swedish

Spelling

Consonant Clusters

Much like Korean, Swedish has gone through pronunciation changes, but without updating the spelling of the word. As a result, there are lot of letter combinations that reduce down to a different sound.

Before we get to the list, it is helpful to know the "types" of vowels, as they will impact pronunciation. There are two main sounds combinations reduce down to: "sj" (which is "technically" /ɧ/, but you can probably get away with "sh"/ʃ/) and "j" (/j/, as in the English word "yellow").

Hard vowels: a, o, u, å
Soft vowels: e, i, y, ä, ö

Sj

• k + soft V
• sk + soft V
• sj
• skj
• rs

J

• g + soft V
• dj/lj/hj/gj

Other

• rt = t, but with rounded lips
• tj = /ɕ/, the "x" in pinyin

Vowel Length

Vowels in stressed syllables are always long, except in words ending in -m or -n and in some commont words. All unstressed vowels are short.

Nouns

Nouns have two genders, ett ("neutral") and en ("non-neutral"). This impacts a number of things, such as possessive pronouns, adjectives, and definite articles.

Definite articles

-en, -t

Verbs

Verb formation

-a can be added to a noun to make a verb that means "to do the thing you normally do with the noun". For example diska, from disk:dish, means "to do the dishes". Similarly, tvätta, from tvätt:laundry, means "to do the laundry".

Last Updated: 2021-10-17 20:32:45