From: Rick McCallister
Message: 63524
Date: 2009-03-01
> From: Andrew Jarrette <anjarrette@...>I've often wondered if the aberrant pronunciation of <often> with a /t/ sprang from Midwestern Germans who learned English from hyper-corrective schoolmarms.
> Subject: [tied] Re: American Dutch dialects
> To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com
> Date: Saturday, February 28, 2009, 9:47 PM
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen"
> <tgpedersen@...> wrote:
> >
> >
> > > The English preservation of /w/ is no more
> unnatural than the Danish
> > > preservation of /sk/, which changed in all other
> Germanic languages
> > > at least before front vowels, and in some before
> all vowels.
> >
> > The idea that Danish, unless Swedish and Norwegian,
> preserved /k/ and
> > /sk/ before front vowels is a common misconception,
> although it's true
> > as a description of the language today. A large number
> of the dialects
> > did in fact palatalize those, today Vendsysselsk and
> Bornholmsk, the
> > two most peripheral dialects, still do, and even in
> spelling this was
> > marked as (s)kj-/(s)ki-. Danish *depalatalized*, most
> likely under
> > German influence; those spellings became obsolete
> around 1900. My
> > favorite example is 'sky' /skü?/
> "aspic" < French 'jus' /3ü/ > 19th
> > cent. Da. /sjü/, falsely understood as 'sky'
> dial. /sjü?/, now /skü/,
> > and depalatalized. Another one is 1900 cent. colloq.
> 'skersant'
> > "sergeant", falsely depalatalized from
> /sjersjant/,
> >
> > Torsten
> >
>
> Well, like Rick says about the Almodovar script, I really
> put my foot
> in my mouth on that one. The depalatalization you talk
> about which
> changed former /sjy/ to /sky/ on the surface seems
> completely
> artificial, although you say it's because of a regular
> equation of
> dialectal /sj/ = standard(?) /sk/.
>
> Andrew