish tongues!

Welcome to my page about the northern varieties of the South Swedish tongues!

We want to revive our real mother tongue!

This is the web site for us who want to revive our ancestral tongue: the northern varieties of the South Swedish tongues. Not the new regional varieties of Standard Swedish that are incorrectly called “dialects”, but the real tongues. We shall revive them as spoken and written varieties.

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It’s not enough that small languages groups such as Welsh survive. Equally important is the variation within “languages”.. Swedish is now half extinct because of forced standardisation and auto-genocidal language shift.

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Ignore for the moment the black column on the right hand side. That’s is dialect written in my orthography, which you may or may not find flawed. But that’s unimportant, because written language is secondary to spoken language. What matters is to revive and preserve the vernacular.

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What are Northern South Swedish tongues?

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There are six groups of genuine Swedish language varieties.¹ One is Sydsvenska mål (South Swedish tongues). The northern boundary stretches through Halland and Småland.² Within South Swedish there is a northern group with shared features.

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Why do we call these varieties “Northern South Swedish”

Because there is no better alternative. The designation “nordlig sydsvenska” (Northern South Swedish) has been used occasionally.³ This name is awkward, but there’s no point inventing names. Naming genuine tongues ofter provinces is unsuitable, because the isoglosses divide Halland and Småland.

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What does one need to do to revive Northern South Swedish tongues?

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Today most people speaks Standard Swedish, or a tongue corrupted by Standard Swedish. We have to start from there. In order to revive Northern South Swedish, we needs to modify, bit by bit, our

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phonology

morphology

syntax

lexicon

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We also need to write our tongues. I use an orthography that I created myself, but everybody can write as they please.

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What about Standard Swedish? Isn’t that a good and necessary variety?

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Yes. As an auxiliary language to communicate with people who wouldn’t understand if we spoke our tongue, and for immigrants.

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What we don’t do

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We are not creating a standard language. We do not want to create anything similar to Ivar Aasens Nynorsk. Nynorsk is a written language, different to all the spoken varieties upon which it is based. Revived Northern South Swedish distinguishes itself from Nynorsk in two ways. It incorporates all attested forms from our land; no standard forms are recommended or suggested. Our intention is to keep or revive those elements from phonology, morphology, syntax and lexicon that we think are worth preserving or reviving in our own idiolect. Second, the spelling is unregulated; I have devised an orthography that at the same time is etymological and shows the pronunciation, but you spell as you please.

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What do we do on this web site?

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On this website there are:

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Where do I begin?

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First aim to learn about the linguistic details attested in or remebered in the parish(es) your ancestors lived in. Write to me! Inform your friends about this web site.

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References

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¹Elias Wessén, Våra folkmål. Sjunde upplagan. Lund 1966. Sidan 13.

²Elias Wessén, Våra folkmål. Sjunde upplagan. Lund 1966. Sidan 19.

³Susanne Schötz, Gösta Bruce och My Segerup, ”Dialektal variation i svensk ordmelodi sammansatta ord” i Svenskans beskrivning : 31, Förhandlingar vid Trettioförsta sammankomsten för svenskans beskrivning, Umeå den 20–21 maj 2010.