Sammendrag
From as far back as we have sources, the dialects spoken in the rural areas around Bergen in Western Norway have lacked the tonal accent contrast that otherwise characterizes most Norwegian and Swedish dialects, the town dialect of Bergen itself included. Due to urbanization, a major part of these areas is now in the process of being turned into suburbs, while their dialects are gradually being replaced by the Bergen dialect. In the forefront of this change seems to be the introduction of the tonal accent contrast. In this article, it is shown that the closer a local community is to Bergen, the more advanced the shift, and while there are few speakers born before 1975 who have acquired the contrast, a substantial part of the younger speakers, born after 1980, has it. It is also shown that the tonal pioneers in the oldest group, and those of the younger one living relatively far from Bergen, have acquired a phonetically intermediate contrast where the statistically significant distance between the two accent peaks is considerably smaller than in Bergen.
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