Linguistic Society of America

The Vowel System of a Norwegian Dialect in Wisconsin

Author(s): Magne Oftedal
Source: Language, Vol. 25, No. 3 (Jul. - Sep., 1949), pp. 261-267
Published by: Linguistic Society of America
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/410087
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THE VOWELSYSTEM OF A NORWEGIAN DIALECT IN WISCONSIN
MAGNE OFTEDAL
Universityof Oslo
1. Most speakersof Norwegianin the Middle West belong to the farming
class.' Nearly all are bilingual,and many of them handle the English language
better than the Norwegian.It is often easy to detect their Scandinavianback-
groundin listeningto their English,even in the case of second-or third-genera-
tion Americans.They wereusuallyeducatedin a gradeschooland a Norwegian-
Lutheranparochialschool. The parochialschool, until relatively recent times,
was conductedin Norwegian;the childrenwere taught to read and write the
language.As a result, only the youngestspeakersof Norwegianare without any
knowledgeof its literary form. LiteraryDano-Norwegianis still used in church
services,and is the familiarformof the languageto those of the city population
who cultivate the idiomof their ancestorsin the Sons of Norway lodges;but the
country communitiesuse dialects almost exclusively.As a rule, a community
has only one maindialect. The pioneerspreferredto settle with peoplefromtheir
own district in Norway; if people from two districts settled close together, the
dialect that counted the largernumberof speakersusually replacedthe other.
Dialect mixturesis seldom to be found except in individualspeakers;only one
case has been reportedwhere a mixed dialect seems to be the languageof a
community.Only the largest settlements, for instance the Koshkonongsettle-
ment near Madison, have maintainedseveraldialects with equal prestige.
The dialects have been influencedby AmericanEnglish (chieflyin the form
of loanwords)to a very largeextent, so much in fact that newcomersfrom Nor-
way often find it difficultto understandthe speakers.This is true even if the
newcomerknows English; for most English words, including a large part of
those most commonlyused in AmericanNorwegian,do not sound English in a
Norwegiancontext, and the speakeris often unawarethat such-and-sucha word
is not pure Norwegian.It is this phonemicaspect of the loanwordsthat will be
dealt with here.
2. For the sake of simplicity,I shall deal with one dialect only, and, within
this dialect, only with the vowels. The dialect I have chosen is the one spoken
in a settlementlocated aroundMondoviin Buffalo County, about twenty miles
southandsouthwestof Eau Claire,Wisconsin.The foundersof the settlementand
most of the later immigrantscamefromLysterin Sogn, in westernNorway. My
materialwas collectedfrom fourinformants,all of them bornin the community.
The oldest was born in 1873, the youngest in 1890. They representin the main
1 The material for this paper is taken from records of American Norwegian speech that I
made in Wisconsin during the fall of 1947and the spring of 1948.My work was made possible
by a grant from the Committee on Studies in American Civilization at the University of
Wisconsin, and is a direct continuation of the extensive research conducted for a number
of years by Professor Einar Haugen.
261

