• mrmule@lemmy.world
    30·
    1 day ago

    This is for the Swedish interpretation of the spelling, blåhaj is also a popular child’s song in Sweden.

    The å is pronounced almost exactly like the English word ‘awe’.

    j in Swedish makes the sound of English’s y

    Blå haj is then pronounced as - ‘bloa high’

    • pmk@lemmy.sdf.org
      1·
      21 hours ago

      The thing that my girlfriend struggled with when she moved to sweden was our swedish letter “y”. She can do it now, but it still doesn’t come naturally, she has to consciously move the right muscles to pronounce it.

    • eightyEnglish
      5·
      1 day ago

      Me too, always makes me keen for baja tacos and I subconsciously make a positive association with the instance/word.

  • Peachy [they/them] @lemmy.blahaj.zoneMEnglish
    9·
    1 day ago

    Wait, “blo” as is “blow” or “blue”? English is stupid language…we have no accents to show which form of a vowel we’re using. I’m assuming “blow”, as that makes the most contextual sense, but again, English is dumb.

    • LordAmplifier@pawb.socialEnglish
      6·
      1 day ago

      They don’t have one for blåhaj, but Wiktionary has an audio file of someone pronouncing blå (blue) in Swedish. The second half of blåhaj sounds like English “Hi,” and the phonemic transcription of the full word is /ˈbloːhaj/. The /bloː/ part is kinda like how someone from Glasgow or someone with a strong German accent might say “blow.”

    • lime!@feddit.nuEnglish
      11·
      1 day ago

      blow-high

      Edit: well, kinda. the sound doesn’t exist in English but the closest i can think of is the o-sound in “score”. and there’s no diphthong, which is why people tend to write “blo-”. it’s a flat sound, which English sort of doesn’t do.