/ˈlalɔ/ vs. /ˈlalœ/
Anna kopierede ret tidligt Léons navn for Charlotte, /ˈlalɔ/.
Så begyndte hun at bruge samme navn for begge, hvad der var noget forvirrende.
Men nu har vi opdaget, at hun rent faktisk skelner, idet Charlotte er /ˈlalɔ/, mens Léon er /ˈlalœ/.
Den forskel er ikke helt nem at opfange i forbifarten!
Hun gør i øvrigt noget tilsvarende med mig og Marcel: Jeg hedder /ˈdade/ (den normale skotske udtale af Daddy), mens Marcel er blevet til /ˈdadɛ/ (vokalerne fra Marcel, men konsonanterne fra Daddy).
Dyrelyde
Da min mor besøgte os for en måneds tid siden, læste hun ofte en bog med dyrelyde for Anna.
Og selvom hendes aktive ordforråd stadig er ret begrænset på andre områder, er hun ret gode til at huske, hvad de forskellige dyr siger:
Mange af hendes dyr taler tydeligt dansk, især fåret og fuglen.
Gordon Brown is my shepherd
I found this poem on The Coffee House blog today:
Gordon Brown is my shepherd, I shall not work.
He leadeth me beside the still factories.
He restoreth my faith in the political opposition.
He guideth me in the path of unemployment.
Yea, though I wait for my dole,
I own the bank that refuses me.
He has annointed my income with taxes,
My expenses runneth over my pay.
Surely poverty and hard times will follow me all the days of his term.
From hence forth, we will live all the days of our lives in a rented home with an overseas landlord.
It’s brilliant as a political statement, but am I the only one finding it really annoying that people are so bad at the grammar of earlier stages of their own language?
It’s obviously either “expenses run” or “expense runneth” – “runneth” is simply a third person singular, just as “runs” in modern English. And for the same reason, “has” and “refuses” should have been “hath” and “refuseth”.
It’s probably also “mine expenses”, not “my expenses”, but I’m not sure whether that rule was obligatory or optional.
IPA
It’s a well-established principle when using IPA for phonetic descriptions to declutter the transcription by leaving out anything that can be predicted using knowledge of the language. (”It is better to state such information in the conventions that accompany a phonetic transcription rather than in the transcription itself.”)
For instance, when giving the original pronunciation of a borrowing in a monolingual dictionary, the IPA is often simply copied from a bilingual dictionary. That is, the pronunciation of ‘Champs-Elysées’ might be given as /ʃɑ̃z elize/, which is fine if you know French IPA conventions, but not otherwise. Where does the stress go – equally on each syllable, or will one syllable get more stress? Is the /e/ to be pronounced [ɛ] as in English? Is the /l/ light or dark?
Or going the other other way, if the word ‘tell’ was taken into French, giving it pronunciation as /tel/ would indicate [t̪el] rather than [tʰɛʟ].
Surely in this context it would be better to use precise IPA. Jeg havde godt nok hørt, at det svenske sprog blev gjort mindre dansk, efter at Sverige løsrev sig fra Kalmarunionen ud fik sin egen bibeloversættelse, men jeg var ikke klar over, hvor dansk svensk kunne være.
Men så fandt jeg nogle brudstykker af gammelt svensk. Her er fx lidt fra 1450:Danskagtigt gammelt svensk
Samson tog jomfrwne j sin fampn oc bar henne nidh oc satte henne vpa sin hæst oc en annan hæst hade han . ther førde han gwll oc kostelighe haffuor vpa . han wæpnade sik well oc bant sin hielm oc red sin weg . han lag lenge i en storan skogh . oc giorde sik ther et hws .
Læg fx mærke til jomfrw “jomfru” (moderne svensk jungfru) og nidh “ned” (moderne svensk ner).