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262 MAGNE OFTEDAL

one and the same phonemicsystem, though with some differencesin phoneme
distribution,particularlyin loanwords.
In the following,I shall use the name Lysterfor the dialectas spokenin Nor-
way, and Mondovifor its Wisconsinvariant.The Lysterdialectis known chiefly
from extensive comparativeword-listscompiledsome thirty years ago by one
of our best scholarsin the field, A. B. Larsen (SognemAlene;Oslo, 1922 f.). It
might seem incorrectto use materialfrom MODERN Lyster for the comparison
with Mondovi, as the settlement was foundednearly a century ago. My justi-
ficationfor doingso is that an examinationof the Norwegianelementsof Mondovi
shows the same inventory of phonemesas Larsen'swordlists. It is clearthat
the later developmentin Norway must have brought in elements-especially
loans from Standard Norwegian-with new phoneme sequences and possibly
new phonemes;such elementsare, of course,kept out of the comparison.
3. The Lysterdialecthas ten vowels and four diphthongsin stressedsyllables:
front unrounded/i, e, e/, front rounded/y, 0, 6/, central/a/, back /u, o, o/;
diphthongs/ei, 6y, eu, ao/. In innately unstressedsyllablesthere are only three
vowels and one diphthong:/a, a, i; ao/.
A stressed syllable is always long; it contains a long syllable-finalvowel, a
long vowel plus one or more consonants,or a shortvowel beforea geminatecon-
sonant or a consonantcluster.A stressedvowel, then, is always long when final
in the syllable, but may be long or short when followedby a consonant or a
cluster.Except for /6/, which is always short, all the stressedvowels and diph-
thongsoccurwith both degreesof length. Certainshortvowelsseemto occuronly
as morphophonemic alternantsof the correspondinglong vowels. This is true of
/e/, and probably also of /o/ and the diphthongs.
Vowels in unstressedsyllables are always short. Beside the four unstressed
vowelsmentioned,whichoccurfrequentlyin inflexionaland derivationalendings,
most or all of the other vowels occur in unstressedsyllables reducedfrom or-
dinarily stressed syllables.
The phonemictranscriptiongives a fairlygood pictureof the actual pronunci-
ation of the vowels. Long /i/, /u/, and /o/ sometimesare slightly diphthongal:
[ri:],[ u:], and [o:u]./e/ varies betweena high variety of [e] and [e]; the lower
varieties prevail before ir/. A long /e/ tends to be slightly lower than a short
one. The diphthong/ei/ correspondingly is often [ei]. /Sy/ is sometimesapproxi-
mately [oy], especially before /r/.
4. I shall now try to show how this dialect rendersthe vowel phonemesof
those Englishwordsthat have becomean integralpart of it. I must emphasize
that my material is by no means complete, consisting almost entirely of re-
sponses to a questionnairepreparedfor extensive researchin American Nor-
wegian ratherthan intensive study of a specificdialect.
In the words transcribedbelow, the stress, unless otherwiseindicated,is on
the first syllable. Pitch is not shown.
E /.i./2 is nearly always rendered by long /i/ in stressed syllables, and by short
/i/ in unstressedsyllables:/fi:l/ 'field',ifi:da/ 'to feed',/skri:n/ 'screen';/b.e.bi/
2
Symbols for English phonemes are placed between periods, to distinguish them from
Lyster phoneme symbols. Mondovi is regarded as having both English and Lyster

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 A NORWEGIANDIALECTIN WISCONSIN 263

'baby', /gre:vi/ 'gravy'. In a couple of words it is rendered by short /i/ even in

