Ray Saintonge wrote:
For Gothenburg/Göteborg I see the issue as more in
transition than
unstable. I just looked at a popular work: "The World Almanac and Book
of Facts, 1998" and it uses "Göteborg". This seems to reflect a modern
trend. My 1906 Encyclopedia Americana lists it under "Gottenburg".adds
both alternatives and show "Götheborg" with the extra "h" as an
alternative Swedish spelling..
I doubt that "Götheborg" was used in Sweden after 1860. It was in use
earlier, when Swedish spelling was more random and before "foreign
elements" like "th" were weeded out.
Yes, this is probably in transition. Today, the non-Swedes who
discover Göteborg do so on the web or as tourists. They *read* the
name and it is spelled "Göteborg" on Swedish street signs and maps.
These tourists seldom need to learn how to pronounce the name.
The city was founded as a sea port in 1621 after Sweden got access to
the west coast, which used to be Danish/Norwegian. Many of the people
who "built" the new city were merchants from England and Scotland with
names like "Chalmers" (see
www.chalmers.se), resulting in English
often being *spoken* in the city, both by visiting sailors and the
locals who catered to them.
The same transition might happen to Hanover/Hannover and
Munich/München, but hardly to Germany/Deutschland or Sweden/Sverige.
Hanover used to have strong ties with England, but that is not the
case anymore, and Swedes who write English texts about the CeBIT expo
don't know there is an English spelling that differs from the
German/Swedish one.
(How long will it take for the spelling in my .signature to catch on?)
--
Lars Aronsson (lars(a)aronsson.se)
Aronsson Datateknik
Teknikringen 1e, SE-583 30 Linuxköping, Sweden
tel +46-70-7891609
http://aronsson.se/ http://elektrosmog.nu/ http://susning.nu/