r/norsk • u/dwchandler • May 06 '18

Søndagsspørsmål #226 - Sunday Question Thread

This is a weekly post to ask any question that you may not have felt deserved its own post, or have been hesitating to ask for whatever reason. No question too small or silly!

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u/[deleted] May 10 '18

No?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_orthography#Sound_to_spelling_correspondences

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_phonology#Consonants

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u/Eberon May 10 '18

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_phonology#Consonants

The Nynorsk version of that page lists [ʃ] as a phoneme of East Norwegian;
the Czech Version too lists [ʃ] as a phoneme of Norwegian;
the French version lists [ʃ] as pronunciation of <sj>, <skj> and <sk> before /i/, /y/ and /øy/;
the Spanish version, which seems to be just a translation of the English one, only lists [ʂ], but not [ʃ].

Basically, only the English Wikipedia excludes [ʃ].

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u/[deleted] May 10 '18

The french version doesn't have an actual source, but I assume they got it from Omniglot like it says at the bottom. The problem there being that omniglot lists <sj> as [ʂ], so that doesn't really help.

The Czech one links to a dead page, and the literature doesn't mention any phonology, only the pitch accent. Can't read any Czech, so I don't know if the czech literature actually says anything about this.

The Nynorsk page implies that [ʃ] and [ʂ] are distinct, but the literature doesn't say anything about it.

Well, anyway. The literature used in any of these don't distinguish between the two, so I can do the (obviously) correct choice and assume that they aren't

Sarcasm aside, the two aren't shown to be distinct in Norwegian, and the sources on the English wikipedia page are more comprehensive either way.

Seeing as they aren't distinct, I could see why some would just transcribe it as [ʃ] without thinking twice about it, because they're such similar sounds.

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u/Eberon May 11 '18

Sarcasm aside, the two aren't shown to be distinct in Norwegian,

By whom?

The only source of the English Wikipedia you can find online is: Popperwell, Ronald G. (2010) [First published 1963], Pronunciation of Norwegian, Cambridge University Press.

When you search for "skj" you find page 94, where he states that s in sk before i, y, ei and øy; in skj and in sj is pronounced [ʃ].

For rs he referes to paragraph 187, which is on page 65. Unfortunately I cannot access that page, but I think it's more than reasonable to assume he distinguishes between [ʃ] and [ʂ].

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u/[deleted] May 11 '18

Hm, interesting. I've controll f-ed <rs> and <sj>. Seems they're deemed different phonemes. My bad. He mentions in the book that a lot of people don't distinguish between them, and I guess I'm in that camp. Anyway, I'll edit my original post