a stressed syllable, namely in /rippa/ 'to reap', /ripper/ 'reaper', and /bins/
'beans'. All these words are also found with a long vowel.
Stressed E /.I./ is most often rendered by short /i/. Instances are /digga/
'dig', /midlij/ 'midling', /kvilt/ 'quilt'. Before /r/, however, we find long /i/, as
in /dipa'ti:ri/ 'diphtheria', /bi:r/ 'beer'. In a couple of instances we find short
/e/: /resk/ 'risk', /medlij/ besides /midliD/. Unstressed /.I./ is rendered in
various ways, sometimes by /e/ (/blegket/ 'blanket'), sometimes by /i/
(/harvista/ 'to harvest'). In the word for a whip, /hyppa/, we find it as the
short high-front ROUNDED vowel, and in the words /re:var/ 'river' and / S0vo'ri:/
'shivaree' it is represented by the higher-mid-front rounded vowel.
E /.e./ has several representatives. The E sound is always preserved in the
words for baby, shades, basement, and baseball. It alternates individually with
long /e/ in the words for gravy and separator, with short /i/ in the words for
railroad and grapes (/.rel.ro:d/ and /g.re.ps/ vs. /rillrod/ and /grips/), with
short /e/ and short /i/ in the word for brake, which is /b.re.k/, /brekk/, or
/brikk/. In a number of other words, which probably all belong to the older
stock of loans, the E sound is not to be found at all. The word for make, meaning
'earn', has either long /e/ or long /e/ (/me:ka/ and /mc:ka/); /sa've:r/ 'sur-
veyor' and /e:garn/ 'ague, malarial fever' always have long /e/; /beis/ 'basin',
/freimhu:s/ 'frame house', and /leik/ 'lake' always have the diphthong /ei/.
E /.e./ is regularly rendered by short /e/: /brekkfest/ 'breakfast', /tenda/
'tend', /beddspredd/ 'bedspread'. Among the few exceptions are /soppa're:tar/
(besides /seppare:tar/) and /kl0 :vis/ 'clevis'. The latter form may be explained
in the same way as /hyppa/, /ro:var/, and / S0vo'ri:/: the neighboring labial
consonants give the E/.I./ and /.e./ a 'rounded' quality, which has caused the
monolingual immigrant (these loans presumably belong to the older stock) to
associate them with his own front rounded vowels rather than with his
/i/ and /e/.
E /.m./ is to some extent treated like /.e./, but while the latter phoneme is
nearly always rendered by a short vowel, the former in at least half of the re-
corded instances is represented by a long vowel. Besides /ketga/ 'to catch (a
cold)', /hendl/ 'a handle', /treppa/ 'a trap', /djekk/ 'jack (of clubs)' we have
/e:tik/ 'attic', /be:tri/ 'battery', /kre:kis/ 'crackers', and /tgc:ns/ 'chance'.
Before /r/, the phoneme always seems to be long, as in /be:rl/ or /be:radl/
'barrel', /skve:rdans/ 'square dance'. Both E /.e./ and E /.m./ result in Mondovi
/e/, but there are important exceptions in the case of /.m./, which is frequently
rendered by long or short /a/: /mola:sis/ and /molassis/ 'molasses', /alf'alfa/
'alfalfa', /ta:van/ and /ta:vanda/ 'tavern', /ga:lon, gallon/, and /ga'lo:n/
'gallon', /ra:bit/ and /rabbit/ 'rabbit'. This development is difficult to explain,
but at least in some of the cases it is probable that the spelling with the letter a,
which in Norwegian symbolizes the sound type [a], has influenced the pronuncia-
tion. The word /brand/ 'bran' is more easily explained. It has, undoubtedly
because of the phonetic resemblance, become homonymous with the Lyster

phonemes. The abbreviation E stands for the north-central variety of American English
spoken in Wisconsin.

