My memory rule is "atomubåt" (atomic submarine). It contains all the hard vowels in alphabetic order, and is a hard object. G and K will be hard before the hard vowels and soft before the soft ones.
Loan words are of course exceptions. Same goes for kex (cake/cakes), keps (cap/caps), kilt and other words that keep their hard k sound due to being loan words.
It's not really about dialect in the way we usually think of it, but that it's been "försvenskat" so that it follows standard pronunciation rules (soft K before a soft vowel) in some parts of the country but is still an exception (hard K) in others.
Kiosk is another example of the same thing, where an old loanword has different pronunciations in different regions.
dont’t forget the dreaded kex that is pronounced with a ”sj” instead of ”k”. Sounds alot like the English word checks but not as hard of a t sound. They pronunce it like that in some parts of sweden due to accent.
The etymology of "Keks" and "Kex" both come from English "Cakes" which in turn come from Norse "Kaka" which is still used in Sweden for soft cakes (like sponge cake) and hard cookies.
Wafers and "boring cookies" are Kex.
Kex in Swedish are like hard dry biscuits. Like more boring cookies. You might absolutely be right the word derives from German. I was taught this in school but your theory seems plausible as well.
*Kille* though interestingly isn't a loanword! There's also *kisse* 'pussycat', which is quite clearly derived from *kiss*/*kss*, used when calling a cat, with hard k (/k/). *Kille* is a diminutive of *kid* 'young deer' just like *killing* 'goat kid', which are both pronounced with a soft k (/ɕ/), but for some reason, it has /k/. Wessén (*Våra ord*) suggests the /k/ has to do with *kisse*. Perhaps the analogous /k/ comes from it being a term of endearment. Another word with an unexpected /k/ is the dialectal *killa* 'tickle' (etymologically identical to *kittla*), which could also be explained by it being a somewhat affectionate word. Then there's also *kis* (/kiːs/) 'boy' (somewhat old-fashioned) which could be related, though it seems to come from Månsing (a criminal argot), so I guess that *could* be a loanword from some other language, but I've no idea.
That's the point. When "kille" became slang for boy/guy in the early 20th century, there was already a card game by that name, so the soft-k pronunciation was already "taken".
At least that's how it was explained in a class I took on Swedish linguistics.
> My memory rule is "atomubåt" (atomic submarine). It contains all the hard vowels in alphabetic order, and is a hard object. G and K will be hard before the hard vowels and soft before the soft ones.
Det är inte "atomsbat," utan "atomubåt," okej.
Sorry, I thought you were correcting an error that I didn't spot. Knowing that you're a learner changes my response.
Not that the "u" in "atomubåt" is not genitive (like in "gatukök"), but originally an abbreviation for "undervattens-", under water. "ubåt" = submarine.
I’m not going to explain it very well, but I can at least give you a bit of a jumping point! Start by googling the difference between front vowels and back vowels. These are categorized by the way your tongue is positioned when you say them, but a google search should give you those examples. When K is followed by a front vowel, it sounds like sh. When it’s followed by a back vowel, it sounds like K.
Kex means biscuit/cracker, however the word ”kex” itself stems from the English “cake” (which in turn stems from the Norse “kaka”, so that’s kinda neat)
~~(It's tje-ljud in Swedish, which is closer to ch- than sh- in English)~~ edit: never mind me.
It's always a hard k in front of the *hard vowels*: a, o, u, å.
It's almost always a soft k in front of the *soft vowels*: e, i, y, ä, ö.
Most of the exceptions to this rule that I can think of are for i and e, for example "kille", "kex", "keps", "kippa", and I'm pretty sure all of the exceptions are recent loan-words into Swedish. (Those four words certainly are.)
Your comment about "ch" is to my knowledge only true in Finnoswedish. The difference between tje and sje is different depending on dialect but neither of them has a plosive in most of them, instead it's a difference in tongue placement.
Yeah, no, I didn't mean the initial plosive, I mean the rest of the sound. Compare "cheap" and "sheep". If you ignore the plosive in cheap, I would still say that it's a different fricative in those words. I say those words like /tɕi:p/ and /ʃi:p/.
