Re: Danish dispalatalisation

>
> [Torsten, 2:] ... The reason we don't find any <skokolaD&> is that

the general uncertainty was between the <sj-> of the dialect that
palatalized and the <sk-> of those that didn't. And no dialect
produced *<sko-> from <sjo-> (On the other hand, Adam Oehlenschlæger
(note the name! Our national composers before Nielsen had names like
Weyse, Heise, Kunzen and Kuhlau), our local Mickiewicz, notes in his
memoirs that some old people in his childhood pronounced <sjorte> and
<sjold> for present <skjorte> "shirt" and <skjold> "shield", which
would tend to corroborate your claim). However, in 19th century low
Copenhagen for <sersjánt> you find <skersánt> "sergeant" (<sersjánt> -

> <sjersjánt> -> <sjersánt> with sj- alternating with sk-.

--- In cybalist@..., "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...> wrote:
> But the fact that the French-derived <sky>, with its unetymological
spelling, was affected suggests that the spelling did play a role. It
often does in cross-dialectal borrowings if the borrowers are
literate. They may not know the exact distribution of the loan-
pronunciation in the donor dialect (which is not their own), so they
will use any clues available to them, also the spelling, to figure it
out. Children trying to switch from a non-rhotic to a rhotic accent
of US English will probably be more likely than adults to rely on
roughly reconstructed sound correspondences, and to use hypercorrect
forms like "guard" for "god" (applying the rule of thumb "non-
rhotic /a(:)/ -> rhotic /ar/") -- the sort of thing that accounts for
your <skersánt> example. Fully literate adults may be more spelling-
conscious and more likely to be guided by generalisations
like "orthographic <r> -> /r/".


Torsten:

The story of the word <sky> "aspic" is one that teachers of Danish
and amateur linguists like to tell their astonished audience. This is
because <sky> "aspic" is homonymous with inherited <sky> "cloud", and
since everyone at one time in their lives have been wondering why
they have been putting a piece of cloud on their open leverpostej
(liverwurst) sandwiches, people get an "aha"-experience from it. In
other words: the word for aspic slipped beneath the Argus eyes of the
languages guardians. It was never consciously spelled that way by
decree from above, as your answer seems to imply (and what would be
the point for such people to dictate an evidently etymologically
wrong spelling of French <jus>?) And <jus> is the spelling you find
in 19th century recipes.

And, furthermore, in the times we are most often talking about, the
speakers are as "children" in your above explanation, ie. illiterate.


>
> Anyway, thanks for putting me so fully in the picture.
>
De nada. It it is always a pleasure to put you fully in the picture.
One doesn't often get a chance to do that ;-)

> Piotr

Torsten