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264 MAGNEOFTEDAL

/brand/ 'fire', and has also acquired the gender and inflexion of this word.3
Cases like this are numerous. Another example is the words for grain and granary,
which have become /gro:n/ and /gre:nri/. The word /gron/ already existed
in Norwegian with the meaning 'grain for food' (and several more specific mean-
ings), but acquired the meaning of the American English grain when the Nor-
wegian word for grain, /koddn/, came to mean 'corn, maize'. Here, both sound
and meaning have contributed to the development, but resemblance in meaning
is by no means indispensable, as we have seen. Compare in this connection the
word for field (corn-, wheat-), which in all recorded American Norwegian dialects
has the same phonemic shape, the same gender, and the same inflexion as the
Norwegian word fil 'file (implement)'.
E /.a./ is mostly /a/, long or short: /ba:rn/ 'barn', /ka:monsku:lo/ 'common
school'; /djard/ 'yard', /gardn/ 'garden', /larmklakka/ 'alarm clock', /blakk/
'block (in city)', / Sapp/ 'shop'. In some cases it is /a/, as in /mo:gosin/ 'mocas-
sin' besides /ma:gosin/ (1 informant); /klo:set/ 'closet' (2 informants) besides
/kla:set/ (1 informant); /kao:mn/ 'common' besides /ka:mon/.
E /.A./ has no approximate phonetic equivalent in Lyster and is replaced in
various ways. It often becomes /o/, especially in combinations with labial or
velar consonants: /soppor/ 'supper', /tobb/ 'tub', /bottri/ 'buttery, pantry',
/lombor/ 'lumber', /djoggo/ 'jug', /koltav.e.tar/ '(corn) cultivator', /trokk/
'truck'. It is /W/ in /djdstis/ 'justice (of the peace)', /djaddj/ 'judge', /ddst/
'dust'; /0/ in /l0ns/ 'lunch'; /a/ in /haska/ 'to husk (corn)', /pagki/ 'pumpkin',
/trakk/ besides /trokk/. It is /u/ in /brusk/ 'brush, underbrush' and in /djugga/
'jug' which one informant gives where the others have /djogga/. In the word for
trunk (traveling chest) it is /o/ with all informants: /trook/. Two informants use
their E [A] sound in the words for supper and rug, where the other two have
/o/. Note that /.A./ is constantly rendered by a short vowel.
E /.o./ corresponds in all recorded instances to Mondovi /o/, long in /fo :set/
'faucet', /lo :n/ 'lawn', /sto :r/ 'store', /o :fis/ 'office', /tgo :rs/ 'chores'; short in
/fork/ '(hay-, manure-) fork', /korna/ '(street-) corner', /kordve:/ 'cordwood'.
It seems to be long when a single consonant follows, long or short when followed
by a consonant cluster.
E /.o./ occurs in the loanwords as long /o/ in /ko:t/ 'coat', /mo:ar/ '(lawn-)
mower', /dj o:k/ 'yoke', /po:kar/ 'poker', /di:po:/ 'depot'; as long /o/ in /sto:v/
'kitchen stove', /ho:/ 'hoe', and the name of the town Mondovi /'manndo:vi/;
and as short /o/ in /spoks/ 'spokes'. The word gopher is rendered in various
ways, which probably reflect systematic features of the original Lyster dialect.
Two of the informants say /guffart/. The Lyster dialect of a hundred years ago
hardly possessed any sequence of long vowel plus /f/, except in compounds.
This accounts for the shortening of the vowel. A short /o/, as far as can be judged
now, did not occur before /f/, therefore /u/ instead of /o/. The third informant
gives the form /go:fo:t/. Here the E word has been transformed, by popular
3 The introduction of the /d/ may be partly due to the phenomenon known as 'opposition
entre voisins'. A great number of Norwegian dialects have /-nn/ where Lyster has /-nd/:
/brann/ : Lyster /brand/ 'fire', /hunn/ : Lyster /hund/ 'dog', /vonn/ : Lyster /vonda/
'bad, evil'.

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 A NORWEGIANDIALECTIN WISCONSIN 265

