Thursday 30 April 2015

Blogging from A to Z in April - The Letter Z - Thursday 30th April 2015


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Thursday 30th April 2015 - The Letter Z





























 Z is for 'ZEST', which is IVER in Swedish.


Yes, Z is a part of the Swedish alphabet, but it is not a well-used letter because the z-sound that we say in English does not exist in the Swedish sound system. If you are going to learn how to speak proper Swedish, you will just have to leave your buzzing Z:s at home!


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As Tina Downey pointed out in her Postcards from Sweden, the Swedish alphabet does not end with the letter Z. There are three more letters tagged on at the end: Å, Ä and Ö.

One fun thing about these letters is that two of them are a word in itself. Ö is an island in Swedish and Å is a creek or small river.

There is a Swedish proverb using the word å*Gå inte över ån efter vatten, 'Don’t cross the stream to get water', meaning 'Don't do things needlessly complicated; settle with a simpler solution when there exists one.' "Carry coals to Newcastle."' (Source.)

Another fun fact about these characters is how they became what they are: letters you have seen before, but with extra dots or accent marks. But they are letters in their own right. You cannot remove the dots or the circle without changing the meaning of the words that are spelled with them. How did this start?

The Å, which looks like an A with a tiny ring on top, was originally spelled as two A:s (aa). But after a time, writers or scribes wanted to save space and wrote a tiny A over the one A. It became a circle over the A.

Both Ä and Ö have a similar history. They were first spelled with an extra 'E' afterwards, as 'ae' and 'oe'. The 'E' was later placed over the 'A' or the 'O' in order to save space. Then the tiny raised 'E' became just a squiggly line and then finally just two dots.


You can see this development if you look at very old handwritten documents or very old printed texts. These tiny letters became diacritical marks**.


Thank you for visiting my blog posts for A to Z in April 2015, which were dedicated to the memory of Tina Downey, who did so much to make the A to Z in April Challenge work.



Best wishes,
Anna













First Commenter:
XXX


P.S.
* Watercourses in Sweden and the other Nordic countries are in Swedish usually referred to as bäck, å or älv. An å is usually larger than a bäck (brook, creek) but smaller than an älv (large river). A certain large bäck may however be larger than a certain small å, and a certain large å may be larger than a certain small älv. The word to use about a certain watercourse is often included as part of its name: Göta älv, Stångån. There are regional differences in whether watercourses of a certain size tend to have å or älv in their names. All älvar are found north of Göteborg, but that is also where the largest rivers in Scandinavia are found. For some rivers in southern Sweden the word ström is used, since that is the watercourse word included in their names. Rivers in other parts of the world are usually referred to with the word flod, which is a more neutral word for any watercourse larger than a bäck.

