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The great Nordic debate: pick your side

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Calvino
Diglot
Groupie
Sweden
sammafllod.wordpress
Joined 5968 days ago
65 posts - 66 votes 
2 sounds
Speaks: Swedish*, English
Studies: French, Spanish, German

 
 Message 17 of 36
22 April 2009 at 12:43pm | IP Logged 
I think we Swedes ought to have kept the æ and ø, instead of falling victim to some kind of baby-brother complex vis-a-vis Germany. Or at least been consistent and started spelling [y] with ü.

Edited by Calvino on 22 April 2009 at 12:45pm
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cordelia0507
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 5840 days ago
1473 posts - 2176 votes 
Speaks: Swedish*
Studies: German, Russian

 
 Message 18 of 36
22 April 2009 at 3:53pm | IP Logged 
But why is this a "great debate"?

While I think the Danish "ö" with the diagonal bar is cooler than the ours (the Swedish/German with the umlauts) I have absolutely no feelings about it at all. It is insignificant! As long as you know that they are the same letter (which all Scandis do) there really isn't a problem.

I imagine it also makes Swedish the most continent-friendly language of the three: I.e. a German or Dutch person can read it and make out a few words here and there without actually knowing the language.

I have to say that I wonder how to do that letter in cursive handwriting. Seems problematic!



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tricoteuse
Pentaglot
Senior Member
Norway
littlang.blogspot.co
Joined 6680 days ago
745 posts - 845 votes 
Speaks: Swedish*, Norwegian, EnglishC1, Russian, French
Studies: Ukrainian, Bulgarian

 
 Message 19 of 36
22 April 2009 at 4:13pm | IP Logged 
Calvino wrote:
I think we Swedes ought to have kept the æ and ø, instead of falling victim to some kind of baby-brother complex vis-a-vis Germany. Or at least been consistent and started spelling [y] with ü.


I had no idea our letters ä and ö had anything to do with German, I was under the impression they arose from writing the second letter of "ae" and "oe" on top of the former. Perhaps you could shed some light on how this came about though?
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Masked Avenger
Triglot
Senior Member
Antarctica
Joined 6136 days ago
145 posts - 151 votes 
Speaks: English, French*, Danish
Studies: Finnish, Latin

 
 Message 20 of 36
22 April 2009 at 4:51pm | IP Logged 
tricoteuse wrote:
Calvino wrote:
I think we Swedes ought to have kept the æ and ø, instead of falling victim to some kind of baby-brother complex vis-a-vis Germany. Or at least been consistent and started spelling [y] with ü.


I had no idea our letters ä and ö had anything to do with German, I was under the impression they arose from writing the second letter of "ae" and "oe" on top of the former. Perhaps you could shed some light on how this came about though?


I know Norwegians chose ø and æ at least in part because of the animosity against Germany right after WWII.

Don't know about Sweden though, but they were largely untouched by WWII!
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Ruisperkele
Diglot
Newbie
Finland
Joined 6094 days ago
25 posts - 32 votes
Speaks: Finnish*, English
Studies: German

 
 Message 21 of 36
24 April 2009 at 10:40pm | IP Logged 
Masked Avenger wrote:

I know Norwegians chose ø and æ at least in part because of the animosity against Germany right after WWII.


This is interesting. I wonder were there any other people who made changes to their language because of World War II? Obviously apart from the Germans themselves, who have ever since tried to avoid using certain words...
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Julie
Heptaglot
Senior Member
PolandRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 6905 days ago
1251 posts - 1733 votes 
5 sounds
Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, GermanC2, SpanishB2, Dutch, Swedish, French

 
 Message 22 of 36
25 April 2009 at 12:13am | IP Logged 
tricoteuse wrote:
I had no idea our letters ä and ö had anything to do with German, I was under the impression they arose from writing the second letter of "ae" and "oe" on top of the former. Perhaps you could shed some light on how this came about though?


Interesting, German letters ä, ö, ü also arose from writing "e" on top of the former letter! Now the question would be if there was an independent development in the two languages or may be one language influenced the other.
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LHOOQ
Newbie
United States
Joined 5756 days ago
5 posts - 5 votes
Speaks: English

 
 Message 23 of 36
26 April 2009 at 5:27am | IP Logged 
Ä and Ö look cute. I was surprised by how many other people are saying these letters are "cute",I thought I'd be the only one :p
Æ and Ø look kind of dark, almost dangerous, to me.
I had no idea these letters had to do with German either. Wow.
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QiuJP
Triglot
Senior Member
Singapore
Joined 5857 days ago
428 posts - 597 votes 
Speaks: Mandarin*, EnglishC2, French
Studies: Czech, GermanB1, Russian, Japanese

 
 Message 24 of 36
26 April 2009 at 2:30pm | IP Logged 
Can I have the Icelandic, Faroese option? English may spell better if they stick to some of the rules of Icelandic and keeping the ð þ æ ö and letters with diacritics,


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