Re: tlhn'ks't, ngghlyam'ft, and other scary words

Daniel Andreasson wrote:
>
> Well, in Swedish, this is because if the vowel is short, then the
> consonant is long and vice versa. Examples:
>
> vit /vi:t/
> vitt /vIt:/
>
> If you add a vowel, the length of the consonant stays the same.
>
> vita /vi:ta/
> vitta /vIt:a/ (not that _vitta_ means anything.)
>
> So consonant length is just as phonemic as vowel length in
> Swedish, that is, not at all. You have long and short vowels
> and consonants, but if you have one you can't have the other.
Yes, I see that.  If two features always co-occur, then one or the other
need not be called "phonemic", at least in the Classical Phonemic view.

I guess what I was after was:  what happens _phonetically_?  If the |tt| is
just a spelling convention, I was thinking  you could have--
|vit ~vita| = [vi:t] ~[vi:ta]
|vitt ~*vitta| = [vIt] ~[vIta]
like the comparable situation in German/Dutch. But I get the impression that
the Swedish |tt| is actually lengthened.  Even in the monosyllabic form???

It's not unlike Engl.|bit| /bit/ [bIt] vs. |bid| /bid/ [bI:d] --predictable
short/long (and some would claim |bid| is [bI:t]-- but not I, since  I'm
sure it can be shown instrumentally that the final stop there is semi-voiced
(begins vd., ends vl.).
(Remember: my Engl. phonemics says /i/ for [I], /iy/ for [i])

Or, the Engl. spelling convention:
mat:  matted   vs. mate:  mated (which our schoolmarms call short vs. long
"a"-- wrong phonetically, but that's what we're taught..., though I think
correct historically (short a vs. long a in OE).  (I suspect I'm
rambling......)
>
> I'm not quite sure what you're after, Roger, but I hope at least
> I'm answering *something*. :)
>
Ahem.  Well, keep in mind that I know close-to-ZERO about Swedish (except of
course what I'm learning here)....:-)  (Personally, based on exposure to
Bergman(n?)'s films, I think it's a beautiful and quite elegant language)