3 ms·
For those wondering, single consonant means slow vowel, double consonant means fast vowel, just like “floss”. So: glass (swe) -> gláss (ice cream) glas (swe)
by hnarn 3y ago
For those wondering, single consonant means slow vowel, double consonant means fast vowel, just like “floss”. So:
glass (swe) -> gláss (ice cream)
glas (swe) -> glaas (glass)
To make it even easier these two words also have different A-sounds, the first quick one has the one in english “tan”, the second has the one in “car”.
- darraghenright 3y agoPlot twist, in Hiberno English that A-sound is the same in both words :) Ice cream in French is also "glace" which is of course spelled differently but sounds pretty much the same as glass.
- hnarn 3y agoSwedish has a long history of importing words from French (as do many other European languages for obvious historical reasons), so I’m quite sure this is indeed the origin of the word. What usually happened though was that after importing the word, it (sometimes) got a new spelling more compatible with Swedish phonetics. Other examples of this include Swedish “trottoar” (fr: “trottoir”)
- cozzyd 3y agoI guess it's obvious in retrospect but I didn't realize that the Romanian trotuar is also an obvious French import.
- hnarn 3y agoA lot of Swedish words that end in -oar (like “reservoar”, “memoar” etc) are all french import originally ending in -oir, so if you start digging into words ending with -uar in Romanian you’ll probably find more :-)