Diskussionstråd / Discussion and Minor Questions

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Johanna
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Re: Diskussionstråd / Discussion and Minor Questions

Postby Johanna » 2018-11-14, 23:23

SomehowGeekyPolyglot wrote:Some compare the non-phonetic spelling of Swedish to the non-phonetic spelling of French.
Is this a bit of a stretch (i.e. an exaggeration), or is that comparison rather straight-forward?

I'm gonna tackle this first since I'm tired and this is a much shorter thing to answer than your previous post.

I would say that it's much easier to learn how to deduce the pronunciation of a word from written Standard French than written Standard Swedish, but if you do it the other way around, it's a bit less difficult to guess the correct spelling from the pronunciation when dealing with Standard Swedish rather than Standard French.

Or at least that was the case until Standard Swedish started to be overtaken by spelling pronunciations, but it has honestly only added to the complexity. Some speakers have gone down this rabbit hole, others haven't, and even among the first group there are certain words that sound oddly pedantic if you pronounce them as written in normal speech.

Standard Swedish is also sort of based on the Västerås dialect of the 16th century, although it wasn't truly standardized until three centuries later and underwent a massive spelling reform in the early 20th century. The thing is, some traditions die hard and that spelling reform didn't care much for etymology... At the same time, the Modern French orthography was designed to be at least semi-etymological while balancing the pronunciation of the standard variety.

Long story short, it's not really an exaggeration or straight-forward, the situation is just different.
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Re: Diskussionstråd / Discussion and Minor Questions

Postby linguoboy » 2018-11-15, 20:13

Honestly, I don't think Swedish is that bad, so I must be missing something. The greatest single complication seems to be orthographic <o>, which covers four different phonemes. (I'm not learning a variety which distinguishes /ɛ/ and /e/.) Even here there's a useful rule of thumb which covers the majority of cases.

Personal pronouns are a mess, but they form a small closed set. Otherwise it seems to be just the occasional silent <d> (and even more occasional silent <g>).
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Re: Diskussionstråd / Discussion and Minor Questions

Postby Jurgen Wullenwever » 2019-01-19, 21:08

SomehowGeekyPolyglot wrote:Some compare the non-phonetic spelling of Swedish to the non-phonetic spelling of French.
Is this a bit of a stretch (i.e. an exaggeration), or is that comparison rather straight-forward?
Johanna wrote:Long story short, it's not really an exaggeration or straight-forward, the situation is just different.
linguoboy wrote:Honestly, I don't think Swedish is that bad, so I must be missing something. The greatest single complication seems to be orthographic <o>, which covers four different phonemes. (I'm not learning a variety which distinguishes /ɛ/ and /e/.) Even here there's a useful rule of thumb which covers the majority of cases.

Personal pronouns are a mess, but they form a small closed set. Otherwise it seems to be just the occasional silent <d> (and even more occasional silent <g>).

You are both right and wrong. The spelling is both simple and very complicated in relation to natural speech, sort of like Norn Iron for Northern Ireland. Swedish pronunciation is often very slurred. For the vowels I once counted thirty graphophonemic relations between nine letters and twelve sounds. Some consonants are silent, others are pronounced in another way, but when the official view supports spelling-pronunciations, the connection to reality is a bit lacking in clarity.
Chekhov wrote:I don't know about naive worldviews, but Jurgen Wullenwhatever pisses me off to no end because of his extreme pessimism and cynicism. You'd think the world was going to end imminently when talking to that guy.

Jag är rebell: jag sockrar teet, saltar maten, cyklar utan hjälm, och tänder glödlampor.
(Ovanstående var förut, nu försöker jag minska sockret och saltet, och har gett upp mejeriprodukter.)

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Re: Diskussionstråd / Discussion and Minor Questions

Postby yellow hoist » 2019-03-19, 18:36

Why: "Han är kock." not "Han är en kock."

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Re: Diskussionstråd / Discussion and Minor Questions

Postby linguoboy » 2019-03-19, 19:27

yellow hoist wrote:Why: "Han är kock." not "Han är en kock."

Convention.

Really, there's no "why". It's just that Swedish and other Germanic languages (including German but not English) don't use indefinite articles before predicate nouns indicating occupation, religion, nationality, etc.:

Jag är ingenjör.
Han är muslim.
Är du vegetarian?

This is a widespread SAE (Standard Average European) feature. Compare Spanish:

Soy ingeniero.
Él es musulmán.
¿Eres vegetariano?
"Richmond is a real scholar; Owen just learns languages because he can't bear not to know what other people are saying."--Margaret Lattimore on her two sons

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Re: Diskussionstråd / Discussion and Minor Questions

Postby Johanna » 2019-03-20, 0:06

What linguoboy said.

