Re: Messy Desks (was: Fluency in one's language, and the ROE)

At 20:14 09.4.2000 +0300, Dan Sulani wrote:

> >Om ett rörigt skrivbord tyder på ett rörigt intellekt, vad tyder då ett
> >tomt skrivbord på?
>
>I _like_  it! I already have a "waiting-list"  of people
>I'd like to tell it to!  :-)
>
>Might we also have a phonemic transcription for those of us
>who don't know Swedish, but who would like to attempt to quote
>it in the original anyway?
OK, here goes a phone*ic transcription:

[Om et "rø:rit "skri:vbu:rd "ty:d@r 'po: et "rø:rit 'inte"lekt, va "ty:d@r
'do: et "tumt "skri:vbu:rd 'po:?]

y = high front rounded, often diphthongized to [yj] when long.
ö [ø] = high mid front rounded.
" = primary stress.
' = secondary stress.

NB Swedish is syllable-timed, i.e. each syllable takes about the same time
to speak, whereas English is stress-timed, i.e. all stresses are about
equally distributed in time.  If you imagine a tune half-way between German
and Italian you get about right! :-)

For the etymologically inclined:

rörig(t): cf. German (um)rühren.
tyder (pres. of tyda) cf. German deuten.
på is actually cognate to English "upon"! In formal style _uppå_ was still
found not so long ago (e.g. the 1917 Bible.)
då is of course "then"!




/BP

 B.Philip Jonsson  <mailto:bpj@...>bpj@netg.se
<mailto:melroch@...>melroch@my-deja.com
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