etymology, into a word which bears all the aspects of a Norwegian compound,
meaning literally 'good-foot'. The fourth informant, however, says /gu:fart/,
which seems to indicate that the limits imposed by the original system have
been transgressed, and that the rules concerning sequences of vowel plus conson-
ant in Lyster have to be re-formulated for Mondovi.
E /.v./ is found as short /u/ in /kukkis/ 'cookies', /bull/ 'bull', and as long
/u/ before /r/ in /in'lfu:rans/ 'insurance'.
E /.u./ is always /u/, long in /su:t/ 'suit (of clothes)', /bju:ro/ 'bureau,
dresser', /stu:p/ 'stoop, porch'; short in /tuls/ 'tools' and (in unstressed posi-
tion) /dju'l.aI./ 'July'.
East Norwegian possesses a retroflex r which occurs as an allophone of flapped
r and of so-called thick 1 (a retroflex cacuminal flap). In the American variants of
these dialects, this allophone merges with E /.r./ and acquires the status of a
phoneme, which in most cases makes the description of the present system ex-
tremely complicated. Lyster, however, being a West Norwegian dialect, has no
thick 1,and the /r/ phoneme has a distinct flap or trill in all its allophones. Retro-
flex sounds therefore have a more difficult access to this dialect, and, with the
exception of relatively recent loans, both stressed and unstressed retroflex vowels
are replaced by vowel plus /r/, parallel with the substitution of /r/ for the
consonant /.r./. The E stressed retroflex vowel is rendered by a rounded front
vowel plus /r/, as in /kartn/ 'curtain', /t rki/ 'turkey', /s rkis/ 'circus', /s rvis/
'service', /skv0:r4/ 'squirrel', /klork/ 'clerk'. The corresponding unstressed
vowel is /a/ in /sa've:r/ 'surveyor' and /u/ in /su'pr.aI.sparti/ 'surprise party'.
In final position, its place is taken by various Norwegian endings, /-ar/
in /seppor.e.tar/ 'separator', /-or/ in /ri:par/ 'reaper', and /-art/ in /guffort/
'gopher'. In many instances the E sound is used by one or more informants where
the others use a substitute; thus, /kartn/ is also heard as /k.r.tn/, /ri:par/ is also
heard as /.r.i:p.r./. My informants vary considerably on this point, though all of
them have some retroflex sounds in their speech.
The diphthong /.ai./ is rendered by /ei/ or maintained. In the words for
July, necktie, dining room, pie plant, pliers, and engine (/'inndj.ai.na/), all
informants agree on using /.aI./; in many other words both diphthongs are used.
There is no loanword in my material where the Norwegian diphthong alone is
found (except, of course, the instances mentioned above, where it represents
E /.e./).
The diphthong /.a-./ is found as /eu/ in /fleur/ 'flour', as /ao/ in /kaonti/
'county' and /taon/ 'township'. My informants are consistent on this point.
For the diphthong /.oI./ I have very little material.
The E unstressed vowel /.o./ is generally Mondovi /a/, as in /ovvan/ 'oven',
/koltav.e.tar/ 'cultivator', /ka:man/ 'common'. The E syllabic consonants,
which may be interpreted phonemically as sequences of /.o./ plus consonant,
are rendered in Mondovi partly as syllabic consonants, partly as /o/ plus con-
sonant (on the pattern of Lyster, which also has this kind of syllabics): /k6rtn/
'curtain', /gardn/ 'garden', /pens1/ 'pencil', /hendJ/ 'handle'; /gre:val/ 'gravel',
/ste:bol/ 'stable'. Inversely, E phonetic [aoplus consonant is rendered as syllabic
consonant (after /S/) in /buSSl/ 'bushel' and /stenSn/ 'stanchion'. The avail-