It may change in a few decades though, you can hear people of my generation (born in the 1980's) and younger doing it the English way in speech sometimes. The most common victim is occupations.
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Re: Sammansatta ord som får annat genus

Postby hembygdsfanatiker » 2019-10-30, 16:22

Säger man en hemygdsfanatiker eller ett hembygdsfanatiker och isåfall varför?

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Re: Sammansatta ord som får annat genus

Postby Johanna » 2019-11-03, 15:35

hembygdsfanatiker wrote:Säger man en hemygdsfanatiker eller ett hembygdsfanatiker och isåfall varför?

Man säger "en hembygdsfanatiker", för att "fanatiker är utrum. Det är det normala, att sammansatta ords genus tar efter sista ledet.
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Re: Diskussionstråd / Discussion and Minor Questions

Postby Gormur » 2020-06-25, 2:24

Norsk: Jeg lurer på om svensk talespråk har stumme bokstaver i noen tilfeller. På forhånd takk :)
Eigi gegnir þat at segja at bók nøkkur er hreinferðug eðr ønnur spelluð því at vandliga ok dáliga eru bœkr ritnar ok annat kunnum vér eigi um þœr at dœma

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Re: Diskussionstråd / Discussion and Minor Questions

Postby Jurgen Wullenwever » 2020-07-27, 14:53

Gormur wrote:Norsk: Jeg lurer på om svensk talespråk har stumme bokstaver i noen tilfeller. På forhånd takk :)

Jämfört med skriften så är det många bokstäver som inte uttalas.
Chekhov wrote:I don't know about naive worldviews, but Jurgen Wullenwhatever pisses me off to no end because of his extreme pessimism and cynicism. You'd think the world was going to end imminently when talking to that guy.

Jag är rebell: jag sockrar teet, saltar maten, cyklar utan hjälm, och tänder glödlampor.
(Ovanstående var förut, nu försöker jag minska sockret och saltet, och har gett upp mejeriprodukter.)

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Re: Diskussionstråd / Discussion and Minor Questions

Postby Varislintu » 2021-03-23, 15:11

Jag lånade nyligen barnboken (Halvan) Här kommer helikoptern i biblioteket. Den handlar om ett räddningsuppdrag där de räddar en tjej från fjällen med hjälp av en motoriserad vajervinsch som sitter på helikoptern.

I boken står att de firar ner fjällräddaren med vinchen till flickan, och att de sedan firar upp henne igen.

Inte kan man väl säga 'fira upp', heter det inte 'hala'? Även om det handlar om en motoriserad vinsch där man inte håller i ett rep eller något sådant?

(Redigerade eftersom jag inte kan stava svenska, tydligen. :blush: )
Last edited by Varislintu on 2021-05-04, 12:54, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Diskussionstråd / Discussion and Minor Questions

Postby Johanna » 2021-04-15, 17:34

Varislintu wrote:Jag lånade nyligen barnboken (Halvan) Här kommer helikoptern i biblioteket. Den handlar om ett räddningsuppdrag där de räddar en tjej från fjällen med hjälp av en motoriserad vajervinch som sitter på helikoptern.

I boken står att de firar ner fjällräddaren med vinchen till flickan, och att de sedan firar upp henne igen.

Inte kan man väl säga 'fira upp', heter det inte 'hala'? Även om det handlar om en motoriserad vinch där man inte håller i ett rep eller något sådant?

Jo, man firar både ner och upp på rikssvenska. (Motsvarigheten till högsvenska för de som inte har koll.)

Man kan säga "hala upp/ner" även när en motoriserad vinsch är involverad, och man kan också säga "vinscha upp/ner". Dock har "hala" mer med fiske och båtar att göra än annat.
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Re: Diskussionstråd / Discussion and Minor Questions

Postby Varislintu » 2021-05-04, 12:52

Johanna wrote:Jo, man firar både ner och upp på rikssvenska. (Motsvarigheten till högsvenska för de som inte har koll.)


Jaså! Jag är faktiskt lite chockad, jag har alltid associerat fira med handrörelsen där man håller i ett rep och, ja, firar ner något. Bra att veta att det inte är så entydigt!

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Re: Diskussionstråd / Discussion and Minor Questions

Postby Johanna » 2021-05-10, 4:28

Varislintu wrote:
Johanna wrote:Jo, man firar både ner och upp på rikssvenska. (Motsvarigheten till högsvenska för de som inte har koll.)


Jaså! Jag är faktiskt lite chockad, jag har alltid associerat fira med handrörelsen där man håller i ett rep och, ja, firar ner något. Bra att veta att det inte är så entydigt!

Och på västgötska blir det annat!
Swedish (sv) native; English (en) good; Norwegian (no) read fluently, understand well, speak badly; Danish (dk) read fluently, understand badly, can't speak; Faroese (fo) read some, understand a bit, speak a few sentences; German (de) French (fr) Spanish (es) forgetting; heritage language.


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