Vad har de på gång?

English Translation

What are they up to?

It seems that ‘de’ is consistently used in written language for the pronunciation ‘dom’. Anybody know the reason why?

Both “De” (they - subject pronoun) and “dem” (them - object pronoun) are pronounced “dom”. They were pronounced differently before, but, as the language has evolved, the two have merged. Even if the distinction is still made in writting.


For reference: the wiktionary article about it

2 Likes

Let me just add that it’s a thorny issue. Many people want to modernize the written language, but they can’t agree on whether to replace the two pronouns with a uniform dom, de, or dem; all suggestions have merits, but some may look bad to those who know how to use either de or dem correctly. Speaking or in informal writing, you can never go wrong using dom consistently.

2 Likes

That is interesting. I thought it was a mistake in Clozemaster!

Actually, the pronunciation of ‘de’ in Danish (same spelling) is off as well. It is pronounced ‘di’, with the same vowel sound as in Swedish ‘ni’. I cannot think of another Danish word in which ‘e’ is pronounced as ‘i’.

1 Like

Some Swedish dialects also pronounce de as “di”.