Swedish Phonology

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This article deals with the phonology of Standard Swedish (Rikssvenska) from a synchronical point of view. There may be a few references to regional variations, however, they are not explained in more detail. This entry is arranged into four larger parts: phonological systems, autosegmental phonology, phonological rules and phonotactics.


Phonological Systems: Segmentals

Phonemes, or rather segmentals, represent speech sounds which distinguish meaning. This can be proved by alining minimal pairs which differ in one single sound (e.g. here /hɪə/ - beer /bɪə/).[1] The process of producing phonemic sounds differentiates between place of articulation (e.g. bilabial, palatal, velar, etc.), manner of articulation (e.g. plosives, fricatives, liquids, etc.) and voicing (either voiced or voiceless). Since standard orthographic systems, such as the Latin alphabet, do not correspond to a universal depiction of these sounds, phonemes are described in the IPA. The IPA is a set of phonetic symbols to which for instance vowels and consonants belong. They form a large phonetic inventory which, on the other hand, is the basis for a phonological system.[1][1]


Vowels

The Swedish alphabet comprises nine vowels: <a, e, i, o, u, y, å, ä> and <ö>[2]

Regarding the pronunciation of those vowels, the language consists of 18 phonemes which are differentiated by their length. There are nine long and nine short vowels which entail a difference of quality and quantity and are therefore distinguishable in meaning. The difference of length, however, is not marked by an orthographical change.[3]


Long Vowels

There are nine long vowel phonemes in the Swedish language. [2]

  Front unrounded Front rounded Central rounded Back rounded
Close ʉː
Close mid øː  
Open mid ɛː      
Open       ɑː


Short Vowels

Swedish makes use of nine short vowels. [2]

  Front unrounded Front rounded Central rounded Back rounded
Close ɪ ʏ   ʊ
Close mid e   ɵ  
Open mid ɛ œ   ɔ
Open a      

In many cases <e> and <ä> as in sett ('seen') and sätt ('a sort') coincide and are both pronounced /e/. This sometimes leads to the assumption that there are only eight short vowels and that [e] and [ɛ][2] are only allophones. Yet, /e/ and /ɛ/ are treated as phonemes in Standard Swedish.


Special Features

  • The phonemes /ʉː/ respectively /ɵ/ are similar to /yː/ and /y/, the lips are less rounded though,
e.g. hund /hɵnd/   ('dog')
     hus  /hʉːs/   ('house')
  • There are no concrete rules concerning the pronunciation of the letter <o> as in bok.[3] Sometimes it is pronounced as /oː/ or /ɔ/ and sometimes it is /ʊ/ or /uː/,
e.g. komma /kɔma/    ↔      gator /gɑːtʊr/
     ('to come')             ('gates')
     mor   /muːr/     ↔      idiom /idioːm/
     ('mother')              ('idiom')


Rules of Thumb for Vowel Length[3]

There is no orthographical indication of a difference in vowel length, however, there are some rules of thumb which often apply. Long vowels only exist in stressed syllables. In unstressed syllables, the vowels are automatically short.


How to recognize a long vowel:

  • when it follows a single consonant or when the vowel is at the end of the word,
e.g. hat         /hɑːt/       ('hatred')
     kostym      /kɔstyːm/    ('costume')
     sko         /skuː/       ('shoe')
  • in front of consonant bonds which originated from flection or word formation when the vowel was already long in the original word,
e.g. polsk       /poːlsk/      ('Polish')                     originally from: Polen
     skrivna     /skriːvna/    ('written', part. perf.)       originally from: att skriva
  • in front of <-rd>, <-rn>, <-rt> and consonant+<l>,
e.g. hård        /hoːrd/       ('hard')
     barn        /bɑːrn/       ('child')
     fart        /fɑːrt/       ('speed')
     pärla       /pɛːrla/      ('pearl')


How to recognize a short vowel:

  • in front of double consonants
e.g. känna       /ɕɛna/         ('to know')
     ligga       /lɪga/         ('to lie')
  • in front of inseparable consonant clusters
e.g. hjälp       /jɛlp/         ('help')
     efter       /efter/        ('after')
  • quite often in front of <-j>
e.g. hej         /hɛj/          ('hey')
     pojke       /pɔjke/        ('boy')
  • in front of <-n> in the clusters <an->, <in-> and <kun->
e.g. anse       /anseː/         ('to think')
     inom       /inɔm/          ('within')
     kunskap    /kɵnskɑːp/      ('knowledge')
  • quite often in front of <-m>
e.g. om         /ɔm/            ('about')
     hem        /hem/           ('(at) home')


Minimal Pairs: short and long vowels

Minimal pairs help to prove that two words differ in meaning based on one single sound which varies.

