Re: CHAT: Rare Phonetics

At 19:08 2001-07-04 -0400, Roger Mills wrote:

>How is
>it spelled (not that that will help, either, as my Swedish is ZERO, save for
>SAAB, Volvo and Bergmann movies).
It is not spelled at all since central Swedish -- on which spelling and
"educated" (i.e. spelling) pronunciation is based -- lacks the sound, using
[O], [U] or [a] for the stressed sound and [E-] for the "schwa".  In those
dialects that have the sound it is mainly the regular reflex of Middle
Swedish short */o/, which has basically remained [O] in central Swedish and
thus merged with shortened instances of Middle Swedish */a:/.  Where
written Swedish has {o} pronounced /O(:)/ we further south usually have
/oe-/.  We also have /A/ phonemically distinct from /a/, which people from
the central area frequently mishear as [O].  These two sounds are sometimes
written {ô} and {â} in dialect literature, but that is not part of standard
Swedish spelling.  Most south-of-central dialects have 12 vowel phonemes
against the 9 recognized by orthography -- with some people believing that
it is somehow our speech that needs mending!  Comparing with the only
recording of spoken French I have available it seems that the sound in "le"
is pretty close.

And BTW Ingemar is Bergman, with only one {n}. (He ain't no German! ;-)



/BP 8^)>
--
B.Philip Jonsson mailto:bpX@netg.se (delete X)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~__
                A h-ammen ledin i phith!                \ \
     __  ____ ____    _____________ ____ __   __ __     / /
     \ \/___ \\__ \  /___  _____/\ \\__ \\ \  \ \\ \   / /
     / /   / /  /  \    / /Melroch\ \_/ // /  / // /  / /
    / /___/ /_ / /\ \  / /Melarokko\_  // /__/ // /__/ /
   /_________//_/  \_\/ /Eowine __  / / \___/\_\\___/\_\
Gwaedhvenn Angelmiel \ \______/ /a/ /_h-adar Merthol naun
  ~~~~~~~~~Kuinondil~~~\________/~~\__/~~~Noolendur~~~~~~
|| Lenda lenda pellalenda pellatellenda kuivie aiya! ||
"A coincidence, as we say in Middle-Earth" (JRR Tolkien)