Re: Saying "Thank you."

At 19:18 2001-08-26 +0000, Lars Henrik Mathiesen wrote:

>In fact, I think it is Swedish that has defricativization of
>intervocalic [D] --- compare Icelandic faþir ["faDir], Swedish fader
>["fAdEr], Danish fader ["f{DQ], if I got that right.
No, Swedish lost /D/ and /Q/, i.e. they merged with zero,
_fadher_ [fA:D@r] becoming [fA:r] (also spelled _far_),
_godh_ [gu:D] > [gu:],
_dagh_ [dA:Q] > [dA:]
and so on.

Later (19th century) pedantic middle-class pronunciation "reintroduced"
plosive [d] and [g] from the spelling, where the _h_ of the old digraphs
_dh_ and _gh_ had (alas!) meanwhile been dropped.  At the end of the 19th
century an educationalist wrote that "to write as one speaks is uneducated,
and to speak as one writes is half-educated."  As an enduring monument to
the Swedes' sheep mentality and willing surrender to real and imagined
authorities -- in this case the belief that spelling should determine
correct pronunciation rather than the other way around -- half-education
won the day...  Cf. Norwegian where the last letter of _god_ amd _dag_
still is silent.



/BP 8^)>
--
B.Philip Jonsson mailto:bpX@netg.se (delete X)
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