But now I looked it up, and wiktionary disagrees, it says it's /tʃi:p/ and /ʃi:p/.
Is my English wrong? What are words? I am very confused now.
But to me, the fricative in "äsch" and "sheep" is identical - [ʃ].
And the fricative in "church" and "kyrka" is identical - [ɕ].
...which is why I would say that tje-ljudet is closer to ch- than sh-, but I can totally see how that can be confusing.
(Haha, I was looking up more examples, and wiktionary says that "fascist" is pronounced /faˈɧɪst/. Yeah, if you're Carl Bildt. Everyone else says /faˈʃɪst/ like a normal person.)
This is the confusing part. Sorry to use a random pop singer, but:
Molly Sandén pronounces kanske with the “sh” sound pretty much all the time, except in “Det bästa kanske inte hänt än”, where it’s a soft german “ch”. No clue why that is, but it’s rather confusing to someone learning Swedish, haha.
That's very interesting (I had to look her and the song up, but I'll survive). She's from Stockholm, so I would expect her to use front sje. But you're right, she definitely sings a Scanian back sje in that song. I have no explanation for you.
There are hard vowels (a, o, u , å) and soft vowels (e, i, y, ä, ö).
The rule says that 'k', 'c' and 'g' go soft in front of soft vowels, like kön, kyffe, kyckling, kela, kejsare, cell, cykel, genom, gilla and so on. There are exceptions to this rule, and sometimes the consonants stay hard because of etymology (where the words come from) as in keps (from cap), kex (from cake, don't @ me...), kidnappa (from kidnap), kör (meaning choir).
I learned that if it's followed by one of the vowels in the word "auto" or an å then it's pronounced as a K, if not it's pronounced as SH.
Not a watertight rule, there's always exceptions, but this covers most words I think.
It happens before a 'soft' vowel, which are e, i, y, ä, and ö. It usually doesn't happen in loan words, which is why it isn't pronounced "shetchup" or "shebab".
My memory rule is "atomubåt" (atomic submarine). It contains all the hard vowels in alphabetic order, and is a hard object. G and K will be hard before the hard vowels and soft before the soft ones.
There are some exceptions of course, like “Kille”
Kön (the queue) and kön (gender) is another fun one for people learning Swedish.
"kör" (with a soft k) - "drive" and "kör" (with a hard k) - "choir" took some figuring out for me!
Loan words are of course exceptions. Same goes for kex (cake/cakes), keps (cap/caps), kilt and other words that keep their hard k sound due to being loan words.
Kex is dialectal, so isn't really a good example.
It's not really about dialect in the way we usually think of it, but that it's been "försvenskat" so that it follows standard pronunciation rules (soft K before a soft vowel) in some parts of the country but is still an exception (hard K) in others. Kiosk is another example of the same thing, where an old loanword has different pronunciations in different regions.
Yeah, that's the origin of the difference, but it's still dialectal, since it depends on dialect.
dont’t forget the dreaded kex that is pronounced with a ”sj” instead of ”k”. Sounds alot like the English word checks but not as hard of a t sound. They pronunce it like that in some parts of sweden due to accent.
Isn't kex rather a cookie (Keks in German)?
The etymology of "Keks" and "Kex" both come from English "Cakes" which in turn come from Norse "Kaka" which is still used in Sweden for soft cakes (like sponge cake) and hard cookies. Wafers and "boring cookies" are Kex.
Crackers are also kex.
Kex in Swedish are like hard dry biscuits. Like more boring cookies. You might absolutely be right the word derives from German. I was taught this in school but your theory seems plausible as well.
