Re: Scandinavian Languages

Quoting Isidora Zamora <isidora@...>:
> Since there are Swedes around, I can ask a question I have long wanted the
> answer to.  What is at the beginning of the Swedish word for "seven"?  How
> is it spelled?  And could you give me a phonetic description of the
> sound?  I've heard that the sound is a terror to foreigners.
At the BEGINNING of _sju_? Foreigners are supposed to have trouble with the
vowel, not the consonant, of that ...

The consonant depends on dialect - mine have [x^w], which is pretty common.
That labialization isn't phonemic by the way - I have it before rounded
vowels, some people have it everywhere and skipping it totally shouldn't be a
problem. Some dialects, eg in Finland, have [S] or [S^w]. Some have [x\], and
for some reason textbooks are prone to give that or [S].

(In case you're unfamiliar with the phonetic transcription I'm using (X-
SAMPA), [x] is "ch" as in German "Bach", [S] is "sh" as in English "fish" and
[x\] are those two pronounced simultaneously. [^w] indicates labialization of
the previous sound.)

> Does anyone have any idea how the definitite and indefinite articles in
> Scandinavian languages arose?  I have been wondering about this since my
> first week in Denmark.  The indefinite article is transparent.  It's simply
> the word for "one" with gender marking placed in front of the
> noun.  Spanish and French do the same thing.  But how do you get a definite
> article by taking that selfsame particle and postfixing it to the
> noun?  (Do native speakers ever even wonder about things like that, or do
> they just accept them?)
This one sometimes wonders, but does not know. I would put too much money on
the suffixed definites being in origin the same as the indefinites - Icelandic
_-inn_ would seem to suggest something else.

                                                              Andreas

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