Swedish phonology

The phonology of Swedish is notable for having a large vowel inventory, with 9 vowels that are distinguished in quality and to some degree quantity, making up 17 vowel phonemes in most dialects (short IPA|/e/ and IPA|/ɛ/ coincide, particularly in unstressed syllables). In some areas these vowels are still distinguished and a full 18-vowel system is upheld. Swedish pronunciation of consonants is similar to that of most other Germanic languages.

There are 18 consonant phonemes out of which IPA|/ɧ/ and IPA|/r/ show quite considerable variation depending on both social and dialectal context. The voiceless palatal-velar fricative realization of IPA|/ɧ/ found in many dialects, including the more prestigious forms of the standard language, has so far not been found in any other language.

Standard pronunciation

Contrary to the situation with Danish or Finnish, there can't be said to exist any completely uniform nation-wide spoken Standard Swedish. Instead there are several regional standard varieties (acrolects or prestige dialects), i.e. the most intelligible or prestigious forms of spoken Swedish, each within their area. Within Sweden actors, singers and TV-personalties are often advised to "neutralize" their dialects by assimilating Central Standard Swedish pronunciation due to the high concentration of political and media power within the Stockholm region.

The differences in the phonology of the various forms of Standard Swedish can be quite considerable, although as a rule less marked than between more localized dialects, including major differences in prosody, vowel quality and assimilation. The differences between the various regional dialects may be compared with those of General American, Australian English, and British Received Pronunciation.

In Sweden, the high-prestige Central Swedish varieties often go under the name of "rikssvenska" ("National Swedish"), a term that in Finland indicates all varieties of Standard Swedish spoken in Sweden as opposed to Finland. Similarly, high-prestige Finland Swedish may go under the name of "högsvenska" ("High Swedish"), which however has become a controversial and emotionally loaded term that has also changed in meaning in the course of the 20th century.

Vowels

:"All pronunciations below are made by a Swedish male, age 25, in a variety of Central Standard Swedish spoken in the greater Stockholm region."Like many other Germanic languages, Swedish has long and short vowels. The length covaries with the quality of the vowels, as shown below. As a rule, although not without exceptions, the place of articulation varies between long and short vowels. The front vowels appear in rounded-unrounded pairs. Unstressed IPA|/ɛ/ is rendered as IPA| [ə] (schwa) in most dialects, and a lowering of vowels is very common before IPA|/r/ and the various retroflex assimilations resulting from it (see below).

Long vowels

Plosives

IPA|/r/ has many quite distinct variations in Standard Swedish. The realization as an alveolar trill occurs among most speakers only in contexts where emphatic stress is used. In the southern variants the sound is rendered with IPA| [ʀ] . In Central Swedish the "r"s can vary greatly depending on social and phonotactic context. Word-initially, IPA|/r/ often becomes a fricative IPA| [ʐ] , in consonant clusters often as IPA| [ʂ] and especially in Central Standard Swedish as the approximant IPA| [ɹ] . Uses of taps like IPA| [ɾ] are also common. One of the most distinct features of the southern varieties are the use of uvular trills or voiced fricatives, IPA| [ʀ] , IPA| [ʁ] for the IPA|/r/-phoneme.

In most varieties of Swedish which use an alveolar IPA|/r/ (in particular the central, northern and Finland Swedish forms), the combination of IPA|/r/ with dental consonants (IPA|/t, d, n, l, s/) produces retroflex consonant realizations, which are usually described as allophones resulting from assimilation rather than separate phonemes. Thus, IPA|/kɑːrta/ ("map") is realized as IPA| [kʰɑːʈa] , IPA|/nuːrd/ ("north") as IPA| [nuːɖ] , IPA|/vɛːnern/ ("Vänern", the lake) as IPA| [vɛːnəɳ] , IPA|/kɑːrlsta/ ("Karlstad", the town) as IPA| [kʰɑːɭ.sta] , and IPA|/fɛrsk/ ("fresh") as IPA| [fæʂːk] . This process is not limited by word boundaries, e.g. ("we're leaving now") and ("we're going downtown") are rendered IPA| [vɪɡoːɳʉ̟ː] and IPA| [vɪɡɔʈɪstɑːn] . In the southern varieties, which use a uvular IPA|/r/, retroflex realisations don't occur. For example, IPA|/kɑːrta/ ("map") is realized as IPA| [kʰɑʁta] , etc. [Garlén (1988), 73-74]

Laterals

Variations of IPA|/l/ are not as common, though some allophones exist particularly in the north and in and around Värmland as a retroflex flap IPA| [ɽ] .

