Småländska

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Småländska (Swedish for "Smålandian") is a general term for the dialects of Swedish spoken in the historical province of Småland in southern Sweden. The northeastern dialects are mainly influenced by the Central Swedish dialects while the southwest has been more influenced by Southern Swedish dialects, like that of Halland and Skåne. Among the most distinguishing features of southern Småländska is the use of a uvular trill [ʀ] (most often realized as a voiced uvular fricative [ʁ]) for the Swedish phoneme /r/. A major isogloss runs straight through Småland in a rough line from the border to Västergötland in the west through Jönköping and to the coastal town of Mönsterås in the east, 40 km north of Kalmar. The isogloss divides the dorsal realizations of /r/ in the south and the transitional area that uses both coronal and dorsal realization encompassing large parts of Västergötland, Östergötland, Värmland and Bohuslän. North of this transiational area only coronal realizations such as alveolar trills [r], alveolar taps [ɾ] and voiced retroflex fricatives [ʐ] are used.

[edit] References

• Elert, Claes-Christian (2000) Allmän och svensk fonetik ISBN 91-1-300939-7
• Nationalencyklopedin, article Småland; section dialekter