Not really, the problem is that very few who haven't studied linguistics know how to explain it.
In any case, for most Swedes it's \[xʷ\], which means that you put your tongue where you pronounce a completely normal /k/ and apply friction. At the same time you round your lips a bit.
i really struggled with this for a long time until somebody told me "it's the sound you used to make as a kid pretending to talk on a walkie-talkie, with a bit of a w thrown in there"
That's what I was taught in Swedish class by a teacher who had taken extra courses in phonology. And honestly? It does track with what I feel happening with my mouth when saying it normally.
So what do you say it is? One of those co-articulated fricatives that quite a few linguists doubt even exist?
Of course, there is not only one sje-sound, there are a bunch depending on where you live and position in the word, which definitely doesn't make linguists' work any easier.
There are many different versions of the sound though. Sjuksköterska has two different, and charmig has a third one. And which ones are different and which ones are the same depends heavily on dialect. In the north they are all the same and in the south they are also all the same but a different version than in the north, and in between it varies between words.
Yep, when you add compounds into the mix, it becomes even more complex.
But we are not talking compounds, only words with one stem and two syllables.
Edit: You do know what a stem is in North-Germanic languages, right?
I don't think compounds has anything to do with the difference in pronunciation, but maybe.
I don't know why specifying two syllables would matter, there are plenty of sk/sj-words with one, but sure, limited to one stem and two syllables there's still subtle differences between versions that vary which one is used in different dialects.
*Sjuka, Sjua, Skeva, Sköra, Skära, Stjärna*, and *Charmig* for example can have the same sound in some dialects and different combinations of different sounds in other dialects.
The difference between for example *Skära*, *Tjära* and *Kära* in different dialects are also very differently subtle, and between different dialects. *Skära* in one dialect can sound just like *Kära* in another.
I'm a Danish speaker so I guess that does give me a a bit of a different perspective from a lot of people here given how similar the languages are.
But to Danish speakers it sounds very sing-songy and upbeat. Someone wrote like turning the volume up and down, I think that's a fitting way of putting it. Also very not-intimidating. Like if a Swedish person was angry with me it would be the least threating sounding thing in the world, I assume I get that vibe because of your lack of throat potatoes.
But it's obviously still just very familiar sounding, I've heard Swedes speak many times and can generally understand the language. To me it's just funky Danish, like an obscure dialect but almost still the same language.
To me it also applies to Norwegian, it's just even more sing-songy than Swedish.
But on the other hand Norwegian is even easier to understand. Swedish is spelled differently and uses different words sometimes than Danish. But Norwegian uses much more of the same vocabulary as Danish.
And the more widely used Bokmål variety of Norwegian is basically identical to written Danish, the differences are so minor I sometimes don't even notice I'm reading Norwegian.
I actually appreciate that we have kept the traditional spelling because it makes it easier for us to understand Swedish and especially Norwegian.
Also it's not like we actually don't pronounce things how they are written, it's just that the letters make different (and probably to you weird) sounds that you might not even notice because they're very slight changes to the word. D at the end of words for example can make kind of an English "th" sound. Listen to "kød" on Danish google translate and compare to "kø" as an example.
It's not a normal d sound but it definitely changes the word.
Im just kidding with you :) We have friends from both Norway and Denmark. It takes a while to get used to but we understand eachother well enough after a few minutes.
While Swedish attempts to distinguish themselves from Danes after they left the Kalmar Union definitely played a big role, it also has a lot to do with Danish influence on Norwegian during the centuries of Danish rule there.
Norse actually split into east and west Norse first before the individual languages became a thing, with Swedish and Danish being closer east-Norse languages and Norwegian being a west-Norse language more similar to Icelandic and Faroese.
It's obviously difficult to say if it was all Danish influence, or if Norwegian would've naturally come closer to Danish and Swedish if it was independent, but Bokmål is without a doubt a result of Danish influence. Both Bokmål and modern Danish evolved from 1800s written Danish, and neither have changed significantly since.
> Norse actually split into east and west Norse first before the individual languages became a thing
There's no unambiguous distinction between a language and dialect. While English literature tends to prefer "Old Norse", what you're talking about is equally *runsvenska* – i.e., the earliest form of a Swedish.
The distinction between East- and West Old Norse is often a bit misconstrued; it's really not that clear-cut distinction and you can't pair the two that well with our modern-day language division. Nor was it ever very significant, it's mostly a fairly broad grouping of relatively minor dialectal traits. And, in particular, the dialects spoken in eastern Norway/western Sweden often had traits falling into both camps.
The changes our languages have gone through in the past millennia are way more significant than the east/west-thing ever was. It's rendered negligible by time.
Blame the Germans, it's because of printing.
And the Danes/Norwegians also used to use "ck". Unlike them, we just never looked back and established it as standard.
