Dear Liggliluff. We (the administrators of the Frisian Wikipedia) are not very happy with the changes you made to the articles and templates on Swedish provinces. We're sure you meant well, but translating parts of unfamiliar toponyms like Gävleborg and Östergötland into Frisian makes such names, in our opinion, harder to understand instead of easier. On Wikidata we have seen that a lot of Wikipedias keep the names op Swedish provinces in the original Swedish-language form, and we have decided we're going to do that as well. So, sorry for your wasted effort, but the changes you made will be undone. Ieneach fan 'e Esk (oerlis) 28 jul 2019, 22.44 (CEST), Drewes (oerlis) 29 jul 2019, 10.45 (CEST)
- Thanks for letting me know about it, and also being nice about it.
- Sure, there are plenty of languages not changing the names, but that is because they don't have a local form. Lets use "Östergötland" as an example; only using Latin-languages as non-Latin languages has to change the spelling. It's br:Östergötland, et:Östergötland, tr:Östergötland because they don't have their own name for it. But when they do have their own names for it, they do use it: fi:Itä-Götanmaa, is:Austur-Gautland, la:Gothia orientalis, pt:Gotalândia Oriental, vo:Lofüda-Götläniän. This actually makes the Frisian Wikipedia an exception, not the norm.
- (I am, of course, open to be disproved)
- Liggliluff (oerlis) 1 aug 2019, 01.32 (CEST)
- No thanks required, really. And I am perfectly willing to give a further explanation.
- The point is that in West Frisian we also actually do not have a local form for the names of Swedish provinces, the only exception being Gotlands län, and that is because that is also an island. (For the sake of consistency we have chosen to keep the Province of Gotland in the Swedish form as well, although we have a separate page on the island which does use the Frisian name Gotlân.)
- I quite understand why you would think that Frisian does have it's own name forms for Swedish provinces, because Frisian forms are mentioned in the articles. However, those are actually literal translations of the Swedish names intended to show what the Swedish names mean, but they are not commonly used Frisian-language forms. (I will change the text to make that more clear.) Take Gävleborgs län for example. The translation says Provinsje Gävleburch. That could never be a Frisian-language form because the letter ä simply does not occur in Frisian. It only explains that the suffix "-borg" is comparable to the Frisian suffix "-burch" (or "-boarch"), and that "län" means "province". The same goes for Östergötalands län. "Öster-" quite clearly corresponds with Easter- in Frisian, and the same goes for "-land" and -lân. That does not mean Eastergötalân is a Frisian name, because West Frisian does not have the letter ö. One could argue that the "-göta-" from Östergötalands län comes from the en:Geats, an ethnonym which we have translated as Geaten in our article on Beowulf. So, if you look at comparable forms, like Grikelân (Greece, from Griken and -lân) and Baskelân (the Basque Country, from Basken and -lân), you could reason that the Frisian form of "Östergötaland" would have to be Eastergeatelân. That does not mean, however, that it is a form that is in actual use. Ieneach fan 'e Esk (oerlis) 1 aug 2019, 14.48 (CEST)
- If you don't have names for it, then it makes sense to use the original names. Now that you've clarified on the articles that it's just the names translated, and not actual proper names in Frisian, that makes everything much clearer.
- Liggliluff (oerlis) 1 aug 2019, 21.31 (CEST)