; Elfdalian is spoken in the southeastern half.]]
Elfdalian or Övdalian (Övdalsk or Övdalską in Elfdalian, Älvdalska or Älvdalsmål in Swedish) is a linguistic variety of the Scandinavian language branch spoken in the old parish of Övdaln, which is located in the south-eastern part of Älvdalen Municipality in Northern Dalarna, Sweden.
Traditionally regarded as a Swedish dialect, Elfdalian is today regarded by several linguists as a separate language. As some other Dalecarlian vernaculars spoken north of the Lake Siljan, Elfdalian retains numerous old grammatical and phonological features that have not changed considerably since Old Norse and is considered to be the most conservative and best preserved vernacular within the Dalecarlian branch. Having developed in relative isolation since the Middle Ages, quite a few linguistic innovations are also present in the language.
Elfdalian has around 3,000 speakers and its existence is severely threatened. However, it is possible that it will receive an official status as a minority language in Sweden, which would entail numerous protections and encourage its use in schools and by writers and artists. The Swedish Parliament was due to address this issue In 2007, but apparently has not yet done so. The European Council has urged the Swedish government to reconsider the status of Elfdalian/Övdalian on three different occasions, most recently in May 2009.
Grammar
Morphology
Elfdalian has a highly complex morphological structure, partially inherited from its Old Norse ancestor. Thus, it has personal conjugations on the verb, three genders, and makes case distinctions. As in other Scandinavian languages, nouns have definite (def.) and indefinite (indef.) forms. The length of the root syllable plays a major role in the Elfdalian declensional and conjugational system. The declension of
warg 'wolf' (long-syllabic, strong masculine noun) was as follows in what is sometimes called "Classic Elfdalian" (as described by Levander 1909):
{| class="wikitable"
|-
| warg 'wolf'
! sg.indef.
! sg.def.
! pl.indef.
! pl.def.
|-
| nominative
| warg
| wargen
| warger
| wargär
|-
| accusative
| warg
| wardjin
| warga
| wargą
|-
| dative
| wardje
| wardjem
| wargum
| wargum(e)
|-
| genitive
| (wardjes)
| wardjemes
| —
| wargumes
|}
Today the distinction between nominative and accusative may have been lost in full nouns, and the genitive has generally been replaced by -es forms (see Dahl & Koptjevskaja-Tamm 2005); but many speakers retain the distinct dative case, used especially after prepositions and also certain verbs (such as jåpa, 'help').
Syntax
Unlike other Swedish vernaculars, the syntax of Elfdalian was investigated in the early 20th century (Levander 1909). However, although Elfdalian syntax attracts increased attention, a majority of the syntactic phenomena is still uncharted. In May/June 2007 a group of linguists from the pan-Scandinavian NORMS network conducted a fieldwork in Älvdalen especially aimed at investigating the syntactic properties of the language.
Presented with the help of generative syntax, the following interesting Elfdalian features can be pointed out:
Only 1st and 2nd person plural (Rosenkvist 2006) can be dropped grammatically; 1st person plural pronouns may be dropped only if they appear directly in front of the finite verb. Verb raising occurs, although there is variation between generations (Garbacz 2006). Especially intriguing are the multiple subjects (Levander 1909:109), which seem to occur in clauses with the adverbial sakta ('actually') or the verb lär ('is possible'):
:Du ir sakt du uvendes duktin dalsk.
:you are you very good speak-Övdalian
:’you are actually very good at speaking Övdalian’
This has recently been studied more closely from a generative perspective in Rosenkvist (2007).
Other interesting syntactic properties are (from a Germanic perspective) negative concord, stylistic inversion, long distance reflexives, verb controlled datives, agent-verb word order in coordinated clauses with deleted subjects, etc. Some of these properties are archaisms (they also appeared in Old Swedish), whereas other are inventions, but none of them has yet been studied in any detail.
It appears that Elfdalian displays a number of syntactic features that make it one of the most interesting Germanic languages. It is also one whose syntax has been the least studied.
Writing systems
History
In
Älvdalen the
Germanic Runes have survived the longest. The last record of the Elfdalian Runes is from 1900; these runes are a variant of the
Dalecarlian runes. Älvdalen can be said to have had its own alphabet during the 17th and 18th century.
Due to the great phonetic differences between Swedish and Elfdalian, the use of Swedish orthography for Elfdalian has been unpredictable and individual, e.g. as applied in Prytz' theatre piece from 1622, containing long passages in Elfdalian, or in the Elfdalian material published in the periodical Skansvakten.
A first attempt to create a separate Elfdalian orthography was made in 1999 by Bengt Åkerberg. Åkerberg's orthography was applied in some books and used in language courses. This orthography is based on Loka dialect and is highly phonetic, involving a great deal of diacritics (Sapir 2006).