[4]

Phonemes Word with long vowel Word with short vowel
iː / ɪ vit vitt
eː / e vet vett
ɛː / ɛ rät rätt
ɑː / a fal fall
yː / ʏ byt bytt
øː / œ röt rött
uː / ʊ bot bott
oː / ɔ fåt fått
ʉː / ɵ Rut rutt

Hence, vit (white[UTR.SG]) and vit-t (white-NEUTR.SG), for instance, are both spelled with an < i >. Though quite often the doubling[2] of the (final) consonant is responsible for the shortened pronunciation of a vowel. According to this, the quality of the vowel changes from /iː/ (as in vit) to /ɪ/ (as in vitt). This verifies that in the spoken language length distinguishes meaning in Swedish.


Diphthongs

Swedish is the only Germanic language which does not have any phonological diphthongs in its Standard Swedish variation. Only one quarter of all the languages in the world do not make use of diphthongs.[5] Consequently, every vowel in a vowel combination maintains its full phonetic value.[3]

e.g. fiol       /fiuːl/       ('violine')
     heroisk    /heroːisk/    ('heroic')[3]

Yet vowel combinations in a couple of loan words are treated like diphthongs.

e.g. schweizisk   /ʃvɛjtsisk/    ('Swiss')
     augusti      /augusti/      ('August')[3]

Consonants

Swedish also differentiates between long and short consonants. In contrast to vowels, the oppositional length of consonants does not carry any meaning. Besides that, long consonants are marked orthographically by a doubled letter.[3]

  Labial Alveolar Retroflex Palatal Velar Glottal
Plosive p, b t, d ʈ, ɖ   k, g  
Fricative f, v s ʂ ɕ ɧ h
Nasal m n ɳ   ŋ  
Trill / Flap   r        
Approximant       j    
Lateral Approximant   l ɭ      

[6] [2]

Annotation: Where two phonemes appear in a single column the first phoneme is always voiceless and the second one voiced.


The /ɧ/ phoneme

Typical for Standard Swedish is for instance the /ɧ/ phoneme which is also often called the sj-sound[2]. It is described as a sound between [x] and [ʃ] but the existence of a real phoneme is often disputed. In some dialects, especially in northern and Finland Swedish, /ɧ/ does not exist and is instead replaced by /ʃ/.

e.g. mission ('mission')
     Standard Swedish:  /miɧuːn/
     Finland Swedish:   /miʃuːn/

The /ɧ/ phoneme renders the following consonant clusters:Cite error: Closing </ref> missing for <ref> tag [5] [2] [4] [6] [7] [8] [3] [9] </references>


Annotations

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Quod Vide

  • 1.0 1.1 Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named mair
  • 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 Hultman, Tor G. Svenska Akademiens Språklära. Stockholm: Svenska Akademien, 2003. Print.
  • 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 Lindholm, Hans. Svensk Grammatik: Lärobok i Svenska som Främmande Språk. Lund: Kursverksamhetens Förlag, 1974. (pp.15-39)
  • 4.0 4.1 Abramson, Arthur S., and Kerstin Hadding-Koch. "Duration Versus Spectrum in Swedish Vowels: Some Perceptual Experiments." Studia Linguistica 18.2 (1964): p.94-107. Web. 23 July 2013. (p.95)
  • 5.0 5.1 Lindqvist, Christer. Schwedische Phonetik: für Deutschsprachige. Hamburg: Helmut Buske Verlag, 2007. Print. (pp.48-49, 58-62, 73)
  • 6.0 6.1 The International Phonetic Association. (2005). [Graph illustration IPA 2005]. The International Phonetic Alphabet. Retrieved from http://www.langsci.ucl.ac.uk/ipa/images/pulmonic.gif
  • Johnson, Keith (2012). Introduction to Phonetics and Phonology [PDF document]. Retrieved from http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/~kjohnson/ling110/Lecture_Slides/4_Prosody/suprasegmentals.pdf
  • Roelcke, Thorsten. Variationstypologie: Ein Sprachtypologisches Handbuch der Europäischen Sprachen in Geschichte und Gegenwart = Variation Typology. Berlin [et al.]: de Gruyter, 2003. Print.
  • Gårding, Eva (1989). Intonation in Swedish. In Albert Di Cristo and Daniel Hirst (Eds.), Intonation Systems: A Survey of Twenty Languages (pp.112-130). Cambridge: Cambridge UP.