Re: Estonian Swedish

From: tgpedersen
Message: 46778
Date: 2006-12-26

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...> wrote:
>
> >
> > I think it was going on in all the dialects in Denmark (but I
> might
> > be wrong) plus in the standard language (the spellings (s)kie-/
> > (s)kje, (s)kiø-/(s)kjø- etc for present (s)ke-, (s)kø-). Today
> only
> > the peripheral dialects of Bornholm and Vendsyssel have palatal
> > stops.
>
> I checked up on Brøndum-Nielsen and discovered palatalised dorsals
> were much more wide spread before. Only Sjælland had /k/, /g/ in
> Anlaut.
>
> It also occurred to me that since the development ON 'gørDa' "did"
> > 'gjorde' makes sense as a regularisation only in a dialect that
> pronounced at least /ky/, /gy/ before front vowels. Estonian Swedish
> had /gy/ in 'gjorde', but plain /g/ otherwise. That means that that
> dialect must have de-palatised /ky/, /gy/, like Danish did.
>
>
> Further I checked Wimmer: "Oldnordisk Formlære". It turned out Old
> Norse pronouced /ky/, /gy/ before front vowel!
>
> Which means Sjællandsk and Estonian Swedish have both de-
> patalatalised. The dynasty under which Estonia was conquered was
> based on Scania and Sjælland. Seems I can forget the idea of later
> German influence being the cause of depalatalisation.

In the meanwhile I discovered that the dialect of Gotland was also
de-palatalized or never palatalized. That island had been under
Danish rule (1361 - 1645), and so had the Estonian island of Saaremaa
(Øsel) (1560 - 1645); Estonian Swedish was spoken on islands and in
coastal villages nearby.


Torsten