Nasals

When preceding IPA|/f/ or IPA|/v/, /m/ is realized as IPA| [ɱ] as in IPA| [kaɱfɛr] ("camphor").

Stress and pitch

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:

*"formel" IPA| [ˈfɔrmɛl] — "formula"
*"formell" IPA| [fɔrˈmɛl] — "formal"

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 Scandinavian linguists. [Thorén (1997)] Most dialects of Swedish make this distinction, although the actual realizations vary and are generally difficult for non-natives to distinguish. In some dialects of Swedish, including those spoken in Finland, this distinction is absent or only detectable through advanced phonetic analysis. Generally, accent 2 is characterized by a later timing of the intonational pitch rise as compared with accent 1; the so-called two-peaked accents (used in most dialects, except for southern Sweden, Gotland and Dalarna) also have another, earlier and non-intonational pitch rise in accent 2, hence the term.

Noteworthy are some three-hundred two-syllable word pairs that are differentiated only by their use of either grave or acute accent. The main rule is that a word that in dictionary form has one syllable has accent 1, while those that are bisyllabic have accent 2. Bisyllabic forms resulting from declination or derivation also tend to have accent 2, except for the definite article, which doesn't induce that accent. This distinction has been present in Scandinavian dialects at least since Old Norse.
*"anden" IPA| [ándɛn] — "the duck"
*"anden" IPA| [àndɛn] — "the spirit"In the example below, the first word derives from "and" and has accent 1, while the second derives from "ande" and has accent 2. The mono- and bisyllabic rule seems to have been present since Old Norse, but nowadays a great number of polysyllables have accent 1. These are mostly words that were monosyllabic in Old Norse, but have subsequently become bisyllabic, as have many loanwords. [Engstrand (2004), pp. 186-190]

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:

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

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" IPA| [skrɛmːts] (verb "scare" past participle, passive voice) or "sprängts" IPA| [sprɛŋːts] (verb "explode" past participle, passive voice). All but one of the consonant phonemes, IPA|/ŋ/, can occur at the beginning of a morpheme, though there are only 6 possible three-consonant combinations, all of which begin with IPA|/s/, and a total of 31 initial two-consonant combinations. All consonants except for IPA|/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".

All vowel phonemes, short or long, can occur in stressed syllables. Unstressed syllables can only be short, and the distinction between IPA|/e/ and IPA|// is therefore not present. In pre-stress syllables, all vowels but IPA|/u/ and IPA|/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 stress, only IPA| [a] and IPA| [ə] occur. [Garlén (1988), pp. 101-114]

ample

The sample text is a reading of The North Wind and the Sun. The transcription is based on the section on Swedish found in "The Handbook on the International Phonetic Association".

Broad transcription

Narrow transcription

Orthographic version

Nordanvinden och solen tvistade en gång om vem av dom som var starkast. Just då kom en vandrare vägen fram insvept i en varm kappa. Dom kom då överens om att den som först kunde få vandraren att ta av sej kappan, han skulle anses vara starkare än den andra. Då blåste nordanvinden så hårt han nånsin kunde, men ju hårdare han blåste desto tätare svepte vandraren kappan om sej, och till slut gav nordanvinden upp försöket. Då lät solen sina strålar skina helt varmt och genast tog vandraren av sej kappan och så var nordanvinden tvungen att erkänna att solen var den starkaste av dom två.

Notes

References

*sv cite book
last=Elert
first=Claes-Christian
title=Allmän och svensk fonetik
publisher=Norstedts
place=Stockholm
year=2000
ISBN=91-1-300939-7
*sv cite book
last=Engstrand
first=Olle
title=Fonetikens grunder
year=2004
place=Lund
publisher=Studenlitteratur
ISBN 91-44-04238-8
*cite book
last=Engstrand
first=Olle
year=1999
chapter=Swedish
title=Handbook of the International Phonetic Association: A Guide to the usage of the International Phonetic Alphabet.
place=Cambridge
publisher=Cambridge University Press
ISBN=0-521-63751-1
pages=140-142
*sv cite book
last=Garlén
first=Claes
title=Svenskans fonologi
publisher=Studenlitteratur
place=Lund
year=1988
ISBN=91-44-28151-X
*cite book
last=Ladefoged
first=Peter
authorlink=Peter Ladefoged
last2=Maddieson
first2=Ian
authorlink2=Ian Maddieson
year=1996
title=The sounds of the world's languages
ISBN=0-631-19815-6
*cite web
last=Thorén
first=Bosse
year=1997
title=Swedish prosody
url=http://www.bossethoren.se/prosodi_eng.html

External links

* [http://www2.hhs.se/isa/swedish/chap9.htm Introduction to Swedish - A guide to pronunciation] (Stockholm School of Economics)