Re: A dialogue in Old Urianian.

Hi Henrik

On 23/02/07, Henrik Theiling <theiling@...> wrote:
>
>
>
> Sorry about my question, I am not an expert of Finno-Ugric langs, but
> I thought that standard Finnish orthography preserves {d} because
> there are some dialects that still pronounce it /D/.  Most dialects, I
> thought, just do not pronounce the {d} graphemes, but some do.  If
> this /D/ is the PU /D/, this would contradict that only Sami preserved
> it.  OTOH, I suppose this would be too obvious a contradiction for you
> to overlook, right?  Or is this phenomenon of those Finnish
> dialects Sami influence?

Finnish does indeed "have" a "D", but the Finnish national standard language
is a somewhat artificial language which is a compromise between various
dialects; in the "standard language" "d" is pronounced more or less as "d"
but this is an invention based on/borrowing from Swedish - as far as I know,
no native dialect has a "d", pronouncing the sound denoted by "d" variously
as "r", "j", "T", or other ways.

As an aside, Vaino Linna used 'the pronunciation of "d" as "d"' to indicate
harsh command language in the most famous Finnish novel (except perhaps the
Kalevala, which isn't really a novel though), his Tuntematon Sotilas/The
Unknown Soldier.

Jeff