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I came to the 'comments' specifically to see what people had to say about the Swedish Chef!!! =)
ø isn't Swedish... ö is. Why did Swedish acually prefer the boring accented letters instead of the fancier æ and ø? :/
1844
In the 1500s, as part of the Reformation, the Swedes broke away from the Catholic Church and turned towards the Lutheran Church. As part of that breaking away they published a new Bible based on the work of Martin Luther, which was written in German. They decided in the publishing of the Bible that they would keep ö and ä, and get rid of ð in favor of th, similar to Luther's Bible. You can read a little bit more here.
It's Norwegian, and a lot of Swedish people think he sounds Norwegian, too.
If the preceding word ends in R, then an S gets pronounced like SH. (This is true for any word, not just "svenska".) Also in words where "RS" appear next to each other anywhere, not just the end of one and the start of the next :)
Wonderful information as I didn't know it, I thought it is a mistake in the TTS of this sentence but now I know that any ''RS" together pronounced like ''SH'', here you are 2 lingots :)
I forgot, do Swedes not capitalize things like "svenska' which the English language would usually capitalize?
Nope! No capital for languages or nationalities, nor days or months of the year, nor the word for I (jag) other than at the start of a sentence :) Capital for the name of a country though. So: Jag talar svenska i Sverige.
I'm applying for a job at the Jim Henson Company. What were you thinking?
I have a pronunciation question: why is the first 's' in 'svenska' pronounced as 'sh' here? Is it to do with it coming directly after a vowel sound or something like that?
It is because of the R in talar. when an R and a S come next to each other they combine into a sound similar to SH
- 951
Yes. to begin with, it isn't considered correct to say talk Swedish. Some native speakers do, but if you don't happen to be a native speaker, this will only sound like a mistake. You should use the verb speaks. And second, talar covers the meaning of both is speaking and speaks. But if you skip the is in is speaking, you get a phrase instead of a sentence. You would say this only as a part of a longer sentence, like "have you ever heard a cook speaking Swedish" or something like that. And the Swedish counterpart would be en kock som talar svenska, literally 'a cook who speaks Swedish', because we use the participles less.
Why did one of my translations come up with the correction "One cook speaks Swedish"? Wouldn't that apply to other proper nouns, too, then? As in one man, one woman, one girl, one house, etc.
Because there is no difference between "A" and "One" in Swedish (just like there is none in German, French, Spanish, etc.).
And yes, that means that it is will be accepted everywhere where the translation with "One" makes sence. E.g. "I am one girl" is probably not going to work, because it is hard to be two girls.
Talar reminds me of the Dutch word 'taal' (language).
They might be related, but as of now I've always heard this word has an unclear ethymology.
- 23
Both are theorised to come from Proto-Germanic *talō, which means a report or calculation. So Swedish tala (speak), Dutch taal (language), German Zahl (number) and English "tale" are all related. [2019/05/06]
English "talk" has the same origin as well - it's likely derived from "tale". :)
- 951
For speakers who have the Standard Swedish R sound, the R here melts together with the S at the start of the following word to create the 'sh'-like sound [ɧ]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sj-sound
- 1844
You just have to remember the gender for each word when you learn it. It's the best way to get them in your head.
