6

Was the tag , which was created for this question, based on the assumption that these languages are genetically related?

I have proposed the following edit to the tag wiki info to clarify that "Scandinavian languages" are not a linguistic term:

This tag is for all languages spoken in Scandinavia (and their dialects). Note that not all languages in Scandinavia belong to the same language family:

  • Danish, Swedish and Norwegian are North Germanic languages, a branch of the Indo-European languages,
  • Finnish and Karelian are Finnic languages, a branch of the Uralic language family,
  • the Sami languages are a different branch of the Uralic languages than the Finnic languages.

In light of this, do we want to keep the tag, or do we want to replace it with other tags, such as and ?

Update September 2017: The tag scandinavian-languages no longer exists (and should not be brought back).

4
  • I like this idea a lot. The Scandinavian languages aren't similar linguistically, only geographically. Let's see what the community thinks before reaching a decision.
    – fi12
    Sep 22, 2016 at 18:54
  • At the moment, the [scandinavian-languages] tag has only a single question, which is asking about "all Scandinavian languages", which tells me the tag wasn't created with much intentionality at all.
    – Flimzy
    Sep 22, 2016 at 20:39
  • I suspect there may be more than one definition of "Scandinavian language", and that one of them refers to mutually intelligible, genetically related languages: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Germanic_languages
    – Andrew Grimm
    Sep 25, 2016 at 11:19
  • @AndrewGrimm In (comparative) linguistics, the term "Scandinavian languages" does not exist, as far as I know. It is a term coined by non-linguists who assumed that all languages spoken in Scandinavia are related.
    – Tsundoku Mod
    Sep 25, 2016 at 15:56

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
1

This really does seem this was made on the assumption that they were made geographically.

Now we have several options here:

  • Keep the tag but:

    • Change the wiki appropriately
    • Make one tag for each language, subgroup, or major group (examples below)

  • Delete the tag but:

    • Make one tag for each of the languages in that tag
    • Make one tag for each subgroup within that tag (North Germanic for example)
    • Make one tag for each major group listed in that tag (Indo-European for example)

I suppose the more feasible option would be to keep the tag but make a tag for each major group and subgroup as there are probably a tag for each known language in the future. This can preserve the range of languages covered within questions that use that tag but also let future languages narrow the languages down a bit more.

3
  • 1
    I think that, at the current stage of LL SE, a tag for Germanic languages would be sufficient, and perhaps one for Romance languages. A tag for Finnic languages or for Finno-Ugric languages may become useful later, but I couldn't find any question that are specifically about these languages (Finnish is just mentioned as an aside a few times).
    – Tsundoku Mod
    Sep 25, 2016 at 8:37
  • I have created a tag for Germanic languages and substituted it for the tag 'scandinavian-languages' on the one question that used it. So this question can probably marked as 'status-completed'.
    – Tsundoku Mod
    Oct 4, 2016 at 20:02
  • @ChristopheStrobbe perhaps a tag for "Uralic Languages" would be enough considering the low volume. If we start getting hundreds of questions just on the Finno-Ugric languages we can spin it off.
    – Robert Columbia Mod
    Oct 31, 2016 at 14:55
1

As of September 2017, the tag has been deleted and instead has been replaced with the broader tag.

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .