Re: Swedish Chinese

Quoting Benct Philip Jonsson <bpj@...>:

> At 11:44 2.2.2004, Tristan McLeay wrote:
>
> >It has been mentioned in jest that Swedish is really a dialect of Chinese
> >masquerading as a Germanic language... What is the basis for all of this?
> >I think one point was some dialects pronouncing /i/ as [z]..?
>
> That, and the lexical tones.  NB that while in Chinese it is
> the syllable which carries the tone in SE/NO it is the lexical
> word.  BTW those very same dialects who have [z=] for long /i/
> have [z_O=] for long /y/ and [z_w=] for long /8/! :)
In addition there's supposed to be a Chinese 2nd person pronoun sounding much
like Swedish _ni_ "you" (pl and, obsoletishly, polite sg). Any sinophone to
remind me of the details?

                                                 Andreas

PS It's only after joining this list that I've become able to distinguish the
Swedish lexical tone with well over 50% accuracy. During the same period, my
idiolect has seen a sharp increase in the use of the subjunctive (probably
related to learning German), and demerged /l/ and /rl/ (used both to be [l_d] -
 now [l_d] and [l`]). The later rather annoys me - dead distinctions should
stay dead! Not enough to make me take the trouble to actively stamp it out
again, however.

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