The History behind de / dem (Swedish with English subtitles)
2015 ж. 2 Мау.
19 323 Рет қаралды
Why is it that 'de' och 'dem' are spelled differently, yet pronounced the same? This video gets to the bottom of the origin of the words-and explains where they come from, and how they have evolved and been pronounced throughout history up until today.
For the original Swedish-only version, go here: • Historien bakom de / dem
---
The image of the runestone depicts U 164, and is CC-by-2.5 by the Swedish National Heritage Board (Riksantikvarieämbetet).
Thanks to Mikael Parkvall for the base map of the Swedish speaking areas!
---
FOLLOW / SUPPORT
KZhead: / academiacervena
Facebook: / academiacervena
Patreon: / academiacervena
---
These videos are excellent for swedish students outside Sweden! For example, in Spain (my country) it´s almost imposible to hear swedish outside classes and swedish movies or tv programs are too dificult for beginers but with these videos it's so easy to practice pronunciation etc. I really hope you will make more videos. They are extremly helpful. Congratulations for such a good job done.
Thank you for your kind words! More videos are coming :)
Same here from England.
Saludos desde Brasil :)
Same for a germany guy learning the nordic languages :)
You should watch some Ingmar Bergman movies probably the most enjoyable thing swedish you can watch. the whole reason i’m learning swedish is to watch Bergman movies with no subtitles haha
I'm starting to 'relearn' Swedish again and I find your videos helpful. Please do some more. Tack så jättemycket!
Thank you for your kind words! I am working on more videos, but a very high workload has so far kept me from finishing them.
1. aei/æi > ē (long e) (thæir/thaeir > thēr) 2. R deleting (thæir/thaeir > thēr > thē/þē) (r > -) 3. Vowel shortening (ē > e) (thēm > them) 4. Fricative into stop (th/þ > d)
This is very helpful! I have been curious about this for years. Thank you for the very clear explanation!
Roligt att ni tog upp finlandssvenska. Jag har vuxit upp med högsvenska och uppfattar intuitivt bortlämningen av "de" som ett tecken på lägre utbildningsnivå då fenomenet ofta förekommer i mer vardaglig användning av språket tillsammans med t.ex. fennicismer. Intressant med lite bakgrund och sammanhang.
I had no idea it used to be "di", and so recently too! I guess that explains why my granddad from Småland (born in the early 40's) uses /di/ so frequently, except I think that's usually with a short vowel.
Also good to mention the influence of Danish in Skåne. Danes still use De/Dem and pronounce De as "Di".
This seems to be a common Scandinavian development. Most varieties-dialectal as well as standard-seem to have either kept the original diphthong (e.g. _dai_) or changed the vowel to /i/ (as in _di_).
Great video! Concise and clear! Thank you so much! Good job!
Interestingly, the same thing is happening in the Netherlands. The subject form is 'zij' and the object form 'hen' or 'hun'. Colloquially, lots of people use 'hun' as a subject form, but this is heavily frowned upon. It is impossible in writing, and even in colloquial speech it shows that you're uneducated. Yet it keeps gaining ground.
Interesting to know! That's usually how it goes with language change: new features emerge, educated speakers try to fight them, they stick around anyway, and finally they end up being the standard, and the old form is forgotten.
No! Sometimes we educated speakers win! If you look at style guides from the early 20th century, they tell people not to use "Chinee" as a back-formed singular of "Chinese", and our prescription won out!
Først vil jeg bare si at videoene du lager er helt utrolig bra. Jeg tror det samme er i ferd med å skje i Norge også. Jeg kommer fra Østfold nære grensen til Sverige og her bruker vi dem både som subjekt- og objektsform. I Oslo derimot er det fremdeles vanlig å skille mellom de (som uttales di) og dem. Det norske språket påvirkes ofte av svensk og endringer i svensk smitter ofte over til norsk. Som sagt sier vi allerede dem istedenfor de her i Østfold, men kanskje dette også vil spre seg til Oslodialekten og deretter til resten av Norge i fremtiden.
Takk så veldig mye! Jeg trur du har heilt rett i det du sier og hvis jeg ikke tar feil er den utviklinga allerede skjedd i et stort antall målføre i Norge. Som du nevner har østlandsk _dem/dom_ i både subjekt og objekt, og på Vestlandet heter det vel også _di/dei_ i begge falla. Kanskje er det heller Oslodialekten som er unntaket? :)
Du kan godt skrive på svensk ;) Ja, du har nok helt rett. Jeg har lest litt mer om dette og funnet ut at mange faktisk bruker den samme formen i både subjekt og objekt i Oslo også. Jeg tror mange bruker dem/døm, men flere bruker også "de" som både subjekt og objekt. For øvrig er også skillet mellom hun-henne og han-ham i ferd med å forsvinne, eller har allerede forsvunnet fullstendig i de fleste dialekter. Jeg undrer om dette kan ha en sammenheng med de refleksive pronomenene. De refleksive pronomenene til "jeg", "du", "vi" og "dere" har nemlig samme form som objektformene "meg", "deg", "oss" og "dere". "han", "hun" og "de" har derimot det refleksive pronomenet "seg", men objektformene "ham", "henne" og "dem".
