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'Elfdalian' (''Övdalsk'' 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 southern 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.
In March 2005, a uniform standard orthography for Elfdalian created by ''Råðdjärum'' (lit. "Let us confer"), The Elfdalian Language Committee, was 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.
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. In 2007 the Swedish Parliament will address this issue.

Contents

Grammar

Morphology

Syntax

Preservation and standardization

See also

References

External links

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 conjugation of ''warg'' 'wolf' (long-syllabic, strong masculine noun) was as follows in what is sometimes called "Classic Övdalian" (as described by Levander 1909):

''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 & Koptjevskaya-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.
Null referential subjects are grammatical, but only 1st and 2nd person plural (Rosenkvist 2006), and 1st person plural pronouns cannot be covert unless 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 advl. you very good speak-Övdalian
’you are actually very good at speaking Övdalian’
Other interesting syntactic properties are (from a Germanic perspective) negative concord, stylistic inversion, long distance reflexives, verb controlled datives, AV- 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 extreme Germanic languages. It is also, concerning syntax, one of the least studied.

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).

See also

★ Dalecarlian Runes

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''

★ Elfdalian, the Vernacular of Övdaln, an article by Yair Sapir, Uppsala University (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.

External links

★ Language Tree - Ethnologue report

★ Dalarnas tidningar - article on the establishment of the first spelling standard by Ulum Dalska (in Swedish)

★ Älvdalska, det lokala språket (English: Elfdalian, the local language) - homepage for the Älvdalen speech hosted by the Älvdalen Municipality

★ Älvdalskan som minoritets- eller landsdelsspråk (English: Elfdalian as a minority or regional language), a parliamentary bill by Kenneth Johansson (c) to make Älvdalska an official minority or regional language of Sweden

★ Förslag till en enhetlig stavning för älvdalska (English: Project for an unified orthography for Elfdalian).

★ Älvdalskan är ett språk – inte en svensk dialekt (English: Elfdalian is a language - not a Swedish dialect), debate article from 9 February 2007 in Swedish in Scandinavia's largest newspaper Aftonbladet

★ Att sätta älvdalskan på kartan (English: Putting Elfdalian on the map), by Östen Dahl. (Has an English summary in the end.)