Re: Nasality pa svenska

Hej,

> > > Okay, so I'm thinking that, without the benefit of having met a
> > > native speaker since I decided to learn Swedish, I've managed to
> > > develop a reasonably unembarassing Swedish accent, grave and acute
> > > accents and all.
> >
> >Heh :-) Now my accent is quite misleading, 'cause my _r_'s
> are uvular,
> >but of course they make my _rt_'s, _rd_'s, _rn_'s and _rs_'s
> >postalveolar...
>
> Postalveolar? Not that there's a world of acoustic difference, but
> prescriptively and following my lect they should be
> retroflex, along with /r/ itself.
Hmph. Retroflex was indeed what I had gathered when reading the descriptions a long
time, when I never thought of learning Swedish, let alone at Univeristy. When I
came here, however, I tried to make those _rt_'s and sundry retroflex, but it
appeared it's not quite the thing. At least on those tapes, and in the
pronunciation of both our teachers (one of whom is from Uppsala anyway). And
also, I don't think the _r_ is retroflex, as it is (to my, admittedly not very
musical, ears) a trill - a weaker one than, say in Russia, but a trill, and I
can't make a retroflex trill... I can't do a normal apical one, for that
matter, but I nevertheless think it's difficult

> Uvualr /r/ isn't uncommon, tho' people who use it
> often have
> pure dentals for /rt/, /rd/ etc (a trait better not acquired
> by a L2 speaker in my mind - it sounds very dialectal).
The point. Of course, if one has an uvular _r_, one can't assimilate it into the
(dorsal?) dentals, since they're completely different then. We're told this
uvular _r_ along with lack of assimilation is a feature of the southern
dialects way down in Skåne, and are told not imitate it. That's exactly why IO
said it was misleading.

(come to think of it, Swedish is (or rather will be, I rather hope) at best my L3, no? :-)

> >Finns det folk som studerar ocksе svenska hдr, I wonder? :-)
> (hur sдger
> >man 'I wonder' pе svenska? ;-))
>
> Literally, _jag undrar_. If used as a tag question like that, syntax'd
> switch to _undrar jag_, altho' I wouldn't normally use such a
> construction at all (not that its wrong, tho').
What would one use in a similar situation then? The Russians would simply put a
word like 'interesno' (interesting) or 'xotel(a) by ja znat'' (I would like to
know) as a tag.

> And _studerar_ should switch place with _också_.
Tack. I think I get the hang of it, but still sometimes funny things turn up.
Mastering V2 was pretty simple, since I had learnt German (while most of our
group haven't), and I think I've got my head round to placing _inte_, but the
rest of the syntax remains pretty much obscure, you never known how many words
you need to put between the VS and the end, and in what order.

Hej då,
Pavel
--
Pavel Iosad               pavel_iosad@mail.ru

Is mall a mharcaicheas am fear a bheachdaicheas
                 --Scottish proverb