Contents

Jämtland dialects

Swedish dialects spoken in Jämtland, Sweden

This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these template messages) The neutrality of this article is disputed. Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page. Please do not remove this message until conditions to do so are met. (March 2018) (Learn how and when to remove this message) You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Swedish. (July 2018) Click [show] for important translation instructions. View a machine-translated version of the Swedish article. Machine translation, like DeepLorGoogle Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 217 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Swedish Wikipedia article at [[:sv:Jämtska]]; see its history for attribution. You may also add the template {{Translated|sv|Jämtska}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation. This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this articlebyadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Jämtland dialects" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (July 2022) (Learn how and when to remove this message) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Jämtland dialects
jamska
Region	Jämtland
Language family	Indo-European Germanic Northwest Germanic[1] North Germanic West or East Scandinavian[2] Swedish Norrlandic Jämtland dialects
Language codes
ISO 639-3	None (mis)
Linguist List	jmk (retired ISO code)
Glottolog	jamt1238
IETF	gmq-u-sd-sez
Jämtland in northern Sweden

Jämtland dialects (jamska [ˈjâmskɐ᷈]; Swedish: jämtska, jämtmål) constitute a group of closely related Norrland dialects spoken in the Swedish provinceofJämtland, with the exception of Frostviken in the northernmost part of the province, where the traditional dialect is Norwegian. In the eastern part of Jämtland the dialects are transitional to those of Ångermanland. The dialect group is commonly regarded and treated as a single entity. Some people^[who?] consider it a language separate from Swedish.

The Jämtland dialects share many characteristics with Trøndersk — the dialect spoken to the west in Norwegian Trøndelag, and has historically sometimes been considered to be Norwegian in origin.^[3] The current view in Scandinavian dialectology, however, is that the Jämtland dialects belong to the Swedish Norrland dialects.^{[citation needed]}

Name[edit]

The local name for the dialects is jamska. There is, however, no common term for the dialects in English, and academic sources call them by various names, such as jamska, jämtska, Jämtish dialect, Jämtlandic dialect, Jämtland dialectsordialects of Jämtland.^{[citation needed]}

The endonym jamska is technically a definite form; the indefinite form jaamsk/jamske is rarely used.^{[citation needed]}

Characteristics[edit]

This section possibly contains original research. Many claims in this section appear to be conclusions that are inferred from the sources given by a second party. Please improve itbyverifying the claims made and adding inline citations. Statements consisting only of original research should be removed. (July 2022) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Vowel balance[edit]

Like all other central Scandinavian dialects (Trønder dialects, east Norwegian dialects, Norrland dialects, some Finland Swedish dialects), the most characteristic feature of the Jämtland dialects is vowel balance, an event that caused the vowel endings after heavy syllables to weaken and later even drop entirely in some dialects moving the tone over from ending to the root syllable, example Old Norse kasta [kʰɑ̂stɑ᷈] > [kʰɑ̂stə᷈] (> [kʰɑ̂.ɑ᷈st] "to throw"), while the endings after light syllables instead where reinforced, and even caused a type of umlaut or vowel harmony on the root vowel (example Old Norse lifa [liβɑ] > [liβɑˑ] > [le̞ʋa] > [lɐ̂ʋɐ᷈] "to live"). According to one theory, this phenomenon has its roots in influence from the neighbouring Saami languages in medieval times.^[4]

Prosody[edit]

The Old Norse phonemic contrast of light and heavy syllables is partly preserved in eastern Jämtland dialects,^[5] and to some degree in Western Jämtland dialects^[6] and in the Oviken parish in southwestern Jämtland.^[7] In eastern Jämtland and in Oviken parish, short stressed syllables are preserved from Old Norse words like hǫku 'chin', lifa 'to live', which have evolved to [hô̞ke̞᷈] in Fors parish, [hɔ̂ke̞᷈] in Ragunda and Stugun parishes, [hɞ̂kɛ᷈] in Hällesjö parish,^[8] and [hôkɵ᷈] in Oviken parish,^[9] while lifa has become [læ̂ʋa᷈] or similar in all of the parishes.^[10][11] In western Jämtland, the short syllables are less stable, and are often lengthened to long or half-long in accent 2 words, but is preserved in accent 1 words: Old Norse svið 'burned' has become [sʋɛ̂] in Åre parish,^[12] while accent 2 words like Old Norse lofa 'to promise', duna 'to make noise', which have evolved to [lɔ̂ˑʋo̞᷈]or[lɔ̂ːʋɔ᷈], and [d̪ɔ̂ːnɔ᷈] in Undersåker, Kall and Åre parishes.^[12]