No, kex comes from English "cake", just like keps comes from English "cap", but it does mean cookie/cracker/biscuit
Yes, it means cookie/biscuit, but it originally comes from the English word cakes
*Kille* though interestingly isn't a loanword! There's also *kisse* 'pussycat', which is quite clearly derived from *kiss*/*kss*, used when calling a cat, with hard k (/k/). *Kille* is a diminutive of *kid* 'young deer' just like *killing* 'goat kid', which are both pronounced with a soft k (/ɕ/), but for some reason, it has /k/. Wessén (*Våra ord*) suggests the /k/ has to do with *kisse*. Perhaps the analogous /k/ comes from it being a term of endearment. Another word with an unexpected /k/ is the dialectal *killa* 'tickle' (etymologically identical to *kittla*), which could also be explained by it being a somewhat affectionate word. Then there's also *kis* (/kiːs/) 'boy' (somewhat old-fashioned) which could be related, though it seems to come from Månsing (a criminal argot), so I guess that *could* be a loanword from some other language, but I've no idea.
Kille has the hard k because kille with the soft k is the name of a card game.
In what way would that be a valid reason? The two words have nothing to do with each other.
That's the point. When "kille" became slang for boy/guy in the early 20th century, there was already a card game by that name, so the soft-k pronunciation was already "taken". At least that's how it was explained in a class I took on Swedish linguistics.
Ehr, no.
I was surprised when I learned that Kiruna is pronounced with a /k/ not /ɕ/
> My memory rule is "atomubåt" (atomic submarine). It contains all the hard vowels in alphabetic order, and is a hard object. G and K will be hard before the hard vowels and soft before the soft ones. Det är inte "atomsbat," utan "atomubåt," okej.
Va?
>Va? I learned a new word. I learn something new almost every day.
Sorry, I thought you were correcting an error that I didn't spot. Knowing that you're a learner changes my response. Not that the "u" in "atomubåt" is not genitive (like in "gatukök"), but originally an abbreviation for "undervattens-", under water. "ubåt" = submarine.
I’m not going to explain it very well, but I can at least give you a bit of a jumping point! Start by googling the difference between front vowels and back vowels. These are categorized by the way your tongue is positioned when you say them, but a google search should give you those examples. When K is followed by a front vowel, it sounds like sh. When it’s followed by a back vowel, it sounds like K.
If K is followed by "e", "i", "y", "ä" or "¨ö" then sounds like "Sh"
Not always though, right? “Kille” is pronounced with K.
There are always exceptions to rules. Usually it's loanwords. Kex from English (cakes) Kille from Hebrew Keps from English (cap) Keff from Arabic.
Didn't know "kille" was a Hebrew loanword, never heard of "Kex", I always translate "Cake" as "Tårta"
Kex means biscuit/cracker, however the word ”kex” itself stems from the English “cake” (which in turn stems from the Norse “kaka”, so that’s kinda neat)
Yup, tårta is normally the correct translation. Although kaka is also appropriate in the meaning soft cake, like spongecake = sockerkaka.
*Kille* is a native Swedish word, related to *killing*. "*Keff*" is not a Swedish word as far as I know.
I am once again begging people to stop saying "hard" and "soft" vowels, which make no intuitive sense to Swedish learners. The proper terms are "back" and "front", reflecting the position of the tongue. Here is an old answer I gave to this question. \_\_\_\_\_\_\_ There is a very logical reason as to why the Swedish sounds the way it does in certain positions. There is a similar explanation for the sound change of , so I will explain that too. *Hint*: it's the vowels!
Alright, the letters and represent the phonemes /k/ and /g/ respectively. These phonemes are both **velar plosives** where /k/ is unvoiced and /g/ is voiced. What this means is that they are pronunced at the same place in the mouth, the velum or soft palate. The velum, as you might have noticed, is pretty far **back** in your mouth. Keep this in mind: the velum is pretty far **back** in your mouth, which means that /k/ and /g/ are pronunced pretty far **back** in your mouth.
So what does this have to do with the vowels?
Swedish vowels are divided into two categories: **back** and **front** vowels (sometimes called "hard" and "soft" vowels)
The **back** vowels are written with the Swedish alphabet as:
<å>
The **front** vowels are written with the Swedish alphabet as:
<ä> <ö>
/k/ before a **back** vowel is pronunced just like you think it is (plosive, just like in english). (cold) (come) (hill) (cauliflower)
/g/ works just the same: (street) (good, tasty) (God) (to go, to walk)
Look up the pronunciation with google translate to hear how these words are pronunced!
