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MeatballDom OP t1_itorinu wrote

Reply to comment by lurkarrunt in Archaeologists have found the 17th-century warship Applet: Maritime experts believe wreck is sister-ship of Vasa, which sank off Stockholm in 1629 by MeatballDom

Surprised to not pick that up myself. Was expecting æblet but then told myself æ wouldn't be used in Swedish and never continued the thought to what should be used. But I guess I assumed the authors would have already done that work.

Edit: Would the umlaut have been used in the 17th century? Vowel shift perhaps?

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Select-Owl-8322 t1_itpauo9 wrote

>Edit: Would the umlaut have been used in the 17th century? Vowel shift perhaps?

"Ä" is actually not an "A" with an umlaut, it's its own separate letter in our alphabet. As is "Å" and "Ö".

And I believe they were used back in the 17th century, but I'm not a linguist so I'm not sure.

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flowering_sun_star t1_itsdadg wrote

Is this just a matter of the way you are taught the alphabet in school? Because it blatantly is the character 'A' with a diacritic that indicates it is pronounced differently.

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Akaviren t1_itsox1b wrote

Not sure if I understand your question, but Å, Ä and Ö is considered a part of the alphabet in Sweden. Thus adding three more letters to what English speakers consider their alphabet.

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Select-Owl-8322 t1_ittgwih wrote

I man, the visual representation is an A with dots, yes. But it is it own letter. The english alphabet has 26 letters, the swedish alphabet has 29. On a swedish keyboard, Å Ä and Ö have their own keys. The pronunciation is entierly different.

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Snooderblade t1_ittuyhc wrote

”Q blatantly is the character 'O' with a diacratic that indicates it is pronounced differently”

Different languages have different letters to accomodate that language, there is no objectively correct ”alphabet” and the english version of the latin alphabet isn’t the default. How is this so hard for english speakers to understand?

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flowering_sun_star t1_itu0zmd wrote

Q is a consonant, while O is a vowel that can have many different pronunciations. They perform very different roles.

It's hard for an English speaker to understand where you're coming from because in English a vowel can have many different pronunciations, and we are comfortable with that. We also understand that other languages use diacritics to provide hints on pronunciation.

It seems really weird to us to insist that a character, and that character with diacritics, are fundamentally different things. Especially when the base character in an English text could reasonably be used to represent both those sounds. And remember that this is all in the context of an English language text!

I'm perhaps just surprised at how up-tight all the swedes are over a simple choice in transliteration. Maybe it is you who need the reminder that not all languages share an alphabet?

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Snooderblade t1_itu429o wrote

But it’s not an A with diacritics! A and Ä are objectively different letters, using an A (which in english sounds nothing like Ä no matter how you pronounce it) is misleading. You can’t just switch letters based on looks without regard for the sounds they represent. Case in point the closest letter to Ä is E, not A, the official way to transliterate Ä in english is Ae and if you look at the actual article they use Ä aswell.

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toyyya t1_itrc8mj wrote

Firstly it's worth noting that Swedish doesn't have umlauts like that and it's a separate letter completely. But disregarding the semantics we have officially used Ä and Ö instead of Æ and Ø since at the very least 1541.

Which is when Gustav Vasa's Bible was written that set new standards for the Swedish language, and the change to Ä and Ö was partly motivated by seeking a stronger separate identity from the Kalmar union (which was a Union between Norway Sweden and Denmark that we had just fought ourselves free from due to the Danes effectively controlling it).

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