Moderator:Johanna
Woods wrote:it has invented its own spelling for words that are written the same way in almost every other language (byrå, essä, restaurang and god knows what else…)
linguoboy wrote:Woods wrote:it has invented its own spelling for words that are written the same way in almost every other language (byrå, essä, restaurang and god knows what else…)
I love this about Swedish! It was a beautiful epiphany when it finally dawned on me that poäng is just a nativised spelling of point.
Woods wrote:I speak Danish they don’t get a word from what I’m saying.
linguoboy wrote:Woods wrote:it has invented its own spelling for words that are written the same way in almost every other language (byrå, essä, restaurang and god knows what else…)
I love this about Swedish! It was a beautiful epiphany when it finally dawned on me that poäng is just a nativised spelling of point.
Woods wrote:speaking Danish to the (Swedish-speaking) Finns definitely does not work!
Woods wrote:I asked the University of Helsinki if I could sit an exam in Swedish and write my answers in Danish.
Woods wrote:there’s ä all over the place (including in places where it’s not needed – i.e. before a double consonant which makes it 100 % certain it’s the same sound, even if you write an e like everybody else
Johanna wrote:I find it very ironic that a native speaker of Bulgarian gives the entire Swedish language lessons on spelling.
Johanna wrote:You should never have to know five other languages in order to know how to spell one!
linguoboy wrote:I have to say, as someone who finds Danish completely incomprehensible in any form, it gives me no end of amusement to hear that held up as the model that other Scandinavian languages should aspire to.
Car wrote: Oh yeah, German actually spells it Büro, but unlike in Norwegian or Swedish, adapting spellings isn't really done any more (they tried it during the last spelling reform, but those spellings didn't find many users).
Naava wrote:Woods wrote:speaking Danish to the (Swedish-speaking) Finns definitely does not work!
:rotfl: What made you think it would work? (I'm not laughing at you btw! I'm just trying to picture a situation where the Swedish speakers are trying to understand what you say - they must've been so surprised. I don't think many speak Danish here.)
Naava wrote:Are you planning to study in Swedish?
Naava wrote:Woods wrote:there’s ä all over the place (including in places where it’s not needed – i.e. before a double consonant which makes it 100 % certain it’s the same sound, even if you write an e like everybody else
I've been wondering about the same thing. Is it because of some historical reasons? Were <e> and <ä> pronounced differently earlier?
Woods wrote:Johanna wrote:You should never have to know five other languages in order to know how to spell one!
It's strange to hear that from a language enthusiast on UniLang, speaking, or having learnt or tried to learn eight languages!
Well, it's not about knowing five other languages. You should only know what the word you're using means and where it comes from. If you keep the French spelling, it looks fancy and you know it's French. If you change it – you no longer know where the word comes from and something is lost. And you still have to learn the other spelling – so either way you have to learn how to write the word, you just learn to write it one way or another – what's the difference?
Woods wrote:But I still prefer it only because of the writing – because I think writing is more important than speaking and it’s what carries language through time – if you change it too much, something is lost and you’re left with less of a language!
Woods wrote:Of course this kind of reforms wouldn’t find any users – Germans love foreign words and foreign languages and German is the place where these words are not only written like they are in their native languages, but also pronounced the same way. “Restaurant” is pronounced in German the same way as in French – even though the sound /ã/ doesn’t exist in German or any of its dialects (as far as I know). I think that’s awesome – and it sets every German child better off for learning French one day, if they wish so!
linguoboy wrote:If you think everyone speaks normative Standard German as its represented in your instructional materials, you're in for a real surprise when you start talking to people on the street! It is very common for German speakers to substitute [aŋ] or even [ɔŋ] for /ã/. I lived in a town only 20 km from the French border and learned to speak a variety with more French loans than the standard language (e.g. Trottoir, partu) and believe me, not everyone there pronounces these words "the same way as in French". Not but a long shot!
Car wrote:Yes, and what's worse, people actually get mocked if they don't pronounce them the "proper" way. People use the "correct" pronunciation (e.g. the French one) to look down on people who aren't as educated as them. Or rather, if you adapt the pronunciation, people are quite likely to see you as less educated and react accordingly.
Linguoboy wrote:Do you really think English spelling should be the model for the world?
Linguoboy wrote:Honestly, sometimes I wish we respelled more words in English. Then I wouldn't have to grit my teeth every time I heard someone pronounce bruschetta with /ʃ/.
linguoboy wrote:Woods wrote:Well, it's not about knowing five other languages. You should only know what the word you're using means and where it comes from. If you keep the French spelling, it looks fancy and you know it's French. If you change it – you no longer know where the word comes from and something is lost. And you still have to learn the other spelling – so either way you have to learn how to write the word, you just learn to write it one way or another – what's the difference?
I'm really not sure what the point is you're making here. Most speakers of Swedish do not learn French. So they only ever have to learn one spelling.
Woods wrote:Johanna is even telling me that I'm not allowed to have an opinion about it, because I'm not as used to this spelling as she is, and who am I to have an opinion about it, if Swedish is not even my native language.