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266 MAGNEOFTEDAL

able material does not show whether Mondovi or Lyster maintains a phonemic
distinction between syllabic consonant and /a/ plus consonant. There is evidence
that at least one other West Norwegian dialect has this distinction, so that it
seems advisable to distinguish between the two in the notation until the relation
has been clearly established. In the word /s6rkis/ 'circus' E /.o./ is replaced by
/i/; in the word /ga:lon, gallon, ga'lo:n/ 'gallon' the orthography has been a
determining factor.
5. When one goes through this material, one of the features that strike one
most-besides the addition of some new phonemes to the original inventory
(/.e./, /.aI./, /.r./, and probably /.A./)-is the consistency with which certain
E vowels are rendered by Lyster short vowels, and others by Lyster long vowels.
While the three low vowels E /.ae., .a., .o./ correspond to both long and short
vowels in Mondovi, with no marked preference for either quantity, /.i., .e., .u.,
.o./ and the diphthongs are nearly always long, whereas /.I., .e., .A., .v./ are
nearly always short. This statement is valid both for E sounds preserved in
Mondovi and for their substitutes where they have been assimilated to the old
Lyster system. The stressed retroflex vowel is long when maintained as a retroflex
vowel, but its substitute is in most cases short /6/ plus /r/.
This assignment of quantity to E vowels may be explained, at least in part,
by the manner in which the vowels are produced and by their acoustic effect.
There is, I believe, a difference in tension between /.i., .e., .o., .u./ on one side
and /.I., .e., .A., .u./ on the other, besides, of course, the other differences in
articulation. Between Lyster long and short vowels there is a similar difference,
the short vowels being definitely laxer than the long ones, insofar as such a dis-
tinction may be determined without instrumental analyses.
There is also an important distributional feature. The E so-called lax vowels
/.1., .e., .A., .u./ never occur under stress without a following consonant. This
is true also for Lyster short vowels. One might suspect that this systematic fea-
ture is the only reason for interpreting the E vowels in question as short, if it
were not that E /.Ee./ and /.a./, which systematically belong to the same class,
are frequently replaced by long vowels, a fact that can be explained only by the
relative length of these vowels in English.
Short vowels resulting from E /.i., .e., .o., .u./ seem to occur chiefly in positions
where E has a relatively short vowel sound, thus before voiceless consonant in
/rippar/ 'reaper' and /brikk, brekk/ 'brake'. But instances of long vowels re-
sulting from this series even before voiceless consonant are far more numerous,
so that this development cannot be stated as a rule. In the work with these
dialects, we again and again are faced with phenomena which can be explained
historically in one way or another, but which do not seem to conform to any
general rules. Even though one may make some statements of fairly general
validity, one can never predict how an English word will sound when adopted by
an American Norwegian dialect.
The age of the loans seems to play an important role. Words that were bor-
rowed very early are treated differently from more recent loans. My material is
too limited to permit a study of this subject here; but Einar Haugen has pub-
lished an illuminating discussion of some of its aspects in Lg. 14.112-20 (1938).

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 A NORWEGIANDIALECTIN WISCONSIN 267

Haugen divides the loanwords into three groups: 1. English words wholly as-
similated to the Norwegian system; 2. partly assimilated words; and 3. ambiguous
words-that is, words that are pronounced alike in English and Norwegian.
Group 1 presumably constitutes the oldest layer of loans, Group 3 the most
recent layer. This grouping, though based on facts from a very different dialect,
seems to be equally valid for Mondovi, and, I believe, for all American Nor-
wegian dialects. There are instances that furnish good illustrations for the differ-
ent treatment of loanwords at different times, namely those English words that
have been borrowed twice. An example is tavern.It was first borrowed while the
meaning of the English word still was 'inn'. The Mondovi word /ta:van/ was
defined by one of my informants as 'a place where you can get a room and board,
sometimes also with sale of liquor'. The word /taev.r.n/, on the other hand, has
only the meaning 'a place where liquors are sold to be drunk on the premises'
and did not come into use until the word saloon had been replaced by tavern
in English. Another example is the word lunch. When one of my female informants
said 'Let's stop working for a while and have a little lunch', she used the word
/10ns/. When she told me that the Ladies' Aid was giving a lunch in the church
basement, she said /1.A.ntS/.
In the present state of our knowledge, it is difficult to say what an adequate
phonemic analysis of the Mondovi dialect should look like. Most of the evidence
seems to indicate that the simplest solution would be a description in terms of
coexisting systems, in which the loanwords of Group 3 would be treated sepa-
rately. Their description would be essentially the same as a description of Wis-
consin English. Such a procedure might be partly justified by the fact that these
loanwords are all easily recognized as English by those who use them. On the
other hand, it would lead to complications in cases where the two systems overlap,
i.e. where the phonemes of the informants' English are identical with those of
the inherited Norwegian material-e.g. /p, t, k, m, n/. The theoretical justifica-
tion of a treatment in terms of coexisting phonemic systems is still under discus-
sion ;4 further investigations of American Norwegian and other immigrant dialects
may contribute valuable data for deciding the question.
4 Cf. Fries and Pike, Coexistent phonemic systems, Lg. 25.29-50. [But if the forms
with 'English' phonemes are actually part of the Norwegian language used by immigrant
speakers, why should they be distinguished from other words in making a phonemic anal-
ysis?-BB]

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