Re: [tied] Swedish Phonetics

I can't give a good answer to your first question. It may be just one of those phonetic drifts that happen without an apparent cause.

"Snob" is sometimes supposed to stand for abbreviated "sine nobilitate" (= "sans noblesse" -- s.nob. in either case) in university registers, but this is probably a folk etymology; at any rate it seems unsubstantiated -- nobody has actually seen those legendary registers. The word comes from 18th-century student slang at Cambridge; it referred to benighted townspeople as opposed to enlightened students and academics (town vs. gown). Some sources say it was a local slangy word for "cobbler". The present meaning evolved in the course of the early 19th century.

Piotr

----- Original Message -----

From: Harald Hammarstrom

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Wednesday, January 31, 2001 12:27 PM

Subject: [tied] Swedish Phonetics

To Piotr & other experts on Swedish phonetics, I've recently heard my girlfriend and others pronounce "nånstans" (somewhere) as "nånstansch" i.e with /-nsh/ and not /-ns/ at the end. The same goes for other words like "förräns" vulgar av förrän meaning until) pronounced /förnsh/. I suppose this is an analogy from somewhere but I can't figure out where. Any ideas on how it arose ? Not that there has to be a specific reasons for it, just wondering. She also claims the english word snob is a contraction of French sans noblesse from a title tag worn by people without noblety. Can anyone confirm or deny this ? thanks in advance, Harald