Främre realisation av kort /u/ i nordvästra Skåne : En dialektgeografisk undersökning

In the beginning of the 20th century, a new phonetic dialectal trait was observed along the coast of the northwestern parts of Scania, in southern Sweden. The pronunciation of the short vowel u in words such as hund (dog) and buss (bus) had moved forward in its place of articulation and coming to resemble the vowels y and ö. By examining the Institute for Language and Folklore’s collection of Scanian dialect words, this essay maps out the geographical and chronological variation of the fronted short /u/ variant, as well as its prevalence in different phonological contexts. The results suggest an isogloss where the fronted short /u/ variant only appears in the most western areas of northwestern Scania. It appears before the alveolar/dental consonants /t/, /s/ and /n/, as noted at the end of the 19th century. The variant’s occurrence is also influenced by the central standard language of Sweden.