News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on The lost letters of the English alphabet. Parent comment

Re:The lost letters of the English alphabet by kagamine on Monday January 16, 2017 @07:52AM (#13409667)
Half of those words make no sense in modern Norwegian. A run through of the list and their approximate pronunciations in English would be:

Skin: shin never heard this said, GooTranslate gives "full" but "full" is "hel" in Norwegian

sky: she meaning sky (the vast expanse above your head)

ski: shee meaning ski like a plank of wood strapped to you foot for travelling on snow.

skill: sheeel to divide or separate. Bears no relation to English that I know of.

skid: sheed not a word I know in Norwgian

skull: shool again, not a word I know in Norwegian, the word for skull is 'hode'

skip: ship a thing that floats and is bigger than a boat.

skirt: sheert not a word, but probably from skjørt meaning the same.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The lost letters of the English alphabet by Symbiote on Monday January 16, 2017 @08:20AM (#13409788)
> Skin: shin never heard this said, GooTranslate gives "full" but "full" is "hel" in Norwegian

skinn in Norwegian, or skind in Danish.

> skill

Seems obsolete, I've only vaguely aware of this usage, and I'm a native speaker: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/skill#Etymology_1

> skull

There's a skalli in Danish: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/skalle

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The lost letters of the English alphabet by kagamine on Monday January 16, 2017 @08:28AM (#13409825)
skill is not obsolete and is heard in everyday speaking as in "å skille ut".
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The lost letters of the English alphabet by Symbiote on Monday January 16, 2017 @12:39PM (#13411492)
I meant it was obsolete in English.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The lost letters of the English alphabet by admax88q on Monday January 16, 2017 @08:02AM (#13409697)
> sky: she

> ski: shee

> skill: sheeel

For a moment there I hoped you were just going to keep adding e's to as you went down the list.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The lost letters of the English alphabet by kagamine on Monday January 16, 2017 @08:19AM (#13409780)
It's quite hard for me to get across the slightly differing sounds as it'snot my native tongue. That is why I used "approximation" in my comment, but yes it does seem like an ever lengthening ee sound. The rule is that if the vowel is followed by a double consonant it's a short vowel, single consonant means long vowel, so bil = beel and bill = beeel. But as a non-native it can be very hard to distinguish during a conversation and I am often misunderstood. In fact, I'm not even sure I have the rule the right way around :(
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The lost letters of the English alphabet by nso on Monday January 16, 2017 @08:17AM (#13409771)
Skin: "Dyreskinn"....

Skull: The word for skull is most definitly not "hode". It's "skalle", which is very similar.

Furthermore, not all dialects have the "sh" sound for sk.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The lost letters of the English alphabet by kagamine on Monday January 16, 2017 @08:23AM (#13409803)
That's a double-l.

The word for head is most definitely hode. Which is what I thought of.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The lost letters of the English alphabet by tallanvor on Monday January 16, 2017 @08:15AM (#13409757)
Well, couldn't you use skalle for skull? Or hodeskalle? I'm not a native speaker, but my understanding is that hode is more general than the skull.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The lost letters of the English alphabet by kagamine on Monday January 16, 2017 @08:21AM (#13409790)
Ha, yesterday I even saw a sign over a low door upon which was written "skall skall ikke". So yes, you are correct with skalle. I have a terrible memory.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The lost letters of the English alphabet by vorg on Monday January 16, 2017 @08:37AM (#13409867)
Surely English sk-word "skoal" is used in Norwegian.
[ Parent | on HN ]