Re: Future Swedish (was: Re: Japanese English)

At 10:22 28.3.2000 +0900, Adrian Morgan wrote:
> > Apart from the problem of gender and irregular
> > plural formation, morphology was a snap.  And
> > the word order presents few surprises and
> > almost no difficulties (unlike German).

Plural formation is not totally irregular, once you know the gender:

Neuters:
-- ending in a vowel normally take -n(a) in the plural (_äpple/äpplen_),
but NB _öga(t),ögon(en)_ and _öra,öron(en)_, which form a subset of two.
--ending in a consonant usually don't have a special indefinite plural
(_hus,hus_), but NB the definite forms differ (_huset,husen_).

Non-neuters:
-- ending in -a usually take -or (na) in the plural.  The -or is pronounced
[@r], except by pedants (but as schoolteachers belong to that class the
reading pronunciation is on the rise... :-/)
-- ending in -e usually take -ar(na).
-- ending in a consonant usually take -ar(na), though quite a few take -er(na).
-- of Latin/Greek/French origin usually take -er(na).  NB latinate words in
-or shift the stress: _mótor(n),motórer(na)_ (accents not part of standard
orthography in these words!

So the only plurals you have to learn by heart are those not belonging to
any of the above groups, mostly native and German words with a plural in
-er(na).  When speaking with an English accent it's quite safe to use [@r]
for all -r plurals, since that is found in quite a few regional accents.

As for difficult sounds: it is Ok to pronounce _y_ as [Yj] and _u_ as
[Yw].  When speaking with an English accent _y_ = [@j], _u_ =[@w] and _ö_
=[@] is more than people expect of you!  For /S/ either [S] or [x] and for
/C/ [tS] is acceptable.  *Hearing* the /S/--/C/ distinction may be another
matter...
/BP

"Doubt grows with knowledge" -Goethe