Re: Swedish Phonetics

--- In cybalist@..., Harald Hammarstrom <haha2581@...> wrote:

> 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

I read in "Sydsvenskan" that the retroflex n, d, and s (not quite sh,
but close) after -r- in uppsvensk (Swedish north of Småland) is
spreading in the dialect in Skåne. It seems to me retroflex vs. non-
retroflex pronounciation has become a shibboleth between Stockholm
and Skåne pronuciation. In that situation you might expect the
Stockholm dialect to develop hypercorrections, ie. retroflex s in
similar enviroments, eg. after -n-. Especially women have a general
tendency to choose the non-dialect (in this case the presumed
uppsvensk) pronounciation.
Another hypercorrection in Swedish that is spreading is final -a
where -e is correct, ie. "timma" for timme". I suppose this is also
the result of a shibboleth Stockholm -a/dialect -e (Småland, Gotland,
and behind all this (oh horror!) Danish).
But I might be wrong.

Torsten