Swedish Phonology

Vowels

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

With regard to 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. On that account some dictionaries mention that there are only eight short vowels in the Swedish language.

Consonants

Typical for the Swedish language is for instance the ɧ which renders the consonant cluster <sj>. It is described to be between a [x] and a [ʃ] sound but this is often disputed. Furthermore the retroflexes ʈ, ɖ, ʂ, ɭ and ɳ are a fixture. 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 altogether in the Swedish language.

	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 one column the first phoneme is always voiceless and the second voiced.