**Diacritic Marks (Source)

A diacritic /d.əˈkrɪtɨk/ – also diacritical mark, diacritical point, or diacritical sign – is a glyph added to a letter, or basic glyph. The term derives from the Greek διακριτικός (diakritikós, "distinguishing"), which is composed of the ancient Greek διά (diá, through) and κρίνω (krínein or kríno, to separate). Diacritic is primarily an adjective, though sometimes used as a noun, whereas diacritical is only ever an adjective. Some diacritical marks, such as the acute ( ´ ) and grave ( ` ), are often called accents. Diacritical marks may appear above or below a letter, or in some other position such as within the letter or between two letters.
The main use of diacritical marks in the Latin script is to change the sound-values of the letters to which they are added. Examples from English are the diaereses in naïve and Noël, which show that the vowel with the diaeresis mark is pronounced separately from the preceding vowel; the acute and grave accents, which can indicate that a final vowel is to be pronounced, as in saké and poetic breathèd; and the cedilla under the "c" in the borrowed French word façade, which shows it is pronounced /s/ rather than /k/. In other Latin alphabets, they may distinguish between homonyms, such as the French ("there") versus la ("the"), which are both pronounced [la]. In Gaelic type, a dot over a consonant indicates lenition of the consonant in question.
In other alphabetic systems, diacritical marks may perform other functions. Vowel pointing systems, namely the Arabic harakat ( ـَ, ـُ, ـُ, etc.) and the Hebrew niqqud ( ַ, ֶ, ִ, ֹ , ֻ, etc.) systems, indicate sounds (vowels and tones) that are not conveyed by the basic alphabet. The Indic virama ( ् etc.) and the Arabic sukūn ( ـْـ ) mark the absence of a vowel. Cantillation marks indicate prosody. Other uses include the Early Cyrillic titlo ( ◌҃ ) and the Hebrew gershayim ( ״ ), which, respectively, mark abbreviations or acronyms, and Greek diacritical marks, which showed that letters of the alphabet were being used as numerals. In the Hanyu Pinyin official romanization system for Chinese, diacritics are used to mark the tones of the syllables in which the marked vowels occur.
In orthography and collation, a letter modified by a diacritic may be treated either as a new, distinct letter or as a letter–diacritic combination. This varies from language to language, and may vary from case to case within a language.
In some cases, letters are used as "in-line diacritics" in place of ancillary glyphs, because they modify the sound of the letter preceding them, as in the case of the "h" in English "sh" and "th".[1]

Wednesday 29 April 2015

Blogging from A to Z in April - The Letter Y - Wednesday 29th April 2015


<a href="http://www.a-to-zchallenge.com/"><img alt="" src="http://i1139.photobucket.com/albums/n547/Jeremy-iZombie/A2Z-BADGE-0002015-LifeisGood-230_zps660c38a0.jpg" title="Blogging from A to Z April Challenge" /></a>



Wednesday 29th April 2015 - The Letter Y


























Y is for YR, which means 'DIZZY' in Swedish. The word YRVAKEN  was the word Tina Downey featured for the letter 'Y' in her 2012 A to Z post. 


Thank you, Tina!



 










I love the word yrvaken. It describes the confusion of waking up and not knowing exactly where you are or what time it is. A truly wonderfully descriptive Swedish word. Read Tina Downey's post about yrvaken here.



Thank you for visiting!



Best wishes,
Anna













First Commenter:
XXX

Monday 27 April 2015

Blogging from A to Z in April - The Letter W - Monday 27th April 2015

 <a href="http://www.a-to-zchallenge.com/"><img alt="" src="http://i1139.photobucket.com/albums/n547/Jeremy-iZombie/A2Z-BADGE-0002015-LifeisGood-230_zps660c38a0.jpg" title="Blogging from A to Z April Challenge" /></a>



Monday 27th April 2015 - The Letter W





























W is for 'WATER', which is VATTEN in Swedish. Clean 'WATER', like air, is essential to our survival. The elements of survival have become a sub-theme for my A to Z with English and Swedish words.



Thank you for visiting!


Best wishes,
Anna












First Commenter:

Sunday 26 April 2015

Blogging from A to Z in April - A Day of rest on Sunday 26th April 2015


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Sunday 26th April 2015 - A Day of Rest

We have just finished the fourth week of A to Z in April with English and Swedish words. (And sometimes Swedish and English words.)







Click on the letter below to visit any post that you may have missed:


Q     R     S     T     U     V


Thank you for visiting!



Best wishes,
Anna










First Commenter:
XXX

Saturday 25 April 2015

Blogging from A to Z in April - The Letter V - Saturday 25th April 2015


<a href="http://www.a-to-zchallenge.com/"><img alt="" src="http://i1139.photobucket.com/albums/n547/Jeremy-iZombie/A2Z-BADGE-0002015-LifeisGood-230_zps660c38a0.jpg" title="Blogging from A to Z April Challenge" /></a>



Saturday 25th April 2015 - The Letter V

























V is for VÅFFLOR, which is 'WAFFLES' in Swedish. The word Våffla has been in the Swedish language since 1664. A fun fact about Swedish waffles: Every year on 25th March, everyone eats waffles in Sweden. Why is that? What is so special about that day?



source













The 25th of March is 'Annunciation Day', the day that the Angel appeared to the Virgin Mary and announced that she was going to become the mother of our Lord. In Swedish, 'Annunciation Day' is Marie bebådelsedag or Vårfrudagen (literally 'The Day of Our Lady).




source









But just regular everyday folks misunderstood the name Vårfrudagen, and thought that it was Våffeldagen, which means 'Waffle-day', a day for eating Waffles.




source


























Thank you for visiting!