I've learnt just a bit of Swedish (not even A1 I'd say). I am surprised how much of what is written here I could understand 😁 Scandinavian languages are so much fun!
Thank the gods for this video. I am an English speaker learning Swedish. I can now confidently use DE and DEM (I prefer using the short e sound for DEM, by the way). I HATE the DOM pronunciation. You have saved me from a ton of anxiety.
@@aliceberethart 'Dom' sounds like uneducated hillbillies or bratty teenagers trying to sound cool.
Vore kul om du gjorde en video om han/hon/hen också. Just "hen" är ju oerhört laddat och många blir ju vita av vrede när de hör "hen" eller anser att ordet är ogiltigt eftersom "hen" betyder höna på engelska. :)
Jag har faktiskt tänkt tanken själv! Jag får ta det någon gång mellan alla andra filmer när jag känner för att sticka ut hakan lite :)
Om den ursäkten var giltig hade jag förväntat mig upplopp och kravaller vid landets alla slutstationer. Näe henhatet är bara barnslig ovilja inför något nytt, oavsett hur användbart.
@@joelmattsson9353 Uraäkta at jag svarar på en 2 år gammal kommentar, men mitt problem med "hen" är inte funktionen (den är ganska smidig, och många andra språk har den). Däremot så har den ingen objektsform (han --> honom, hon --> henne, hen --> ..."henum"?) och dessutom så är det nästan omöjligt att få in den i vissa (åtminstone i min Värmländska) dialekt på ett naturligt sätt, där: Han & honom = 'an & hönöm/hömmôn. Hon & henne = ho' & hänn'. Problemet blir att alltså att "Hen" (med kort E) låter som "henne"! Och man riskerar att röra ihop det med "Di" (som vi oftast använder, även om vissa kör med ett distinkt "de", med lång E (oftast bara vid övertydlighet/betoning)), särskilt efter ord som "gjorde" (uttalas [juːʊrd]) eftersom "Gjorde de?" [juːʊrd dɪ] och "Gjorde hen?" [[juːʊrd hɪ] då skulle bli nästan ourskiljbara.
Please make more videos! :)
I'm working on it! :)
+Academia Cervena Make a video explaining how you can get a total syntax error in certain grammatical situations, like when saying 'a scared lion'. =)
Fascinating! A bit like the English ye and you. Btw, the way you pronounce vi, ni, and de is absolutely inimitable! Makes one hopeless... I just spent a few minutes trying to pronounce these words like you _and I failed_ . Dayum! I hear but can't reproduce.
English even went a step further by you "swallowing" thee and thou too.
God dammit I am learning swedish and was ripping my hair off with this word !!! 😳🤪
helt fascinerande! If this happened in England, it would be the equivalent of the south western provincial way of speaking becoming standard in London. "I see they?!" I only hear that way of speaking in rough parts of Bristol and other west country towns and cities.
Yes :) Also, English already did something similar, replacing its original subject form 'ye' with the object form 'you' !
No, in English low class people also speak in this uncouth way. It would be like people saying -Them are some tasty cookies. Or Them are stupid hillbillies.- It sounds just as lowclass in English as it does in Swedish.
Tack
Varsågod!
I Danmark siger vi stadig de og dem, heldigvis. Det er noget mindre forvirrende. Forstår ikke hvordan det blev et problem i første omgang. :b
Nej, motivationerne bag sprogforandringer er så sandelig ofte ikke helt lette at gennemskue :)
Where in Sweden do you live? I don't know what dialect you speak because I recognized that you said "shvenska" and not "svenska" how I know or heard it before. How is your dialect called? By the way maybe (if you didn't already do it) you could make a video about the dialects of Swedish and the development :)
I usually speak a fairly levelled eastern Central Swedish dialect (from the region around lake Mälaren). The feature of s turning into what sounds like a sh is a general feature of most Swedish dialects (exeptions are South and Finland Swedish)-it happens when there's an r preceding it! (Compare f.ex. with the pronunciation of 'rs' in a name like Skarsgård) A video about Swedish dialects is something I'd really love to do. Hopefully I'll be able to find the time to make it at some point.
