Swedish language

Sounds

Swedish is notable for having a relatively large vowel inventory consisting of 9 vowels that make up 17 phonemes in most varieties and dialects (short /e/ and {{IPA|/ɛ/}} coincide). There are 18 consonant phonemes out of which {{IPA|/ɧ/}} and /r/ show quite considerable variation depending on both social and dialectal context.

Related Topics:
Vowel - Phoneme - Consonant

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A distinct feature of Swedish is its varied prosody, which is often one of the most noticeable differences between the various dialects. Native speakers who adapt their speech when moving to areas with other regional varieties or dialects will often adhere to the sounds of the new variety, but nevertheless maintain the prosody of their native dialect. The prosodic features of Swedish are sometimes summarized as a "melodic accent", though this term is not used by linguists and is used mostly as a descriptive, but still rather vague, term for the prosodic features of Swedish and Norwegian.

Related Topics:
Prosody - Norwegian

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Vowels

Swedish vowels are contrastive in terms of quality, and the frontal vowels appear in rounded-unrounded pairs. Unstressed {{IPA|/ɛ/}} is rendered as {{IPA|}} (schwa) in most dialects, and a lowering of vowels is very common before /r/ and the various retroflex assimilations such as {{IPA|}}, {{IPA|}}. Various patterns of diphthongs occur in different dialect groups. Among the most distinguishable are those of Skåne in southern Sweden and in Gotland.

Related Topics:
Contrastive - Frontal vowels - Rounded - Schwa - Retroflex - Diphthong - Skåne - Gotland

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Consonants

The uniquely-Swedish phoneme {{IPA|/?/}} (the "sje-sound" or voiceless palatal-velar fricative) and its allegedly double places of articulation is a difficult and complex issue that is still debated among phoneticians.{{ref|sje-sound}} Though the acoustic properties of the various {{IPA|}}-sounds are fairly similar, the realizations can vary considerably according to geography, social status, age, gender as well as social context and are notoriously difficult to describe and transcribe accurately.

Related Topics:
Voiceless palatal-velar fricative - Places of articulation

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The sje-sound has a great variety of allophones in Swedish, and often quite subtle realizations. Most common are various {{IPA|}}-like sounds, with {{IPA|}} occurring mainly in northern Sweden and {{IPA|}} in Finland. {{IPA|}} can sometimes be used in the varieties influenced by major immigrant languages like Arabic and Kurdish.

Related Topics:
Allophone - Arabic - Kurdish

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The realizations of /r/ are also highly variable in different dialects and varieties. In Central Swedish dialects {{IPA|/r/}} often becomes a fricative {{IPA|}}, in consonant clusters often as {{IPA|}}, and especially in Central Standard Swedish as the approximant {{IPA|}}. Uses of taps like {{IPA|}} are also common. In southern Sweden uvular trills or voiced fricatives, {{IPA|}}, {{IPA|}} are commonly used to realize /r/. Unlike Central and most of the Finland-Swedish variants, /r/ is not assimilated into retroflex realizations in the southern variants. {{IPA|/k?rta/}} ("map") is hence realized as {{IPA|}}.

Related Topics:
Approximant - Taps - Uvular trill - Voiced fricatives

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Prosody

Prosody in Swedish often varies substantially between different dialects including the spoken varieties of Standard Swedish. As in most languages, stress can be applied to emphasize certain words in a sentence. To some degree prosody may indicate questions, although less so than in English. Swedish is, like English, a stress-timed language and has many words that are differentiated by stress:

Related Topics:
Standard Swedish - Question - Stress-timed

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• formel {{IPA|}} — "formula"
• formell {{IPA|}} — "formal"

Although there are inflection rules to prevent two unemphasized syllables in a row, words may instead have two consecutive stressed syllables.

Related Topics:
Inflection - Syllable

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Stress in most dialects differentiates between two kinds of accents. Often referred to as acute and grave accent, they may also be referred to as accent 1 and accent 2 and are described as tonal word accents by Swedish linguists.{{ref|accents}} Most dialects of Swedish make this distinction, although the actual realizations vary and are generally hard for non-natives to distinguish. In some dialects of Swedish as well as all those spoken in Finland this distinction is absent or only detectable through advanced phonetic analysis.

Related Topics:
Stress - Acute - Grave accent

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Noteworthy are some three-hundred two-syllable word pairs that are differentiated only by their use of either grave or acute accent. One rule in play is that a word that in primary form has one syllable use accent 1, whereas a word that in primary form has more than one syllable use accent 2.

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• anden {{IPA|}} — "the duck"
• anden {{IPA|}} — "the spirit"

Here, the first word derive from the noun "and", thus using accent 1, and the second word derive from the noun "ande", thus using accent 2.

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Phonotactics

Like many other Germanic languages, Swedish has a tendency for closed syllables with a relatively large amount of consonant clusters in initial as well as final position. Though not as complex as that of most Slavic languages, examples of up to 7 consecutive consonants can occur when adding Swedish inflections to some foreign loanwords or names, and especially when combined with the tendency of Swedish to make long compound nouns. The syllable structure of Swedish can therefore be described with the following formula:

Related Topics:
Closed syllable - Slavic language - Compound

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:(C)(C)(C)V(C)(C)(C)

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This means that a Swedish one-syllable morpheme can have up to three consonants preceding the vowel that forms the nucleus of the syllable, and three consonants following it. Examples: skrämts (verb "scare" participle, passive voice) or sprängts (verb "explode" participle, passive voice). All but one of the consonant phonemes, {{IPA|/?/}}, can occur at the beginning of a morpheme, though there are only 6 possible three-consonant combinations, all of which begin with /s/ and a total of 31 initial two-consonant combinations. All consonants except for /h/ and {{IPA|/ɕ/}} can occur finally, and the total amount of final two-consonant clusters is 62. In some cases this can result in near-unpronounceable combinations, such as in västkustskt {{Audio|sv-västkustskt.ogg|listen}}, consisting of västkust ("west coast") with the adjective suffix -sk and the neuter suffix -t.

Related Topics:
Morpheme - Participle - Passive voice - Suffix

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All vowel phonemes, short or long, can occur in stressed syllables. Unstressed syllables can only be short, and the distinction between /e/ and {{IPA|/ɛ/}} is therefore not present. In pre-stress syllables, all vowels but /u/ and /o/ are differentiated. With each successive post-stress syllable, the number of contrasting vowels decreases gradually with distance from the point of stress; within three syllables from intonation, only , {{IPA|}} or {{IPA|}} occur.

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