The Swedish alphabet consists of 29 letters, A-Z and then Å, Ä and Ö. Consonants b, d, g, j, l, m, n, r and v are voiced and f, h, k, p, s, t are voiceless. The letters q and w generally only occur in loan words and in some proper names. The letter z exists only in a few foreign words. Some argue that there are only 28 letters as v and w are often classed as the same letter.
The following is a list of special phonetic symbols which are used to describe some of the sounds which are specific to Swedish:
(example words are all in Swedish, unless specified otherwise)
sounds
Similarly the letter combination rs is pronounced as sh as in ship and is represented by the IPA symbol
sh
; this also occurs when a word ends with r and the following word begins with s. There are several sounds which have tricky pronunciations and which vary throughout Sweden depending on dialect. Take the following combinations:
sch sj skj stj
In the Stockholm/Central Swedish dialect the above could all be pronounced as
sh
similar to sh as in ship, but elsewhere they are pronounced with a sound that is very difficult to produce as a non-native speaker. For example the word seven in Swedish is sju, the sj combination is pronounced
h
(somewhat like the qu in queen but without the k sound) so the pronunciation of sju is
sju
(Hedelin, 1999).
Swedish is known for its sing-song lyrical quality. Much of this can be attributed to stress; Swedish words have strong syllabic stress. In the majority of Swedish words the principal stress falls on the first syllable. The other syllables will either have no stress or secondary stress, however secondary stress is often considerably stronger in Swedish than it is in English and it is therefore possible to divide it into weak and strong secondary stress (Granberry, 1991).
As stated, the principal stress usually falls on the first syllable; however there are some exceptions to this rule. If a word begins with the prefix be- or för- then the principal stress falls on the second syllable of the word (Granberry, 1991:9). Also, loan words sometimes do not follow the same stress pattern as Swedish words, particularly French words as they generally maintain their original pronunciation. Because of this the principal stress tends to fall on the last syllable of the word. Examples are: garage, baggage, massage, sergeant. It is important to note that the -e is not pronounced after the g and the g sound becomes s as in pleasure (Croghan, 2004).
Strong Secondary stress can fall in two ways, (1) on the second part of a compound word; (2) on suffixes including -sam, -dom, -lek, -skap and -het. When there is no stress or weak secondary stress, it falls on the second syllable when words are not compounds and have two or more syllables (Granberry, 1991:10).
Granberry, J. (1991). Essential Swedish Grammar. New York: Dover Publications.
Hedelin, P. (1999). Norstedts Svenska Uttalslexikon. Stockholm: Norstedts.
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Nov 07, 2008 20:14 | Views
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