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Sometimes I wonder about the Swedish reluctance to use dialects when writing; some Westrobothnian writers do use dialectal words, especially in dialogues, but rather than using their dialect as a mode of communication, they seem to use dialectal words to add "flavour" instead.
Most of the writers who feel comfortable to add dialectal words to their texts happen to be from the north, and many of them do so, because of a long-standing tradition of allowing Westrobothnian words and grammatical structures to manifest themselves in written form.
They look at writers like Sara Lidman and P.O. Enquist and feel comfortable in doing so, because of the aforementioned writers' standings as Swedish, literary giants.
In fact, you could even say that there's a certain expectation on Westrobothnian writers to use dialectal words.
In fact, you could even say that there's a certain expectation on Westrobothnian writers to use dialectal words.
This can be seen in the works of e.g. Stina Stoor and Stig Andersson, who tend to write their dialogues in a written form of standard Westrobothnian; easily recognised as "not Swedish" but similar enough to seem quirky, rather than off-putting for non-speakers of these dialects.
At the same time, none of them actually write *in dialect* to a full extent, nor do their use of dialectal words seem to encourage speakers of other dialects to follow in their footsteps.
In essence, all theseWestrobothnian writers could be compared to many speakers of Scots who *could* be writing in their language, but who, because of a lack of generally agreed upon orthographies etc. end up writing in Standard Scottish English instead.
This reluctance to give space and time to dialects in written form leads to them dying out as individual, effective modes of communication. There is *no* such thing as a singularly defined "Westrobothnian", yet that's what we're left with when talking about dialects today.
What is more, because dialects so rarely find themselves written down, other than as accented Swedish with a rare set of generally agreed-upon "approved" dialectal words, those of us who would want to write our dialects find ourselves constantly questioning our own language.
If we look at Norway, the same problem simply does not exist, due to the existence of New Norwegian as a written language; dialects are valued as important parts of the Norwegian local psyche, but the same couldn't really be said about Swedish.
In many ways, this comes down to the fact that Norwegian has two written standards, where Nynorsk could be compared to MacDiarmid's synthetic Scots; i.e. a written amalgamation of different forms of spoken Norwegian dialects, but not an actual language per se.
For a long time, users of New Norwegian have championed the saying "speak your local dialect, but write New Norwegian". This has led to a situation where people are proud of their dialects, which cannot be said, in the same way, about Swedes and Swedish dialects.
Dialects are accepted in Sweden to a certain extent, insofar that accents are regularly heard, and you can usually pinpoint the general origin of a person, but having an accent is not, and never was the same thing as truly speaking a dialect.
My students can for the most part pinpoint the villages people come from by listening to their accents, but if I asked them to translate dialectal words to standard Swedish, the majority of them would struggle.
A lot.
A lot.
Whenever I do write something in dialect, I always end up reading it to my grandmother, in order for her to "approve" of what I've written. I have a huge respect for our elders, and I take the opportunities I can to note down their words, whether in Saami or Westrobothnian.
My favourite words are the ones that show how close speakers of South/Ume Saami and speakers of Westrobothnian have been, like mårak (angry, cf. South Saami måerehke), sjira (magpie, sjyjrá in Ume Saami) and sjwoppen (cf. soehpenje in South Saami, ie. lasso).
This turned into a long thread when all I really wanted to say was; be proud of your dialects and local languages.
Instead of mocking those who do so, be supportive of the fact that they're challenging a Western, monoglot worldview, thereby broadening your horizons as well
Instead of mocking those who do so, be supportive of the fact that they're challenging a Western, monoglot worldview, thereby broadening your horizons as well
And finally; if Scots is good enough for you on New Year's Eve and Burn's Night, it's good enough for you the rest of the year as well, whether it's full on Shaetlan, Doric or Dundonian, or a plainer version of Scottish English.
Speak it, let others speak it and be proud of it.
Speak it, let others speak it and be proud of it.
