Re: Re: Åland

From: Erkki Kolehmainen (erkki.kolehmainen@kotus.fi)
Date: Tue Nov 08 2005 - 10:11:46 CST

  • Next message: Erkki Kolehmainen: "Re: Åland"

    FYI: Åland is "Ahvenanmaa" in Finnish. Å is the English "river" in Swedish.

    Regards, Erkki

    Philippe Verdy wrote:

    > From: "Marion Gunn" <mgunn@egt.ie>
    >
    >> Scríobh Hans Aberg:
    >>
    >>>
    >>> Or "groups of islands" (and a province): sorry I did not think of
    >>> that. My Bonnier's Encyclopedia from 1967 suggests that the word
    >>> Åland comes from Primitive Norse: either Ahwiland, "land of island",
    >>> or "Ahvaland", "land of water"....
    >>
    >>
    >> That makes sense. How interesting! The Irish word for 'river' is 'abha',
    >> with historical pronunciationa like both 'ahva' and 'ahwa' - until
    >> now, I had not considered a Norse association for that particular word.
    >
    >
    > And what is the origin of the name of the "Oland" islands (part of the
    > Swedish territory, and that has a very similar prununciation, and not
    > very far to the South of Åland Islands in the Baltic sea) when you know
    > that many people in Åland speak Swedish preferably to Finnish?
    >
    > Is there really a difference of pronunciation between Oland and Åland in
    > Swedish ? May this justify the fact that Ålanders prefer not speaking
    > about Åland Islands, due to possible confusion with the Swedish Oland
    > Islands in oral speech ?
    >
    >



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