Re: Swedish alphabet [was: Re: Spanish alphabet]

At 01:55 +0200 26.9.1999, Daniel Andreasson wrote:
>Matt wrote:
>
>> Swedish alphabetises "v" and "w" as different versions of the same letter=
=2E
>> This is not a problem when it comes to dictionaries, since so few Swedish
>> words begin with "w" ("whiskey" is the only one I can think of), but it's
>> damn disconcerting when you're trying to look up proper names in the phon=
e
>> book, or in a library card catalogue.
>
>Well, there is, "wigwam" and some "wiener-" words (like
>"wienerbr=9Ad", "wienklassicism" and "wienerschnitzel"). There's also
>"whist" (the card game), "wellpapp" and "walesare" and some more,
>but as you can see, all of them are borrowings.
>
>On the other hand, there are lots of Swedish surnames beginning with
>{w} (pronounced /v/) (Winberg, Werner, Waldenstr=9Am, etc) so I don't
>really understand why we count them as the same letter.
On the one hand the same surnames are also spelled with V by some people,
but OTOH there are a lot of fancy with archaizing or foreignizing
spellings, so that you have to look in different places for them, so at the
end I agree with Daniel and Matt that treating W separately at least in
phone books and library catalogs, with pointers between variant spellings,
would probably be a good thing, especially in view of the many many English
and German authors listed in our library catalogs.

BTW: does anyone know how Polish, which doesn't use V in its orthography,
alphabetizes it?

BTW 2: when writing in Swedish I avoid "Wales", "walesare", "walesisk" --
because their half-English half-Swedish pronunciation mix annoys me -- and
use "Kymrien", "kymrer", "kymrisk".  Those who don't understand could
always look in a dictionary, where at least "kymrisk" should be found, or
are welcome to mail me!

Come to it people do not only pronounce "worcesters=8Cs" completely wrong --
I would almost prefer the spelling _vusters=8Cs_! --, they also say "whist",
"whisky" and "watt" with [v], altho Swedish has [w] as an allophone of [u],
so that most people are able to pronounce it.

BTW 3: _whisky_ ought to be _uisce_, since it is not English, but Gaelic! :-=
)


/BP

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  B.Philip Jonsson  <bpj@...> <melroch@...>

        Solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant!
                                            (Tacitus)