Best wishes,
Anna













First Commenter:

Su-sieee! Mac
of
Qwerity View, from the top of the ladder 


 



Friday 24 April 2015

New Etsy Treasury: Sea Green

Blogging from A to Z in April - The Letter U - Friday 24th April 2015


<a href="http://www.a-to-zchallenge.com/"><img alt="" src="http://i1139.photobucket.com/albums/n547/Jeremy-iZombie/A2Z-BADGE-0002015-LifeisGood-230_zps660c38a0.jpg" title="Blogging from A to Z April Challenge" /></a>



Friday 24th April 2015 - The Letter U




























U is for UTTER, which is the Swedish word for OTTER, those cute, but wild water mammals, that live in forests near bodies of water. Did you know that the English word (and probably the Swedish word too) is related to the Indo-European word, wódr̥, for WATER?


source












I have featured cats and hedgehogs for this challenge, so why not another cute furry animal, the European otter, (Lutra lutra)?


source













source











source












source










 

Thank you for visiting!


Best wishes,
Anna











First Commenter:
XXX

Thursday 23 April 2015

Blogging from A to Z in April - The Letter T - Thursday 23rd April 2015


<a href="http://www.a-to-zchallenge.com/"><img alt="" src="http://i1139.photobucket.com/albums/n547/Jeremy-iZombie/A2Z-BADGE-0002015-LifeisGood-230_zps660c38a0.jpg" title="Blogging from A to Z April Challenge" /></a>



Thursday 23rd April 2015 - The Letter T




























T is for 'TIME', which is TID in Swedish. Time is like the wind, you can't hold it or see it, but it's there.

A short post today. 

The word for newspaper in Swedish is tidning, my local newspaper where I live is called Norrköpings Tidningar. And what archaic English word that means 'news' comes to mind? Yes, 'tidings'.



Thank you for visiting!


Best wishes,
Anna













First Commenter:
Alex J. Cavanaugh

http://alexjcavanaugh.blogspot.se/


Wednesday 22 April 2015

Blogging from A to Z in April - The Letter S - Wednesday 22nd April 2015


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Wednesday 22nd April 2015 - The Letter S























 
S is for SOLROS, which is 'SUNFLOWER' in Swedish, one of Tina Downey's favourite flowers. I want to honour Tina's memory with a sunflower for the letter S. 






I took theses pictures before 20th August 2009, when my daughter Elisabet was five years old. I wanted to post them for the memorial post for Tina Downey on 8th September 2014. I thought this one lone sunflower was symbolic of Tina's strong will to live and reach out to others. But I couldn't find it until now after going through several memory cards and about 6000 photos.






















The photo quality of the last picture is really bad - it is not even in focus. But it shows the unkempt part of our garden behind the garage, just sand, gravel, two broken bicycles and an abandoned baby carriage. No one planted this sunflower. There must have been seeds that were just dumped there. And only one plant survived.





















I wish Tina could have seen these pictures. I wonder what she would have thought? She was a great one for taking photos. She might have liked them.

I wish I could have met Tina in person. We never did. We just chatted through our blogs and the blog hops that we did together. Thank you Tina for inspiring me.


And thank you all for taking the time to visit with me here.


Best wishes,
Anna












First Commenter:
Tanya Walton
of
Allotments4You


http://www.allotments4you.com/2015/04/rainbows-and-raindrops.html#comment-form

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