Swedish Phonology

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/). 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]

Vowels

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

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.

Long Vowels

There are nine long vowel phonemes in the Swedish language.

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

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> 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] 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. 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

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.

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 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. Consequently, every vowel in a vowel combination maintains its full phonetic value.

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

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

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

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.

	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

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. 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: </references>

Quod Vide

• Swedish
• Schwedisch
• Nominalphrase im Schwedischen

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Lindholm, Hans. Svensk Grammatik: Lärobok i Svenska som Främmande Språk. Lund: Kursverksamhetens Förlag, 1974. (pp.15-39)

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)

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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

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