daisy: "
... (but that's much like the U.S. too, where the Northern and Southern accents are very different)."
In Sweden, traditionally, there was more to it than merely accent. People from different provinces could not understand each other's "languages". They had to speak standard swedish instead, and that's how standard swedish was formed as we know it today. (Even though the upper class had their own standard based on low german and danish which probably has affected the standardised pronunciation as well.) Today it is more like the situation in USA, i.e. the difference between how people speak in different parts of Sweden is mainly a matter of accent.
(In some parts of Sweden we still speak the local language though, like in Jamtland which is the oldest continuously existing democracy. See an earlier post in this thread for a sample of the local language using normalised spelling.)
daisy: "
So you see the connection... "
Yes, this connection between
vårfru 'virgin' and
våffla 'waffle' I explained in my post. The only connection is that these words were pronunced the same in the northern dialects, at least in compounds like
vårfrudagen/
våffeldagen. Due to this confusion, people started to eat waffles (!) to honour virgin Mary.
I hope she feels honoured.
daisy: "
Lussibrud is actually translated as "St. Lucy bride," when young Swedish girls dress up as St. Lucy (white dress, red sash, wreath with candles on her head) and serves her parents breakfast in bed. Therefore, how would Lussibrud be spelled phonetically, please? Lussebrud = LYSS-se-BRY:HD, as Quaanaaq has it?"
OK, now I get what you mean. But it should be
lussebrud with an
e, not
i. This Lussebrud tradition came to my province some time after the second world war (in the 1940's), and as far as I know we call her
Santa Lucia or even merely
Lucia. In southwestern Sweden were this tradition was invented in the medieval times, she may traditionally have been called
lussebrud, but this word doesn't exist all over the country. I think that the lussebrud/Lucia tradition spread outside southwestern Sweden in the 19th century, and in mid 20th century it turned into a nationwide tradition.
This is how
lussebrud would be pronunced in fairly standardised pronunciation: LUCE-seh-BREW-d (the final 'd' is almost as soft as an english 'th' in 'they'). I have put up a recording at
http://www.geocities.com/jepe2503/lussebrud.wav
If the link doesn't work (due to some stupid Geocities flaw) then copy and paste it into the URL field in your browser![/i]
United States (United States)
Sweden (Sverige)
Georgia (საქართველო)