Primary and secondary diphthongs[edit]

Central- and southwestern Jämtland dialects have preserved the Old Norse primary diphthongs ai, au, ey, usually with pronunciations like [e̞i̯], [ɞɵ̯], [œy̯].^[13] In the Offerdal parish in western Jämtland, ai and ey have monophthongized to [ɛː] and [œː],^[14] while au is preserved as [æɵ̯].^[13] Eastern Jämtland dialects (spoken in the parishes Borgvattnet, Ragunda, Fors, Stugun, Håsjö, Hällesjö) have no diphthongs, but have monophthongized aito[e̝ː], eyto[ø̝ː], and auto[ɵː], [ɞː], [ʌː]or[o̞ː].^[15][16][17] Southwestern Jämtland dialects have not only preserved the original diphthongs, but also, similar to Icelandic and some dialects in Norway, diphthongized Old Norse áto[ɑu̯] in Myssjö parish, [ɔu̯] in Hackås and Oviken parishes, and [aɔ̯] in Berg and Rätan parishes.^[13]

Voiceless L[edit]

The Jämtland dialects, like Icelandic, Faroese, and other northern Scandinavian dialects, have both a voiced [l] and voiceless [ɬ] l-sound. This sound comes from a voiced l that has been partly assimilated by either a preceding sort, or a following t: Old Norse kirtilinn 'gland' has become [tɕʰɑ̂ːɬ̠l̠n̠᷈], [tɕʰɑ̂ɬ̠ːl̠n̠᷈]^[18] or similar, Old Norse slíta 'to struggle, to pull' has become [ɬlît̪e̞᷈], [ɬlîi᷈ːt̪]^[19] or similar, and Old Norse allt 'all' has become [aɬt] or similar.^[19]

Orthography[edit]

There have been attempts to standardize the orthography of the Jämtland dialects. The attempt that has been the most popular is Vägledning för stavning av jamska (1994 and 1995) which is the work of the committee Akademien för jamska consisting of Bodil Bergner, Berta Magnusson and Bo Oscarsson. The most prominent application of this orthography has been to prepare translations of parts of the Bible into the dialect, resulting in the book Nagur Bibelteksta på jamska. An excerpt:

Genesis 1:26–27:

²⁶Å Gud saa: ’Lätt oss gjära når mänish, nager som e lik oss. Å dom ske rå öve fishn derri havan å över foglan pyne himmela, å öve tamdjura öve heile jola, å öve all de djur som kravl å rör se på jorn.´

²⁷Å Gud skapa mänishan å gjool som n avbild ta se själv. Te kær å kviin skapa n dom.

The book does not fully follow Vägledning för stavning av jamska. For example, using Vägledning för stavning av jamska one would spell gjæra v. 'do; make', not "gjära". Another spelling convention in Nagur Bibelteksta på jamska is the use of the digraph "sh", in e.g.『mänish』n. 'human being' and "fishn" n. 'the fish', with the same pronunciation as English 'sh' in 'shoe'. Properly using Vägledning för stavning av jamska, this would be spelled sch; see § 26 in the external link below. People writing Jämtland dialects commonly use the letters of the Swedish alphabet, with the addition of æ and ô.^{[citation needed]} The letters c, q, w, x, and z are usually not used.^{[citation needed]}

References[edit]

Notes[edit]

Bibliography[edit]

Noreen, Adolf (1903–1907). Vårt språk: nysvensk grammatik i utförlig framställning. Bd 1 (in Swedish). Lund: Gleerup.

• Dä glöm fäll int jamska, published by Margareta Persson (red.), 1986
• Reinhammar, Vidar (January 2005). Hammerdalsmålet. Swedish Science Press. ISBN 91-85352-59-4. Archived from the original on 2007-09-27. Retrieved 2006-02-01.

External links[edit]

• Jemtsk og trøndersk – to nære slektningar by Arnold Dalen
• Vägledning för stavning av jamskabyAkademien för jamska
• Publisher's webpage about Nagur Bibelteksta på jamska