# Norwegian, Swedish: "crush" som "krøsj"



## Dan2

Zluim said:


> ... (å ha et crush/(krøsj) på noen).


Tror dere, at 'ø' er det beste valget mellom de norske vokalene for vokalen i "crush" (og "but", "cup", osv)?
Er kort 'a' bedre?
Skriver dere ikke "krasj" for "crush" fordi "krasj" = "crash"?

På svenska: Föredrar ni 'ö' eller 'a' för de engelska "cup"-vokalen?

[tak]!


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## Cerb

Å uttale kort "a" som "ø" er en av de vanligste feilene nordmenn gjør på engelsk. Hvis det dreier som om et fornorsket slanguttrykk er "ø" være mest vanlig selv om personen som bruker det vet at lyden er gal. Alternativet vil være å skrive/uttale ordet korrekt på engelsk.

Kan du fortelle oss mer om hvilken sammenheng dette er i?


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## Zluim

Svensker sier "krasch", "batt" og "kapp"; nordmenn sier "krøsj", "bøtt" og "køpp", men "krasj" eller "kræsj" for "crash". Det kan vel ha noe å gjøre med at "ö" på svensk og "ø" på norsk ikke uttales helt likt, slik at nordmenn oppfatter vokalen i "crush" som nærmest "ø", mens den for svensker ligger nærmest "a". Det er forresten alltid fornøyelig å høre svensker si "Dejvis Kapp" og lignende, på samme måte som "Livverpul" gjør seg veldig bra på norsk.


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## Tjahzi

Well, Swedish normally doesn't alter the spelling of foreign (that is, English) loans of this kind (most likely since our orthography, at least in comparison to the Norwegian, is rather inadequate). 

Whether this is the underlying reason to why we also generally don't alter the pronunciation very much, I don't know, but I suppose it's not a discouraging aspect.

To sum up, Swedish usually realizes English [ʌ] as [ʌ] or [ä]. (Personally, I find the latter more natural, but then again, the difference is marginal. Anyhow, it's in no way an /ö/.)


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## Dan2

Cerb said:


> Kan du fortelle oss mer om hvilken sammenheng dette er i?


Jeg ble overrasket over å se at man bruker "ø" for den engelske "cup"-vokalen ("crush" -> "krøsj").  Derfor spurte jeg om nordmenn føler at "ø" er den nærmeste norske vokalen til den engelske "cup"-vokalen. (Jeg trodde at norsk kort "a" er nærmest.)


Cerb said:


> Å uttale kort "a" som "ø" er en av de vanligste  feilene nordmenn gjør på engelsk.


Med "kort 'a'" mener du den engleske vokalen i "cup"?  (Vi sier "short 'u'".)


Zluim said:


> ... slik at nordmenn oppfatter vokalen i "crush" som  nærmest "ø", mens den for svensker ligger nærmest "a".


Takk!


Tjahzi said:


> Well, Swedish normally doesn't alter the spelling  of foreign (that is, English) loans of this kind (most likely since our  orthography, at least in comparison to the Norwegian, is rather  inadequate).


In case it wasn't clear: I'm not so much interested in spelling conventions as how vowels are _perceived _across languages.


Tjahzi said:


> To sum up, Swedish usually realizes English [ʌ] as [ʌ] or [ä].  (Personally, I find the latter more natural, but then again, the  difference is marginal. Anyhow, it's in no way an /ö/.)


(Note: I understand Tjahzi to mean the IPA [ä], not the Swedish 'ä'.)
Thanks. Is [ä] your Swedish "short a"?
(BTW, I don't perceive the difference between the Eng "cut" vowel and IPA [ä] as marginal: IPA [ä] is typical for Amer Eng "hot", "cot", etc., which of course are distinct from "hut" and "cut", etc.)


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## Cerb

Dan2 said:


> Jeg ble overrasket over å se at man bruker "ø" for den engelske "cup"-vokalen ("crush" -> "krøsj").  Derfor spurte jeg om nordmenn føler at "ø" er den nærmeste norske vokalen til den engelske "cup"-vokalen. (Jeg trodde at norsk kort "a" er nærmest.)
> 
> Med "kort 'a'" mener du den engleske vokalen i "cup"?  (Vi sier "short 'u'".)


Min feil, jeg tenkte på "short 'u'", ja. Den er nærmere kort "a", men det virker som om dette er veldig vanskelig å plukke opp for mange.


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## Tjahzi

Indeed, I meant the IPA symbol [ä] (I linked in order to clarify that). 
The spelling reference was mostly an explanation to why we do not alter the spelling (since we so clearly perceive the /u/ in _cup _and_ nut_ as /a/, I, without thinking, assumed the Norwegian realization to be a case of assimilation in order to conform with their patterns of pronunciation). 

The below is chart shows the Swedish vowel inventory. As you can see, [ä] is indeed our short /a/ (despite the fact that it's for some reasons written as [a] there (probably because [ä] is not a fully accepted sign (but I use it anyway since I find it essential to make the distinction))). 

