Re: Estonian Swedish

From: tgpedersen
Message: 39740
Date: 2005-08-24

>
> I think it was going on in all the dialects in Denmark (but I
might
> be wrong) plus in the standard language (the spellings (s)kie-/
> (s)kje, (s)kiø-/(s)kjø- etc for present (s)ke-, (s)kø-). Today
only
> the peripheral dialects of Bornholm and Vendsyssel have palatal
> stops.

I checked up on Brøndum-Nielsen and discovered palatalised dorsals
were much more wide spread before. Only Sjælland had /k/, /g/ in
Anlaut.

It also occurred to me that since the development ON 'gørDa' "did"
> 'gjorde' makes sense as a regularisation only in a dialect that
pronounced at least /ky/, /gy/ before front vowels. Estonian Swedish
had /gy/ in 'gjorde', but plain /g/ otherwise. That means that that
dialect must have de-palatised /ky/, /gy/, like Danish did.


Further I checked Wimmer: "Oldnordisk Formlære". It turned out Old
Norse pronouced /ky/, /gy/ before front vowel!

Which means Sjællandsk and Estonian Swedish have both de-
patalatalised. The dynasty under which Estonia was conquered was
based on Scania and Sjælland. Seems I can forget the idea of later
German influence being the cause of depalatalisation.


Torsten