Re: The disappearance of *-s -- The saga continues

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, enlil@... wrote:

> Torsten:
> > Glen's grandmother would have spoken with a less "extreme" /s./

than

> > today's Stockholmers.
>
> More specifically, my grandmother was a child of 10 or so (because
> Swedish farmers liked to breed like bunnies). They settled in
> Minnesota before my grandmother moved to Canada (I think that was
> when moving to another country was simpler and less bureaucratic).

That Stockholm farmer thing confuses me. You'd have a hard time
finding farmland in Stockholm at the time, a city of appr. 100,000.

>
> So technically, my grandmother may have been influenced by American
> English as it was in Minnesota at the time. One interesting thing
> that I never quite understood is why she was pronouncing "w" in
> "vitt". She pronounced it more like /wIt/. I'd be interested to

know

> what Swedish sounded like in Stockholm during the turn of the
> century and what differences there are from today that would have
> affected my gramma's speech.
>

My Brøndum-Nielsen doesn't cover the pronounciation of Swedish /v/
in the dialects. Swedish spelled <vitt> as <hwitt> (assuming you
mean the neuter of <vit> "white") until approx. 1910, but that
wasn't reflected in the pronounciation, to the best of my knowledge.

Torsten