Launchpad itself

List "Languages in Sweden" needs to be amended

Asked by Mikael Hiort af Ornäs

Hi,

When editing your list of preferred languages under https://translations.launchpad.net/~[user]/+editlanguages, Swedish users is presented with a list of languages in Sweden. It lists the majority language (sv, sv-SE) and the minority language Romany (rom).

However, Sweden has five minority languages:

Finnish (fi, fi-SE)
Meänkieli [also Tornedal Finnish] (fit)
Sami languages [all dialects recognised; spoken in Sweden mostly Southern, Ume, Pite, Lule and Northern Sami] (smi)
Romany [also Romany Chib] (rom)
Yiddish (yi, yid)

All these are more or less commonly spoken among the respective communities and they all are recognised in law. For instance, the Finnish speaking community amounts to almost half a million citizens, a hefty part of the ca. 9 million inhabitants in the country as a whole. Looking at history, Finnish, Meänkieli and Sami have been spoken in Sweden since before the Swedish state was formalised (13th century), Romany at least since the 16th century, and Yiddish at least since the 18th century.

I would like the standard list of "Languages in Sweden" to be amended, to include the other four minority languages (Finnish, Meänkieli, Sami languages and Yiddish).

Warm regards,

Mikael Hiort af Ornäs
(https://launchpad.net/~lakritslemmel)

Question information

Language:
English Edit question
Status:
Solved
For:
Launchpad itself Edit question
Assignee:
Launchpad Translations Coordinators Edit question
Solved by:
Mikael Hiort af Ornäs
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Revision history for this message
David Planella (dpm) said : 		#1

All done, with the exception of "Meänkieli [also Tornedal Finnish] (fit)", for which Launchpad does not have an entry. If you've got the details on:

- The English name
- Native name
- Number of plural forms
- Plural form expression

Then we can add it to Launchpad.

Revision history for this message
Mikael Hiort af Ornäs (lakritslemmel) said : 		#2

Hi,

1. The English name varies. Sweden's governmental bodies use "Meänkieli" (http://www.regeringen.se/content/1/c6/08/56/34/920bbf49.pdf) also in English texts, while e.g. the encyclopaedia Ethnologue (http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=fit, see full reference below) says "Finnish, Tornedalen".

2. The native name is "Meänkieli".

3. 2 plural forms

Plural rule #1 (2 forms)

- is 1: 1
- everything else: 0, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, …

4. I don't understand what you mean with "Plural form expression".

/Mikael

---

Reference:

Lewis, M. Paul (ed.), 2009. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Sixteenth edition. Dallas, Tex.: SIL International. Online version: http://www.ethnologue.com/

Revision history for this message
Jeroen T. Vermeulen (jtv) said : 		#3

Thank you. I've registered the language: https://translations.launchpad.net/+languages/fit

The "plural expression" is a mathematical expression (in basic C) which specifies, for a given number n, which form a sentence needs to be in if it's about n items of some kind. In this case, as in English, the two forms are "singular" and "plural." We conventionally number these 0 and 1 respectively. So for this language, the plural expression could be "n != 1" which means: if n equals 1, use form 0 (i.e. singular). In all other cases, use form 1 (i.e. plural).

In fact that's the expression I registered. If there's anything wrong with it, please let us know soonest.

Revision history for this message
Mikael Hiort af Ornäs (lakritslemmel) said : 		#4

It's looks OK to me, but I'm far from fluent in Meänkieli. If there's any fine-tuning to do, there'll hopefully be someone far more qualified than me to address that problem.

Thank you for all the help!

Mikael