Intuitively one could think that the Scanian dialect derives its rollercoaster diphthongs and occasional guttural grunts from the Danish language, which is of course in close geographic proximity, over the Øresund. Historical ties between the two have always been close. The Danes ruled Skåne until 1658, and similarities abound.
The idiosyncratic Scanian dialect shares little or no direct ancestry with Danish. The roots of Scanian are in French. French-speaking aristocracy, in the 17th and 18th century, on holiday from Stockholm used local Scanian servants. Thus a heavy dose of the Francophone was transmitted to the Swedes of the south. Linguists believe that this link is responsible for many of the features of the dialect that survive today.
I recently saw this theory born out in a piece of theatre sport, where a Swedish actor (non-gender specific, but she was a chick) assumed a ‘’Allo ‘Allo!’ type French resistance fighter accent. The result was basically pure Scanian, and the actor couldn’t keep a straight face.
The Scanian dialect comes hand in hand with a healthy belief that if you’re not Scanian, you’re a bit weird. This is in stark contrast to the Danes who believe that if you’re not Danish than you’re a blithering twit, and Denmark is the epicentre of the universe and the land of milk and honey. This comparatively self-effacing outlook is nicely exemplified by the joke about the federal politician who told the Scanian that there was good development potential in Skåne. The Scanian, to whom he had made the comment, replied
-Aou, ja ved ent de. Po tre sior har vi vann o på den fjärde Lappland.
-Yes, and what are those. We have water on three sides and on the other, Lappland.
4 comments:
the word is actress, damnit! and heroine is not a mispelling of a great time, but the accurate spelling of a great one. And what of mistresses? Wellll, I guess I'll ruminate on that as I fondle my copy of the oxford english dictionary in bed... zzzzzzzzzzz
how very cultured of you to say this here ... all you could talk about across the big ditch on the holybaz blog was stuff about leaky tartartarians and finicky shproghosers...
little do these know of the soci-economic stickyness of the flipside emanations of blogsah maurice ....
Well hbrains, it was thoughts of you fondling your OED, in bed, that spurned my epic outpourings, which are admittedly more full of flaws than a whistle shproghozer down a leaky Ontårian. . . Okay, now it's getting pretty bizarre.
in response:
nobodyknowswho.blogspot.com/2007_04_15_archive.html
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