4 ms·
For a long time, the v and w were basically indistinct, until some decades ago. I don't remember exactly when. There might even be a law about it.
by checkyoursudo 3y ago
For a long time, the v and w were basically indistinct, until some decades ago. I don't remember exactly when. There might even be a law about it.
- hnarn 3y agoThere's no "law", but there was a lot of language reform in the 19th and 20th century. You can read more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_orthography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_orthography > Usage of the letters ⟨v⟩ and ⟨w⟩ was, as long as the Fraktur typeface was used, guided by the typeface. In Fraktur, ⟨w⟩ was used as a rule to indicate the sound [v], except for in loanwords of Latin or Romance origin, when ⟨v⟩ was used. In SAOL 1874-1900, which were not printed in Fraktur, the number of words using ⟨w⟩ was very small, and primarily tied to names (clown, darwinism, schweizeri). (...) The attempt to remove ⟨w⟩ was further evident in the 1923 edition. Since 1950 however, the use of ⟨w⟩ in loanwords has been more acceptable, as the number of loanwords has increased. Since 2006, ⟨w⟩ constitutes an individual letter of the alphabet in SAOL, sorted separately from ⟨v⟩. One rationalization I think we can be pretty happy about today that the article mentions is that [f,fv,hv] which all produced the same sound were unified into simply "v" in schools in the early 1900s.