If you hear spoken Swedish and Norwegian, you would find that these languages tend to sound considerably more melodic compared to many of their Germanic counterparts. This difference is predominantly attributed to their 'pitch-accent' feature, where certain stressed syllables tend to come with some form of tone, or more rather, accent. To recap, in Swedish, … Continue reading So, how did Swedish (and Norwegian) gain word accents?
Norwegian
Putting a ring on it — The å’s diacritic
The letter 'å' (typed using Alt+0229) is perhaps one of the most recognisable letters in the languages of Scandinavia, as you may have recalled the last time you went strolling about in an Ikea store. It is even the entire name of certain places in Norway and Sweden. So too does it represent a unit … Continue reading Putting a ring on it — The å’s diacritic
A Non-Anglocentric Language Tier System?
1. How many languages do you know ? Okay, lemme define this question. To “know” a language, usually means to have the knowledge to speak, read, write, understand and communicate in a language. So yeah, as of now, I do know quite a bunch of languages to varying standards, like English, Mandarin Chinese, Arabic, French, Japanese, […]
The Language Closet 