Proceedings Fonetik 2009 - Institutionen för lingvistik

Proceedings, FONETIK 2009, Dept. of Linguistics, Stockholm UniversityThe acoustics of Estonian Swedish long close vowelsas compared to Central Swedish and Finland SwedishEva Liina Asu 1 , Susanne Schötz 2 and Frank Kügler 31 Institute of Estonian and General Linguistics, University of Tartu2 Department of Linguistics and Phonetics, Centre for Languages and Literature, Lund University3 Department of Linguistics, Potsdam UniversityAbstractThis pilot study investigates the phonetic realisationof Estonian Swedish long close vowelscomparing them with Central Swedish and FinlandSwedish counterparts. It appears that inthe Rickul variety of Estonian Swedish there isa distinction between only three long closevowels. The analysed vowels of Estonian Swedishare more similar to those of Central Swedishthan Finland Swedish, as measured by theEuclidean distance. Further research withmore data is needed to establish the exactvowel space and phonetic characteristics of EstonianSwedish dialects.IntroductionThis study is a first step in documenting thephonetic characteristics of Estonian Swedish(ES), a highly endangered variety of Swedishspoken historically on the islands and westerncoast of Estonia. Despite its once flourishingstatus, ES is at present on the verge of extinction.Most of the Estonian Swedish communityfled to Sweden during WWII. Today only ahandful of elderly native ES speakers remain inEstonia, and about a hundred in Sweden.ES has received surprisingly little attentionand was not, for instance, included in theSweDia 2000 project (Bruce et al., 1999) becausethere were no speakers from youngergenerations. To our knowledge, ES has notbeen analysed acoustically before; all the existingwork on its sound system has been conductedin the descriptive framework of dialectresearch (e.g. E. Lagman, 1979). Therefore, theaim of this study is to carry out the first acousticanalysis of ES by examining the quality ofclose vowels. In this pilot study we will focuson ES long close vowels comparing them tothose of Finland Swedish (FS) and CentralSwedish (CS), the two varieties of Swedish thathave had most influence on ES in recent times.Swedish is unique among world’s languagesbecause of a number of phonologically distinctcontrasts in the inventory of close vowels (cf.Ladefoged and Maddieson, 1996). It has beenshown, however, that there is considerablevariation in the realisation of these contrastsdepending on the variety of Swedish (Elert,2000, Kuronen, 2001). Thus, the study of closevowels seems like a good place where to startthe acoustic analysis of ES sound system.General Characteristics of EstonianSwedishSwedish settlers started arriving in Estonia inthe Middle Ages. During several centuries, theycontinued coming from various parts in Swedenand Finland bringing different dialects whichinfluenced the development of separate ES varieties.ES dialects are usually divided into fourdialect areas on the basis of their sound systemand vocabulary (see Figure 1).Figure 1. The main dialect areas of Estonian Swedishin the 1930s (from E. Lagman 1979: 2).54