The Swedish third person plural pronoun has the nominative case form de, which is pronounced /dɔm/.
How did this situation come about? My guess is that the nominative merged with the accusative but somehow maintained its old orthographic form.
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Sign up to join this communityThe Swedish third person plural pronoun has the nominative case form de, which is pronounced /dɔm/.
How did this situation come about? My guess is that the nominative merged with the accusative but somehow maintained its old orthographic form.
MujjinGun has provided this excellent video in a comment, but it's been long enough since it was posted that it deserves a proper answer. I've provided comparisons from English as well whenever possible.
Originally, the Swedish third-person plural pronoun was de in the nominative and dem in the accusative, pronounced just as spelled. At this point the spelling was standardized, and there was much rejoicing.
Over time the pronunciation shifted to /di/ and /dɔm/, but the spelling remained the same. (Compare the mess that is modern English vowels; the spelling used to make sense, but the pronunciation has changed and the orthography hasn't kept up with it.)
Then in northern and central Sweden, de slowly fell out of fashion in the spoken language. Instead, dem was used for both the nominative and the accusative. (Compare how English thou has been replaced almost entirely with you.)
This was seen as vulgar, lower-class, and slang-y. So it happened exclusively in spoken language; in writing, and in more formal environments, the nominative would still be de. (Compare informal English contractions like "gonna". I'd almost always say "gonna" out loud, but in writing I would put "going to" without even noticing the difference.)
This "incorrect" pronunciation slowly spread. Once it was part of the Stockholm local dialect the vulgar/informal labels started to fade away, and by the mid-20th century /dɔm/ became the official standard pronunciation for both nominative and accusative.
And that's where we are now, with the pronouns usually spelled de and dem but both pronounced /dɔm/.
I would say that the Bouba/kiki effect has something to do with the explanation.
I'm from Northern Sweden and briefly watched and listened to the video about the de/dem/dom etymology. I think that there was absolutely nothing about why and only observations how words evolved and changed and how people did.
I would say that the reason is the sound. It is easier and sounds softer to say /dɔm/. The sound has a psychological association with something round and soft, compared with the other sound ("di/de(t)") that has a psychological association with something sharp and hard.
If you compare the sounds in a test, many people will make a connection between a soft sound (example "Bouba") and a round and soft shape, and they will make a connection between a "Kiki" sound and something sharp.
The first association (roundness) is associated with easygoing and the second association (sharpness) is associated with hard determinism.