You can also see that we have relatively few open vowels (one, that is) and as such, they are allowed a greater degree of allophony than other Swedish vowels.

For the record, I thought myself to remember the vowel of _cup _and _nut_ being [ʌ], but I'm not so sure anymore. It sounds more like [ɐ] to me. (Which would be very much in line with my perception of it as [ä] or [ɐ].) 

Any thoughts?


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## cocuyo

I am really amazed, that in a forum like this, people might even think of a particular pronunciation as "American" or "British", when there are considerable differences of pronunciation even within England, and the language is spoken by native speakers in such different locations as Jamaica and India. There simply is neither one particular "American" pronunciation, nor is British English homogenous in this regard. 

So in one vernacular, crush and crash might sound exactly the same (either with the [ʌ] sound or [ɐ] or perhaps another, have your pick), while in another they won't. And English speakers any side of any ocean are notorious for not hearing the differences between various vocal sounds. 

So which pronunciation that will be adopted by a foreigner that uses an English word is up to the individual. Whether it will also be written as perceived varies. Spanish speakers mostly try to adapt English words to their own spelling system, so jumper becomes chompa, but in Sweden we rarely change the English spelling, regardless of how we pronounce the word. There are however a few old loans that have a Swedish spelling (ex. röjel), as well as some more recent loans where two different spellings are used (ex. tape vs. tejp). For new loans, we mostly use the English spelling, but I have neither seen 'crush' used in Swedish nor heard it. However, if I were to use it, I would spell it with u.


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## Dan2

cocuyo said:


> I am really amazed, that in a forum like this, people might even think of a particular pronunciation as "American" or "British", when there are considerable differences of pronunciation even within England, ... nor is British English homogenous in this regard.


I don't think anyone has mentioned British English in this thread. What I said about American English is true across thousands of kilometers and represents the most common varieties of American English. 


cocuyo said:


> I am really amazed, that in a forum like this,  people might even think of a particular pronunciation as "American" or  "British",


There are indeed many pronunciations that are specifically American or British.  How else can one explain the fact that an American recognizes a British speaker as British within seconds of his opening his mouth, no matter where in Britain he comes from; and a Brit an American.

But you are right that there is significant dialectal variation in England and elsewhere. However millions of people across the world study a standardized version of British English, often called RP, and the vowels of RP are quite well defined.  Anyone interested in the varieties of English knows immediately what is meant by, for ex., "the difference between standard Brit Eng "hot" and the most common Amer Eng pronunciation of "hot"".


cocuyo said:


> So in one vernacular, crush and crash might sound exactly the same  (either with the [ʌ] sound or [ɐ] or perhaps another, have your pick),  while in another they won't.


In theory anything is possible, but I've never seen a merger of the "crash" and "crush" vowels reported for any major American, Canadian, English, or Australian dialect.


cocuyo said:


> And English speakers any side of any ocean  are notorious for not hearing the differences between various vocal  sounds.


Even long-time, very fluent, foreign speakers of English typically mispronounce some of the English vowels (i.e., pronounce them differently from how they are pronounced in the dialect they are targeting).  Is there any evidence that English speakers are worse than others in vowel perception/production?


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## Zluim

I guess I jumped the gun a little bit, so here are my second two cents. Dialectal variation aside, in RP the vowel of "crush" is a centralized, lowered [ʌ], which is close to [ä], and [ä] is indeed what I hear from Swedes, never [ʌ]. That is to say Swedish pronunciation is more open and less rounded than RP [ʌ]. Norwegians, lacking [ä], look elsewhere to find something resembling [ʌ]. 

Being centralized, RP [ʌ] is not too far from [ɐ], [ɜ], [ɞ], or even [ə], either. To Norwegians this is "øh" territory, "øh" being the sound uttered to alert the listener that you are going to say something but need a second to think about it. Add into the mix a difficulty distinguishing the vocal quality of [ʌ] from [ɜ)], and we arrive at /ø/.


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## Magb

Every post so far has assumed that the Norwegian short /ø/ is pronounced something like [ø] or [œ], but in fact my own /ø/ is typically pronounced [ə]. It has pretty much the same sound as unstressed /ɛ/, so for instance in the word _bøtte_ "bucket", the two vowels are almost identical. I think this is a quite typical feature of eastern Norwegian; Gjert Kristoffersen mentions this phenomenon in The Phonology of Norwegian (page 17).

This fact makes it easier to see why /ø/ is a reasonable substitute for the English /ʌ/, at least for the Norwegians who are subject to the phenomenon in question. /ø/ is basically [ə] in eastern Norwegian and /ʌ/ is basically [ə] in many English varieties, especially in American English. Swedes can use their short /a~ɐ~ä~whatever/ for English /ʌ/ because it sounds like the typical British English /ɐ/. But for most Norwegians, short /ɑ/ is too far back to stand in for a centralized /ʌ/. On the other hand, Norwegian short /æ/ is too far front, and is in any case reserved for the English /æ/. /ø/ is the closest thing we have, and for people like myself who centralize and de-round the vowel, it's actually a very good approximation.


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