tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Nov 12 14:20:57 2009

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Re: Yet another newbie!

Zrajm C Akfohg ([email protected])



On Wed, Nov 11, 2009 at 02:33, Tracy Canfield <[email protected]> wrote:
> A quick question about Swedish, because it might get you a better answer
> about Klingon:
> Would you say these two Swedish words are pronounced differently?
> Specifically the s sound?
>
> lÃssen
> lÃsen

In Swedish all syllables strive to take up the same amount of time to
say, so whenever a short vowel (as in "lÃssen" above) is followed by a
single consonant sound, that consonant becomes longer in duration
compared same syllable with a long vowel.

However, as kids here in Sweden we are usually taught that a double
consonant means that the preceding vowel is shortened--and no one ever
mentions the lengthening of the consonant (which is something a native
speaker just does instinctively, and never thinks of) most people
don't know (or think) about it. The change in the vowel sound is what
dominates.

I didn't notice the the lengthening of the consonant until one or
another of my teachers pointed it out, when I studied grammar, or
phonetics at university level (and I'm a native speaker of Swedish).

The Finnish language have a much systematic approach to this. In
Finnish a doubled consonant means a lengthened consonant, and a
doubled vowel means a lengthened vowel. To us Swedes, however, that
way of spelling looks mightily peculiar. (But then Swedish and
Finnish, despite being talked in neighboring countries, does not
resemble each other one bit.)

/zrajm






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