{"id":256,"date":"2007-05-08T11:45:05","date_gmt":"2007-05-08T15:45:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/?p=256"},"modified":"2007-05-08T11:45:05","modified_gmt":"2007-05-08T15:45:05","slug":"a-note-on-swedish-pronunciation-and-an-appeal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/?p=256","title":{"rendered":"A note on Swedish pronunciation, and an appeal"},"content":{"rendered":"

I need to put some kind of pronunciation guide I think, into the book. The most elegant answer would be to do the whole thing in IPA<\/span><\/a> but of course anyone prepared to do that could just as well look up a proper guide. So here I am trying to think of ways to transliterate Swedish pronunciation into English that are neither wholly misleading nor completely hideous. Anyone got improvements on the below?<\/p>\n\n

Where there are recognised English names for Swedish places, I have used them. Unfortunately, there is only one such name: Gothenburg. I can’t believe that the Latinate forms Dalecarlia and Scania are more familiar to English ears than Dalarna and Skåne.<\/p>\n\n

Which brings me to the subject of the three vowels It’s Skåne, not “Skane” and the difference matters a lot. &Auml;, &Ouml; and &Aring; are letters distinct from each other, and from O and A, just as much as E and F are distinct. The bits on the top do matter, and do make a difference not just to the sound of the vowel itself, but also sometimes to the preceding consonant. “G”, for example is a hard “g” before an “o”, but a “y” sound when it comes before an “ö” (or e, i, and ä). So Sven Göran Ericsson, the former English football manager, is pronounced “Sven, you’re an …” whereas if he were (as English newspapers believe) “Sven Goran” he would be pronounced “Sven Goo Ran”.<\/p>\n\n

The other tricky letters are “j” and “k”, which also from consonants in combinations, as “h” in English does with “c”, “t” and “s”. So “Kjell” is pronounced “Shell”, more or less, and “dj” is always “y”.<\/p>\n\n

With all these rules in mind, there is a simple trick to pronouncing Swedish comprehensibly: talk with your tongue high and forward in your mouth, as if you had someone else’s nipple between your lips.<\/p><\/blockquote>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I need to put some kind of pronunciation guide I think, into the book. The most elegant answer would be to do the whole thing in IPA <\/span>but of course anyone prepared to do that could just as well look … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=256"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}