diff --git a/README.Norwegian b/README.Norwegian index ba8abf8..8eb4547 100644 --- a/README.Norwegian +++ b/README.Norwegian @@ -1,21 +1,34 @@ *NOTES ABOUT NORWEGIAN* -Traditionally, Babel has been supporting Norwegian under the name "norsk", with -"norwegian" as an alias. This is not a satisfactory support of the languages -of Norway, where there are actually two official languages, called bokmal (ISO -639-1 'nb') and nynorsk (ISO 639-1 'nn'). There is also a ISO 639-1 code for -"Norwegian", 'no'. See Wikipedia for details. +The Norwegian language has two written forms, called bokmål and nynorsk, whose +history dates back to the 19th century during the Danish occupation. The most +widely used one of them is bokmål, but nynorsk is used as well, and they are +both official languages of Norway. The ISO 639-1 code are ‘nb’ for bokmål and +‘nn’ for nynorsk. There is also a ISO 639-1 code for “Norwegian”, ‘no’. - Since a few months, there are two different pattern files available on CTAN -(but still only one ldf file for Babel). Since the language currently labelled -as "norsk" is actually bokmal, this means we can use the bokmal patterns as the -successor to the "norsk" patterns, and ship the nynorsk patterns in addition to -this. We thus can use the following definitions in language.no.dat: + Traditionally, LaTeX has been supporting Norwegian under the common name +“norsk”, with “norwegian” as an alias in language.dat. The captions in Babel's +norsk.ldf are in bokmål. Since a few months, there are two additional pattern +files available on CTAN labelled as bokmål and nynorsk, which correct +hyphenations for a small number of words – two words for each language, +actually: in bokmål, attende and betre are hyphenated at-ten-de and be-tre, +whereas in nynorsk it's att-en-de and bet-re. With the current patterns for +“Norwegian” (nohyphbx.tex), though, they are hyphenated atten-de and betre, +which is correct in neither language. The new pattern files provide therefore +provide tiny improvements. + + Since the Babel's current support is suitable for bokmål, and the bokmål +patterns are only slightly different from the current ones, we can use them as +the successor to the norsk patterns, and ship the nynorsk patterns in addition +to this. We thus can use the following definitions in language.no.dat: norsk loadhyph-nb.tex =norwegian =bokmal - dutch loadhyph-nl.tex nynorsk loadhyph-nn.tex - Arthur, 2008-06-10 + Of course, the nynorsk patterns still can't be used directly as long as there +is no Babel support, but we hope that support will be added on the future, and +the patterns will already be there. + + Arthur, 2008-06-11