XPost: rec.arts.books.tolkien   
   From: jcb@inf.ed.ac.uk   
      
   On 2012-05-10, Troels Forchhammer  wrote:   
   > Oh -- and I'm sorry if I come across as preaching: my own kids are   
   > thoroughly fed up with hearing their father go on about how they can   
   > easily understand Swedish if they just make an effort, but it our   
      
   That way round is easy...mapping heard Swedish on to the written   
   language is fairly easy, and then the differences are small. The   
   trouble for the poor Swedes (and the rest of the world) is that   
   mapping heard Danish on to the written language is even harder than   
   doing it with English, because of the extensive sound changes in   
   spoken Danish.   
   Though Swedish has its problems...Danish has about four vowels that   
   all sound like "eh" to English, whereas Swedish has four vowels that   
   all sound like "ew" :-) But at least the Swedes pronounce most of the   
   consonants.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)