Råðdjärum's Orthography
In March 2005, a uniform standard orthography for Elfdalian presented by
Råðdjärum (lit. "Let us confer"), The Elfdalian Language Council, and accepted by
Ulum Dalska (lit. 'Let us speak
Dalecarlian'), The Organization for the Preservation of Elfdalian. The new orthography has already been applied by Björn Rehnström in his book
Trair byönner frå Övdalim 'Three Bears from Älvdalen' published in 2007. Råðdjärum's orthography was also used in Bo Westling's translation of Saint-Exupéry's
Le petit prince,
Lisslprinsn.
The Elfdalian Alphabet
The Elfdalian alphabet consists of the following letters:
Aa Ąą Bb Cc Dd Đð Ee Ęę Ff Gg Hh Ii Įį Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo Pp Qq Rr Ss Tt Uu Ųų Vv Ww Xx Yy Y̨y̨ Zz Åå Ą̊ą̊ Ää Öö
Besides letters occurring in the Swedish alphabet, Elfdalian has letters with ogonek, denoting nasal vowels: Ąą, Ęę, Įį, Ųų, Y̨y̨ and Ą̊ą̊. Additionally, it contains the letter Ðð for the voiced dental fricative.
Preservation and standardization
Ulum Dalska, The Organization for the Preservation of Elfdalian, was established in 1984 with the aim to preserve and document the Elfdalian language. In 2005,
Ulum Dalska launched a process aiming to bring about an official recognition of Elfdalian as a language by the Swedish authorities.
Råðdjärum, The Elfdalian Language Committee was established in August 2004 within Ulum Dalska, its first task being to create a new standard orthography for Elfdalian. In March 2005 the new orthography created by Råðdjärum was accepted by the Ulum Dalska annual meeting. Råðdjärum consists of five permanent members: Prof. Östen Dahl (linguist), Mr. Gunnar Nyström (dialectologist), Mrs. Inga-Britt Petersson (teacher), Dr. Yair Sapir (the Committee's Coordinator, linguist), Prof. Lars Steensland (linguist).
As an initiative from Ulum Dalska to encourage children to speak Elfdalian, all schoolchildren in Älvdalen who finish the ninth grade in 2010 and prove that they can speak Elfdalian receive a 6000 SEK stipend.
Notes
References
Älvdalsmålet i Dalarna, Lars Levander. (Doctoral thesis published in Svenska landsmål, 1909, (105).)
Dahl, Östen and Maria Koptjevskaja-Tamm. 2005. The resilient dative and other remarkable cases in Scandinavian vernaculars. Ms. University of Stockholm.
Nationalencyklopedin, entry älvdalsmål, subentry Dalarna
Sapir, Yair. 2006. Elfdalian, the Vernacular of Övdaln (PDF)
Garbacz, Piotr. 2006. Verb movement and negation in Övdalian. Working Papers in Scandinavian Syntax 78:173-190.
Rosenkvist, Henrik. 2006. Null Subjects in Övdalian. Working Papers in Scandinavian Syntax 78:141-171.
Rosenkvist, Henrik. 2007. Subject Doubling in Oevdalian. Working Papers in Scandinavian Syntax 80:77-102.
External links
In English
Language Tree - Ethnologue report
Yair Sapir: Elfdalian, the Vernacular of Övdaln
*The NORMS fieldwork in Älvdalen 2007, a page with blog entries written during and after a linguistic field trip to Älvdalen.
In Swedish or in Darlecarlian
Dalarnas tidningar - article on the establishment of the first spelling standard by Ulum Dalska (in Swedish)
Förslag till en enhetlig stavning för älvdalska ("Project for a unified orthography for Elfdalian").
Älvdalskan är ett språk – inte en svensk dialekt ("Elfdalian is a language - not a Swedish dialect"), debate article from 9 February 2007 in Swedish in the newspaper Aftonbladet
Svenska språket – ett hot mot älvdalskan ("The Swedish language – a Threat to Elfdalian"), op-ed piece in Swedish in Dalarnas Tidningar 2 October 2007 by Lars-Olof Delsing, Janne Margrethe Bondi Johannessen, Christer Platzack, Henrik Rosenkvist, Peter Svenonius, Øystein A. Vangsnes, and Jan-Ola Östman.
Att sätta älvdalskan på kartan ("Putting Elfdalian on the map"), by Östen Dahl. (Has a summary in English at the end.)
Oðer råðstemną um övdalskų - The Second Conference on Elfdalian
Älvdalen Municipality: Älvdalskan (in Dalekarlian and Swedish)
Category:Dalarna
Category:North Germanic languages
Category:Swedish dialects
Category:Languages of Sweden
