3 ms·

I moved to Sweden from Norway at a time when writing a check really was a thing :) It baffled me that swedes would pronounce 'check' with an initial 'k'-sound (

I moved to Sweden from Norway at a time when writing a check really was a thing :) It baffled me that swedes would pronounce 'check' with an initial 'k'-sound (as in "käk" or "käck"), which is not at all like the pronunciation in Norway (which is similar to the English pronunciation). What a strange country :-)

henrikschroder 7y ago
Similarly, Danish has kept the 'dj'-sound in English loan words like juice, where Swedish dropped the initial fricative. That tripped me up a couple of times while in Denmark...
- simongray 7y ago
  Danish generally just adopts loanwords wholesale, never bothering to adapt the pronunciation. We have lots of words from English, French, and German that are spelled and pronounced basically like in those languages. Now as for Swedish, what trips me up is that I've met so many Swedes that (otherwise) speak great English, but seem to pronounce J sounds in a distinctly Swedish way when speaking English. I've had fluent English-speaking Swedes in a university setting asking if I want to hear a "yoke" (joke) and or maybe telling me about their "yeans" (jeans). It's so weird. It's a bit like how many French people seem unable to pronounce an H when speaking English, but Swedes are damn good at English, unlike the average French person.
  - henrikschroder 7y ago
    Yeah, the "blindness" to sounds that don't exist in your native language is funny, and usually the best way to figure out where a non-native speaker is from. If you can't even hear the difference between "sheep" and "cheap", or "joke" and "yoke", you have no way of pronouncing it right in the first place! Likewise, I can identify English with a Danish accent pretty quickly, but I can't for the love of me speak it, because I'm not good enough at Danish. But a dead giveaway is that Danish realizes 'R' as [ʁ], and many Danes pronounce it the same way when speaking English. :-P And there's something with the vowels that's just weird that Danish people do... I can't put my finger on it. (I have the opposite problem, I can't make that 'R' sound at all, which is why my Danish sounds pretty funny to native Danes.)
    - simongray 7y ago
      The Danish accent is definitely instantly recognisable, but I also can't put my finger on what it is. It's definitely something about the vowels. Danish is a very vowel-heavy language, so I'm sure some of that bleeds over into English.
jacobush 7y ago
I'm old enough that I have used a check a couple of times, but probably fewer than 10. I remember not being certain how to pronounce it "xeck" (käck) or "sheck" (sjeck) or even "tcheck", to improvise an English sort-of-phonetic spelling.

henrikschroder 7y ago

Similarly, Danish has kept the 'dj'-sound in English loan words like juice, where Swedish dropped the initial fricative. That tripped me up a couple of times while in Denmark...

simongray 7y ago
Danish generally just adopts loanwords wholesale, never bothering to adapt the pronunciation. We have lots of words from English, French, and German that are spelled and pronounced basically like in those languages. Now as for Swedish, what trips me up is that I've met so many Swedes that (otherwise) speak great English, but seem to pronounce J sounds in a distinctly Swedish way when speaking English. I've had fluent English-speaking Swedes in a university setting asking if I want to hear a "yoke" (joke) and or maybe telling me about their "yeans" (jeans). It's so weird. It's a bit like how many French people seem unable to pronounce an H when speaking English, but Swedes are damn good at English, unlike the average French person.
- henrikschroder 7y ago
  Yeah, the "blindness" to sounds that don't exist in your native language is funny, and usually the best way to figure out where a non-native speaker is from. If you can't even hear the difference between "sheep" and "cheap", or "joke" and "yoke", you have no way of pronouncing it right in the first place! Likewise, I can identify English with a Danish accent pretty quickly, but I can't for the love of me speak it, because I'm not good enough at Danish. But a dead giveaway is that Danish realizes 'R' as [ʁ], and many Danes pronounce it the same way when speaking English. :-P And there's something with the vowels that's just weird that Danish people do... I can't put my finger on it. (I have the opposite problem, I can't make that 'R' sound at all, which is why my Danish sounds pretty funny to native Danes.)
  - simongray 7y ago
    The Danish accent is definitely instantly recognisable, but I also can't put my finger on what it is. It's definitely something about the vowels. Danish is a very vowel-heavy language, so I'm sure some of that bleeds over into English.

jacobush 7y ago

I'm old enough that I have used a check a couple of times, but probably fewer than 10. I remember not being certain how to pronounce it "xeck" (käck) or "sheck" (sjeck) or even "tcheck", to improvise an English sort-of-phonetic spelling.