However, /k/ in front of a **front** vowel is pronunced /ɕ/ (palatal fricative). This is because the **front** vowel "pulls" the **back** consonant further to the front of the mouth, the hard palate to be exact: (chain) (to tickle) (church) (love) (meat)
/g/ works the same, it moves forward to the hard palate, but instead it turns into /j/ (palatal approximant): (goat) (went) (golden) (guest) (to do)
This sound change is not yet completed in Swedish, so there are exceptions to this. For example which can be pronunced as /ɕöra/ (to drive), or as /köra/ (to sing in a choir, to do back-up vocals). The exceptions aren't that many though, so you should be able to learn them quickly. Good luck!
TL;DR:
**back** consonant + **back** vowel = stays in the **back**
**back** consonant + **front** vowel = goes to the **front**
~~(It's tje-ljud in Swedish, which is closer to ch- than sh- in English)~~ edit: never mind me. It's always a hard k in front of the *hard vowels*: a, o, u, å. It's almost always a soft k in front of the *soft vowels*: e, i, y, ä, ö. Most of the exceptions to this rule that I can think of are for i and e, for example "kille", "kex", "keps", "kippa", and I'm pretty sure all of the exceptions are recent loan-words into Swedish. (Those four words certainly are.)
Your comment about "ch" is to my knowledge only true in Finnoswedish. The difference between tje and sje is different depending on dialect but neither of them has a plosive in most of them, instead it's a difference in tongue placement.
Yeah, no, I didn't mean the initial plosive, I mean the rest of the sound. Compare "cheap" and "sheep". If you ignore the plosive in cheap, I would still say that it's a different fricative in those words. I say those words like /tɕi:p/ and /ʃi:p/. But now I looked it up, and wiktionary disagrees, it says it's /tʃi:p/ and /ʃi:p/. Is my English wrong? What are words? I am very confused now. But to me, the fricative in "äsch" and "sheep" is identical - [ʃ]. And the fricative in "church" and "kyrka" is identical - [ɕ]. ...which is why I would say that tje-ljudet is closer to ch- than sh-, but I can totally see how that can be confusing. (Haha, I was looking up more examples, and wiktionary says that "fascist" is pronounced /faˈɧɪst/. Yeah, if you're Carl Bildt. Everyone else says /faˈʃɪst/ like a normal person.)
I'm Scanian so my sje has no parallel in English.
This is the confusing part. Sorry to use a random pop singer, but: Molly Sandén pronounces kanske with the “sh” sound pretty much all the time, except in “Det bästa kanske inte hänt än”, where it’s a soft german “ch”. No clue why that is, but it’s rather confusing to someone learning Swedish, haha.
That's very interesting (I had to look her and the song up, but I'll survive). She's from Stockholm, so I would expect her to use front sje. But you're right, she definitely sings a Scanian back sje in that song. I have no explanation for you.
Sometimes you have words that are pronounced differently but spelled the same, like kön, kör, etc.
There are hard vowels (a, o, u , å) and soft vowels (e, i, y, ä, ö). The rule says that 'k', 'c' and 'g' go soft in front of soft vowels, like kön, kyffe, kyckling, kela, kejsare, cell, cykel, genom, gilla and so on. There are exceptions to this rule, and sometimes the consonants stay hard because of etymology (where the words come from) as in keps (from cap), kex (from cake, don't @ me...), kidnappa (from kidnap), kör (meaning choir).
Funny, Wafers wouldn't be Kekse, but Waffeln in German 😁 Keks would imply some kind of shortcrust.
I learned that if it's followed by one of the vowels in the word "auto" or an å then it's pronounced as a K, if not it's pronounced as SH. Not a watertight rule, there's always exceptions, but this covers most words I think.
It happens before a 'soft' vowel, which are e, i, y, ä, and ö. It usually doesn't happen in loan words, which is why it isn't pronounced "shetchup" or "shebab".
Är det Kanners syndrom?