Danish Spelling

[Larry Trask]

Lars Henrik Mathieson writes:

> And why can't that phonetic spelling be right? Danish has no voiced
> stops --- to the first approximation, at least, though I've been told
> that instruments will show some voicing in some contexts.

> But assume for the argument that the facts are like this: In absolute
> initial position, /ptk/ are aspirated voiceless and /bdg/ are plain
> voiceless. In all other positions, including after /s/, you find only
> plain voiceless stops. (The symbols are assigned historically --- the
> Danish distinction maps very well onto German unvoiced/voiced stops,
> for instance).

> Which phoneme do those plain voiceless stops belong to? They sound
> exactly like the /bdg/ you get in initial position. They don't sound
> like initial /ptk/. So why shouldn't <stave> (spell) be /sda:u/?

Roman Jakobson famously wrote on this very point.  I'm afraid I cannot
recall the reference, but maybe somebody can.

As I dimly recall, Jakobson reported that uneducated Danish-speakers --
apparently there *were* some in his day -- consistently assigned phones
to phonemes on the basis of phonetic similarity, producing a result
very different from the one recognized in the Danish orthography.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk

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