Sw, Dan and Nor

[X99Lynx at aol.com]

In a message dated 3/29/99 4:40:40 AM, you wrote:

<<Swedish and Danish, to me, are farther apart than Vedic and
Avestan. It's been 30 years since I studied them, but they seemed then like
virtually the same language, which no one could say about Swedish and Danish.
Now Norwegian, one variety, is virtually the same as Danish, for political
reasons.>>

Apparently, the differences between Sw, Dan and Nor (NN and BN) are a bit
complex and in some ways recent.  The commonalities and differences have
created a situation along phonologic and lexical lines where it has been said
that "Norweigan is Danish spoken in Swedish."  A late developing difference is
in southern scandinavian to voice "short fortis stops p, t, k to b, d, g after
vowels," and going even further in Danish proper, "turning d and g into
spirants or even vocalic glides" - though this apparently has not been
reflected in spelling.  It is said that this and "a general devoicing of lenis
consonants" makes Danish word endings "difficult for other Scandinavians to
hear correctly."  Also the accentual system in Nor and Sw use of "tonemes" is
observably different in Danish where the 'stod' or thrust sometimes takes the
place of the "rising or falling melodies" one hears in the other two
languages.  One can sometimes distinctly hear the difference between Swedish
and Danish even if it is hard to hear what is being spoken.  Conversely, I'm
told  Norweigans and Swedes speaking may recognize or hear each other's words
relatively easily, but not understand what the words mean.

This once again brings up what the measure of difference between languages,
especially if those differences are supposed to tell us about the time since
separation of languages with presumed common ancestry.

The recent Danish phonological development mentioned above is an example where
current lack of mutual comprehension is not due to any early split and
therefore perhaps does not tell us much about the matter of time of
separation.

Regards,
Steve Long