Re: s-stems in Slavic and Germanic

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott" <BMScott@...> wrote:

>
> At 2:32:04 PM on Sunday, February 15, 2009, Andrew Jarrette
> wrote:
>
> > I forgot to say that I lied when I said I've never heard
> > Danish: I forgot that I did watch a Danish film with
> > English subtitles about eight years ago entitled "Babettes
> > Gæstesbud" or the like ("Babette's Feast"). I don't
> > remember much except that there was a very beautiful
> > redheaded Danish woman in it, the feast consisted of
> > turtle soup, and they made ølebrød. I don't remember much
> > about how Danish sounded, it sounded pretty "normal" as
> > far as foreign languages go, i.e. not very distinctive
> > like Swedish; but I do strongly remember that "ølebrød"
> > sounded more like "ølebrøl" to me. I know that <d> in this
> > position is pronounced [ð] in Danish, but it didn't sound
> > like an English [ð] to me, it sounded like an [l]. What is
> > ølebrød?

Germans are known to hear the the Danish [ð] (which is more in the
sloppy direction of a Spanish [ð]) as an [l]. Our phonetics professor,
Eli Fischer-Jørgensen told us a story of two Danish linguists who were
used (with others) as informant guinea pigs for a demonstration by
some field linguist at a conference in Australia: he would hold up an
object, they would answer the name of that in their language, he would
write it on the blackboard.
So:
[one leaf], they: blad [blað], he: 'blal'
[two leaves], they: blade [bläð&], he: 'blalv&'
So much for fieldwork.

About the movie: in the few clips I've seen of it the two women speak
Rigsdansk, which is totally unbelievable given the setting of the
movie, they would have spoken Vestjysk, so that no one outside Western
Jutland would understand a word.

> Presumably <øllebrød>, literally 'beer-bread', which my
> dictionary describes as a 'dish made of bread, sugar, and
> non-alcoholic beer'. See (among many others)
> <http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cookbook:%C3%98llebr%C3%B8d>,
> <http://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%98llebr%C3%B8d>, and
> <http://bjoernsblog.smartlog.dk/old-school--llebr-d-post120613>
> ('Øllebrød er som skabt til november: mørk, varm, sød og
> nærende, og den er både nem og billig at lave').

My maternal grandmother saved breadcrumbs as described and served
øllebrød about once a week. It's delicious with whipped cream, but I
suppose it would take some getting used to for foreigners. These days
it comes out of cardboard box, for those who still savor it, but it's
going out of use.
Risengrød
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice_pudding
is something I served with success travelling in the States. People
got up at night to empty the pot.


Torsten