Re: Swedish Chinese

At 21:52 2.2.2004, Pavel Iosad wrote:

> > While spelling pronunciations are fairly widespread in Modern
> > Swedish (as BP complains about now and then), I doubt they're able to
> > introduce new phones.
>
>What are they? I only know about [ok].
Rather make that ["ok3\]...

>  Well, unless you count the
>[u]-or-whatever in [kvIn:ur] as a spelling pronunciation (which it,
>AFAIU, historically is)
_Att, av, och_ all used to be /o/, _till_ used to be /ti/ or /te/,
_vid_ (prep.) /ve/ etc.
<rant> but the worst by far is the _-ade_ verb
preterite, which historically was only [a].  In fact most final
and intervocalic _d g_ were historically [D G] and were subsequently
lost, so the pronunciation of [d g] in these cases is strictly a
spelling pronunciation for most lects.  In a way I can't mind people
talking like that, and I surely understand that there is no point in
trying to make them change their pronunciation, but what nags me is
that people regard the *traditional-historical* pronunciation as
*wrong*.  It is a bit as if someone would insist that you must give
unstressed vowels in russian their 'full' sound -- including reversing
the _akanje_ because that is how it's written.  The same goes of course
for looking down on us that have /3\/ for historical short *o (too bad there
is no CXS/XS for explicitly marking a vowel as short!) in words like
_sova, mossa_ which are [s3\:vQ], [m3\s:Q] _sôva, môssa_ for me,
when in fact the /o/ pronunciation arose under foreign influence
(lots of immigrant Germans in late medieval Stockholm who couldn't
pronounce the proper sound).  Another thing is the ridicule directed
at those who preserve a distinct feminine gender.  All those 'modern'
pronunciations are actually a middle-class phenomenon.  Traditionally
both peasants and nobility both spoke far more conservative-traditional
lects.  NB I'm not ridiculing those who use spelling pronunciations,
since most of them now living learnt them from their elders and grew up
with them, but they certainly have no business looking down on those
who speak differently from them!
</rant>


/BP 8^)
--
B.Philip Jonsson mailto:melrochX@melroch.se (delete X)
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