@@AcademiaCervena it's been 87 years
@@AcademiaCervena I am also from the same (big) region but I can clearly pick up differences between your idiolect and mine. For instance, they way you pronounce "börjar" at 0:51 and again at 2:08. My ö:s are more rounded, and some other vowels as well (i, y, u). I wonder if anyone has done a study of dialectal variations within Eastern Central Swedish? A lot of people in the Stockholm region have the idea that they don't have a dialect, which is of course nonsense.
Intressant ! Själv bor jag i Nyköpings trakterna där de flesta skippar de/den och endast säger dåmm, finns dock folk (inklusive mig själv) som säger de och dåmm
Alltså inte "di" utan utalar de som det stavas.
dera > deras (Adding -s suffix)
It's awesome to hear it spoken. Are you native speaker?
Yes, I am :)
@@AcademiaCervena wow! I'm jealous of people who grow up speaking a language other than English. Haha I just think it adds something interesting to people and I love languages. I am definitely going to keep watching your videos. (:
Ah, därför säger de att jag pratar konstigt ibland. Jag är från tyskland och på tyska heter „de“ „die“, så jag uttalar det oavsiktligt som: „di“ ibland. Men jag tror att det finns väldigt många saker som tyskarna uttalar konstigt när de försöker prata svenska.🤷♂️...Jag hoppas att jag har inte gjort så många misstag igen.
So basically it's like in English, where Millennials think that "whom" is just "who" pronounced with a cold, and we oldies shake our heads in despair!
Yeah, kind of. But in Sweden the only debate is about keeping them apart in the written language. Nobody hardly even thinks about the fact that they were once supposed to be pronounced differently.
What do people want to do? Spell them both as "dom"?
When people don't distinguish them in writing, is generally the go-to option, and is fairly common in informal contexts. I couldn't tell you how many would support an actual "official" change to it though-my impression is that most people are fine with the current (weird) status quo. But in the future, I'm certain that is inevitably what we'll end up with, and maybe that's just as well.
The current situation seems very hard to maintain. People who don't say "whom" usually can't even comprehend what the theoretical difference between that and "who" is. Similarly, in the few examples where English does not make a subject/object distinction in pronouns (namely "you" and "it"), I find that people are baffled by such a distinction being made in other languages (e.g. if you try to explain that they can't just say "du" for "dig"), despite the fact that they spontaneously manage to correctly distinguish "we" from "us", etc. On the other hand, I guess that that "de" and "dem" may be propped up in Sweden by the high rates of English proficiency amongst the population: if you are routinely distinguishing between the very closely cognate "they" and "them", "de" and "dem" can't become some arcane archaic rule that no one remembers. I suppose that changing to "dom" would also create a sharp divide between texts from Sweden and those in the Swedish of Finland. That might be unacceptable for people who wish to maintain the unity of the language.
Another thing that could be discussed is the reason for the innovation. It seems to me that the original pronunciation of "de" is identical to the usual pronunciation of "det". A shift to a "di", or even better a "dåmm" pronunciation, serves the purpose of removing ambiguity. Oh, and there is the issue of the article "de" (plural of "den/det") as opposed to the pronoun "de". Is its evolution similar?
wow jag känner mig lite smartare men bara lite :D
Inflectional suffix
e > å
thēr/þēr, thār, thaun thā, thār, thaun þēm/thēm, þēm/thēm, thēm/þēm thæira/thaeira, thæira/thaeira, thæira/thaeira
Is it still even worth distinguishing "de" and "dem" today, as a second language?
In writing yes, in speech no. Unless you're learning Finland Swedish.
Jag säger "di" när jag talar med mina nära släktingar och jag är född på sjuttiotalet.
Får jag fråga varifrån du kommer?
I am Swedish :)
The same thing happens/happened in norwegian.
if I'm not wrong some Norwegians don't distinguish "oss" and "vi" either.
how come? I thought you guys say "de" and "dem" normally
Why is de pronounced as dom?
Case suffix
Dom*
e > i
-s ending
Men om nästan alla säger "dåmm", är det kanske dags att ändra stavning till "dom"? Samt "mig", "dig" och "sig" till "mej", "dej" och "sej".
Ja, det är en rimlig tanke. På 70-talet hade de stavningarna vind i ryggen, men de lyckades inte slå igenom helt, och sedan vände det tillbaka.
Here in a quite large part of Värmland we say "de" with 'e' and dôm instead of "dom". It's not even close to being extinct.
English went even one (or two, depending on how you see it) step further; it merged FOUR pronouns: you, ye, thee, and thou into just "you".
de > di
de > dåm
e > o
-s suffix
Genitive suffix
dem > dåm
R deleting