> Thought I might mention that that same Swedish for Tourists
claims "kära" should be pronounced "chairah" by English speakers, i.e.
with an affricate that you say is no longer used in Sweden (and which
was probably not the same as English "ch" in "chair"). Why do these
publications feel they must oversimplify and thereby misrepresent
foreign pronunciation (a rhetorical question)?
>
They're just out of date. In the now largely extinct Scandinavist
tradition going back to the 1840's, in Denmark the songs of Swedish
poet Bellmann were sung in an imitated Swedish with /c^/.
c^ > the 'ich' sound is recent in Swedish.
Torsten