Swedish Phonology

Vowels

The Swedish alphabet uses nine vowels: a, e, i, o, u, y, å, ä and ö

Regarding their pronunciation, the language consists of 18 vowel phonemes which are distinguished by their lengthening. There are nine long and nine short vowels which entail a difference of quality and quantity. The orthographic depiction of diphthongs does not exist in Swedish.

Long Vowels

There are nine long vowel phonemes which can cause a change in the meaning of a word.

	Front unrounded	Front rounded	Central rounded	Back rounded
Close	iː	yː	ʉː	uː
Close mid	eː	øː		oː
Open mid	ɛː
Open				ɑː

Examples: is [iːs] ny [nyː] mus [mʉːs] sol [suːl] led [leːd] öl [øːl] bås [boːs] näs [nɛːs] sak [sɑːk]

Sometimes the doubling of a consonant also indicates the lengthening of a preceding vowel, e.g. bar - barr.

Short Vowels

Swedish makes use of nine short vowels.

	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 coincide and are pronounced the same such as in sett - sätt. This sometimes leads to the assumption that there are only eight short vowels.

Consonants

Typical for Standard Swedish is for instance the /ɧ/ phoneme which renders the consonant cluster sj as in sjö. It is described as a sound between [x] and [ʃ] but this is often disputed. In some dialects, especially in northern and Finland Swedish, /ɧ/ does not exist.

Furthermore the retroflexes ʈ, ɖ, ʂ, ɭ and ɳ are a fixture. They are orthographically represented by the consonant clusters rt, rd, rs, rl and rn.Opinions differ concerning the total number of consonant phonemes since retroflexes are often treated as allophones. Counting them among phonemes, there are 23 consonant phonemes in the Swedish language altogether.

	Labial	Alveolar	Retroflex	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Plosive	p, b	t, d	ʈ [1], ɖ [2]		k, g
Fricative	f, v	s	ʂ [3]	ɕ [4]	ɧ [5]	h
Nasal	m	n	ɳ [6]		ŋ
Trill / Flap		r
Approximant				j
Lateral Approximant		l	ɭ [7]

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

Retroflex Consonants

Not only are retroflexes fixed in lexemes but they can also occur in different articulatory patterns:

1. They can cross over word boundaries if the final letter of a word is a r and the initial letter of the following word is either t, d, s, l or n,

e.g. vår triumf [voːʈriɵmf], hur mår du  [hʉːr moːɖɵ], under sängen [ɵndəʂɛŋən], eller nej [ɛləɳɛj], hur ledsam [hʉːɭesam].

2. When the genitive s is attached to a word ending with r, the retroflex ʂ is used,

e.g. Peters hus [petəʂ hʉːs], min mors affär [min muːʂ afæːr].

Intonation

Swedish is a pitch accent language which once derived from Old Norse. It has two distincitve prosodical patterns related to the different syllabic structures in Old Norse. These two patterns cause a difference in meaning:

1. Accent 1 (acute) which all old monosyllabic words receive,

e.g. and-en      [ándɛn]
     duck-DEF   

2. Accent 2 (grave) which all old dissyllabic words receive,

e.g. ande-n      [àndɛn]
     ghost-DEF

Examples: 'anden' accent 1 vs. accent 2

Besides its historic background, there are some further phonological rules:

1. Accent 1 can occur in any accented syllable regardless of position.

2. Accent 2 never occurs in the last syllable of a word. Therefore only polysyllabic words can have an accent contrast.