Og en del senere, først i 1600-tallet, ser vi tekster som denne:
Vi Gustaf Adolph &c. göre vitterligit med dette vårt öpne bref, att såsom menige Sverigis rikis ständer, högre och nidrige, opå den allmennelige riksdag, som höldts i Norköping opå det år 1604, då samptychte och beviliade en arfförening om den konungslige regering här i riket således, att näst efter vår sal:e kere her faders dödelige afgång då vele de anamma och bekenna oss för deres rätte herre och regerande konung.
Læg her fx mærke til adjektiverne på -e og en form som dödelige “dødelige” (moderne svensk “dödliga”).
Der findes sikkert endnu bedre eksempler, men det er begrænset, hvor mange førreformatoriske svenske tekster, der p.t. er scannet ind på internettet. 
Rasmussen again and again
FT.com wrote that “Mr Rasmussen resigned on Saturday and his successor, finance minister Lars Lokke [sic!] Rasmussen – the third consecutive premier with that surname – now has a tough act to follow, particularly with the economy and the minority government’s popularity hitting new lows.”
As a native speaker of Danish, I hadn’t even noticed that this is the case.
Of course I know their names – Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, Anders Fogh Rasmussen and Lars Løkke Rasmussen – but as everybody else in Denmark I think of them as Poul Nyrup, Anders Fogh and Lars Løkke, and I find it utterly bizarre and confusing when they in English-language media are all referred to as Mr. Rasmussen.
What’s happening is that surnames ending in -sen are so common that most people who have a less common middle name use that for most purposes, especially if their first name is common (such as Poul, Anders or Lars).
Open-arse
As I wrote recently, we’ve now planted a medlar tree.
The medlar (”mispel” in Danish) – which is edible only after it starts to rot – is not widely known these days, but it used to be popular.
In those days, it was colloquially known as an open-arse, however, as in Romeo and Juliet:
O Romeo, that she were, O that she wereAn open-arse and thou a poperin pear!
Phyllis seems to be insinuating that I shouldn’t mention our open-arse tree in front of the kids.
Doesn’t she appreciate Shakespeare?
Dyr look like animals
A few days ago, I removed a few bricks that had been placed on top of the lawn for a while, and beneath there were plenty of centipedes, worms, spiders, ants and woodlice.
Léon was watching with great interest, and afterwards he went in to tell Phyllis:
– Mum, there were dyr under the stenene, and they looked like animals!
It so typical of a bilingual kid to know the same word in two languages (here “dyr” and “animals”), but not to equate them. Fully bilingual kids are normally crap at translating literally.
Thinking in languages
Phyllis says people have often asked her whether her kids are thinking in English or French when they are speaking the latter, and I remember being asked similar questions when I was a kid.
I must admit I find it a puzzling question because I don’t think of thinking as being in a language most of the time. I’d say something like 4/5 of thought happens in swift, intuitive, pictorial ways, and it’s only put into words in a final output stage.
So when I’m speaking Spanish (just to take a language I’m fairly fluent in but where I have severe gaps in my vocabulary), most of my thinking is the same as the same as if I had been speaking Danish, but when I have to output it, I have to express myself using fewer words, and I will occasionally be unable to express exactly what I wanted to say. That doesn’t mean I have a word or a sentence ready in Danish, just that I’m thinking of a concept that doesn’t have an output mapping.
So I must say I disagree with Wittgenstein: Die Grenzen meiner Sprache sind nicht die Grenzen meiner Welt.
Our address in Gaelic
I was trying to figure out what our address is in Gaelic.
“Glasgow” is of course Glaschu, and according to Wikipedia, “Newton Mearns” is Baile Ùr na Maoirne.
According to the same source, “Kinloch” is normally Ceann Loch (”head of the loch”).
However, I’m not certain what “Kinloch Road” would be. “Road” is of course rathad, but what about the genitive? “Kinloch Castle” is Caisteal Cheann Locha (although some sources add the article and don’t aspirate: Caisteal Ceann an Locha), so that is probably the best pattern to follow.
Our address is thus:
27 Rathad Cheann Locha (or 27 Rathad Ceann an Locha)
Baile Ùr na Maoirne
Glaschu G77 6LY
Alba