Le Nord : revue internationale des Pays de Nord - 01.06.1941, Qupperneq 234

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LE NORD
large number of recent changes in pronunciation have never be-
come reflected in the spelling. This conservatism has been a bul-
wark against the disintegrating tendencies of the dialects, and the
slang of the big towns. In our own time the written language
exercises a very considerable influence on speech, both in Sweden
and in Denmark, in consequence of the spread of school teach-
ing and the habit of private reading. The dialects are vanishing,
and spelling-pronunciations from the Standard language are for-
cing back the old forms developed regularly according to sound
laws. A few examples from Danish may serve to illustrate the
point. Danish has Fode food (Swedish föda) as against Moje care
(Swedish möda): Fode with the preserved d is an archaic, literary
form; Meje is younger and originally a dialect form. In the same
way, Danish has Mave stomach, Have garden, lave prepare
(Swedish mage, hage, laga) as against drage draw, Plage pain,
Dag day (Swedish draga, pldga, dag). The last-mentioned forms
are traditional and preserved through the medium of the written
language since mediaeval times. We know that the older pro-
nunciation of these words used to be drave, Plave, dav, but these
forms have now vanished from educated speech. The tree-names
Eg oak and Bog beech, corresponding to Swedish ek and hok,
used to be pronounced / aj / and I haj I a few generations ago,
just as e. g. Steg joint and Rog smoke (Swedish stek and rök)
are pronounced / staj \ and / raj / to this very day. Nowadays,
however, the two tree-names are pronounced / eg / and / hog /
as they are spelt. It is to be hoped that similar spelling pro-
nunciations will also gain ground in Denmark in the case of
such words as Steg, Rog, Leg play, hleg pale, skreg screamed
(cf. Swedish lek, hlek, skrek), etc. On the other hand, there is
probably not much hope of getting rid of the pronunciation
/ sajsten / for seksten (the number 16), seeing that numerals are
so rarely spelt, and that a spelling pronunciation has therefore
little chance of gaining ground. From a Scandinavian point of
view it is a matter for congratulation that the present spelling-
pronunciation of Skih ship, tahe lose, etc. had driven the older
and less readily understood jskiw /, / tawe /, etc. from the field.
It is to the prevailing orthographic traditionalism that we
owe the community which still exists between the Scandinavian
languages. If we had continued to adapt our spelling to the
pronunciation, as it is urged in some quarters that we should do,
then we should long ago have arrived at a state of Babylonian