Woods wrote:I really don’t see the point in introducing the word “changera” into Swedish in the first place. In Bulgarian, which I doubt any of you cares about, I see this every day. Journalists use French, German and in this day and age predominantly English words for concepts which were already named and established probably before even English came into existence!
Woods wrote:So I think using foreign words when you can use native ones is not always good.
Woods wrote:Because at the end, what are we all going to speak – the exact same language?
Woods wrote:Linguoboy wrote:Do you really think English spelling should be the model for the world?
English has done a pretty good job.
Woods wrote:Linguoboy wrote:Honestly, sometimes I wish we respelled more words in English. Then I wouldn't have to grit my teeth every time I heard someone pronounce bruschetta with /ʃ/.
How are you gonna spell it – broskätta?
Woods wrote:Could you not find somewhere in English or Swedish some other way of saying “a piece of bread with some stuff on top of it”?
Woods wrote:And how am I going to decipher what this word means and where it comes from, without opening some huge dictionary and doing a lot of work?
Woods wrote:I was saying that if they have to learn one spelling, it might as well be “bureau” instead of “byrå.” Maybe it will not make that much sense right away, but it will make much more sense in the long run.
Woods wrote:Indeed, just look at the irony: every scholar in Sweden is required to have English as their first foreign language.
Woods wrote:Which means that they will have to learn the historically correct spelling anyway, no matter if they want it or not.
Woods wrote:This being said, I am not against some mild, very consistent changes in orthography, which align foreign vocabulary with the spelling of the language, while at the same time preserving the root of the word. Like in English we write “community” instead of “communauté,” “reality” instead of “realité” and so on. But we don’t write “biewrau” instead of “bureau” or “leftenant” instead of “lieutenant,” because that wouldn’t make any sense!
Woods wrote:And if we change the spelling every ten years, what are we going to do with all the books that have been printed decades and centuries ago – burn them and rewrite everything?
Well, one of them just looked at me seriously and said “Do not ever talk to me like that!”
Well, I would study in whatever language I can – and since learning Finnish takes forever, I would rather try in Swedish as a way to get in more quickly...
if I write -ar instead of -er or -er instead of -ar as a plural, I don’t know what they’ll do – do you think they will not recognise my answers because of the “typos,” or ask me to sit an additional exam in Swedish?
after all, Swedish is one of three versions of the same language.
And it’s supposed to be accepted the same way as Danish by institutions in all Scandinavian countries and also Finland.
if I’ve chosen the other standard for my writing, because it fits me better, then what’s the problem?
To me it looks more like they wanted to be different, rather than keeping the writing the way it was and like the other ones still are. But I don’t know – let the Swedish speakers tell.
Woods wrote: Maybe I’m just too arrogant to think that Swedish is part of the whole world’s cultural heritage and it should not be regarded as a mere property of the Swedes?
Naava wrote:If you already know Danish, Swedish shouldn't be too hard to learn. At least Danish will help you more with Swedish than with Finnish.
Naava wrote:I don't think anyone's gonna care if you make a mistake. I study in English and I still make mistakes with articles and prepositions, but it hasn't had any effect in my grades.
Naava wrote:If you make many mistakes, they might recommend you to take some extra Swedish lessons to make sure you can study in the language.
Naava wrote:It's the same problem as in if you were asked to write your answers in English, but you decided to use Dutch. Wrong language.
Naava wrote:Woods wrote:And it’s supposed to be accepted the same way as Danish by institutions in all Scandinavian countries and also Finland.
Really? I've never heard of this. Where did you find this?
Naava wrote:Woods wrote:after all, Swedish is one of three versions of the same language.
No, it's not. It's one of the three languages that are closely related.
Naava wrote:Btw, since you don't seem to think it'd be a problem if you used Danish instead of Swedish - do you know if you could do that in Bulgaria? Would Bulgarian universities accept exams written in other Slavic languages even if the exam was in Bulgarian?
Naava wrote:Woods wrote:Maybe I’m just too arrogant to think that Swedish is part of the whole world’s cultural heritage and it should not be regarded as a mere property of the Swedes?
What? Do you think that everyone has equal rights to every language in the world, too?
Woods wrote:- there are not two, but ten different plural endings
- the past participle (the form used to make the perfect) has not one, but three different forms
- the present verb ending can be either -er or -ar (and how in this world am I supposed to know which one to use?)
And then there’s the writing…
- there’s ä all over the place (including in places where it’s not needed – i.e. before a double consonant which makes it 100 % certain it’s the same sound, even if you write an e like everybody else
- the doubling of consonants at the end of the words makes it harder to recognise words we otherwise know very well from other languages;
and the worst of all:
- it has invented its own spelling for words that are written the same way in almost every other language (byrå, essä, restaurang and god knows what else…)
hashi wrote:Woods wrote:and the worst of all:
- it has invented its own spelling for words that are written the same way in almost every other language (byrå, essä, restaurang and god knows what else…)
[...]
The point about loanwords is the same - some languages will just copy the word in its entirety (whether or not its pronounced the same is another issue), but others will adapt it (sometimes in a seemingly odd way) like Swedish does. It's just what language does and Swedish is no exception lol.
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