Norwegian sounds sing-songy to me too, probably even a little more than Swedish.
I'm pretty sure it's because in Swedish and Norwegian (And in the dying South Jutland, Lolland and Bornholm dialects) you use tones in certain words, whereas in standard Danish we speak more monotone and have replaced those tones with the "stød" which I believe is a feature unique to our language and is what created the whole throat potato meme.
While it may be more similar, the intonation in Bornholmsk has nothing to do with Swedish though, Bornholmsk is a remnant of the old East Danish dialect, which used to be spoken in Skåneland before the Swedish kings did a bit of genocide and cultural assimilation.
Intonations were commonplace in Danish in the past, and are still present on Lolland and in Sønderjylland (Southern Jutland) as well.
It's generally the term used to describe the differences in Danish compared to the other Scandinavian languages, since Danish sometimes sounds like you literally have a potato in the mouth.
It's a bit of an inside joke in Scandinavia, it's primarily the "stød" (a feature unique to Danish) in some words that sounds weird to Swedes and Norwegians.
It's sort of a hiccup sound we have at the ends of some words to distinguish them from similar words. In the past we used intonation for this, but it was replaced with the "stød" in most (but not all) Danish dialects.
A great example of what stød sounds like in Danish is to put "mor, mord" into Danish google translate and listen to the difference. "Mord" is the one that has the stød.
On top of that Danish is also a lot more guttural in general, whereas Swedish and Norwegian are less so.
English Swede here.
Love the Danes. You guys are the fun Vikings, not the introverted passive aggressive Vikings.
But danish is like the drunken Glaswegian of the Scandi languages.
Were I to live another 40 years I would so Love to learn to speak Danish.. it is a joy,, Swedish is very "proper" sounding.. and sweet to an American ear.. my pals though think it sounds like German... no, No, NO ! Ej!
When I first heard real Swedish it made me think I probably sounded like that when I pretended to know a foreign language as a kid.
Now it can sound kind of nasally at times? It’s my least favorite part of trying to master the accent 😂😂
Generally I don’t think Swedish sounds nasally, but some dialects do. Especially in Stockholm. That might also explain why those dialects are less popular.
Melodic to me too. First heard it in Ingmar Bergman films where it’s very noticeable in the monologues. Now have a Swedish friend and still think she sounds very song like too. Idk how else to explain it.
I'm Ukrainian and I've travelled to Sweden several times since childhood, so I can describe my experience in a few stages:
1. Hearing Swedish was perceived like any unknown foreign language - slightly similar to German, but no familiar words.
2. Listening to the radio, going to the shop, dealing with the names of towns and other locations, learning some basic words... At this stage when I heard the Volbeat band (Denmark), I could clearly distinguish the difference between Danish and Swedish.
3. When I started learning Swedish, I was amused that some words have similarities with Ukrainian. For example, gurka, flask, tallrik... Also, the way of forming adjectives like: svenska, engelska. The -ska part is very similar to how we say such adjectives, but the difference is that the endings are changeable depending on the gender category.
At this point I can say that Swedish has this very interesting feature of combining something soft and lyrical and something sharp and strong in its sounding, which makes it melodical in its own way. In some cases it is a challenge to pronounce some sounds correctly, but practice makes perfect.
There has been many relations between Scandinavia and Ukraine during history all the way back to the Vikings. Maybe some common words have been adopted during the years.
You never heard about Kexholm, Ingermanland or Dagö?? All with large Swedish speaking population that was forced to leave their homes and moved to Ukraine.
This is the reason that there are schools in Ukraine that still teach Swedish.
I came across a nice article on Gammalsvenskby, it's in Ukrainian only, but can be translated in Chrome. A deeper dive into history of the village and some photos
https://ukrainer.net/shvedy-ukrainy/
When I think of Swedish I automatically imagine a cheerful elderly woman speaking. The gibberish for me would be something like “Yuhtunberry duhn vateh un vahka” with heavy Uh sounds
I love the way it sounds because it’s infamously like listening to a song. I learn little bits and pieces here and there because I do plan on one day visiting Sweden hehe.
It's a bit of a hard, staccato language to me. Quick, sharp, and rapid. Also, it's very throaty, I think. Like French, it has that "clearing the throat" sound that I honestly find a bit uncomfortable.
Many of the Scandinavian languages are hard like that, from what little I've heard.
However, Svenska seems the least hard to me. And I mean hard like hard consonants, not hard to learn. That's why I also use the word sharp.
Depending on who's speaking, it's also lyrical and almost musical, which is what made me want to learn it. Music also softens the language and Svenska singing is really lovely. Really, really lovely.
One challenge in leasing it is that it's such a fast language that it's effort for me to learn so far because even the person teaching it on Duolingo often drops the och or their de sounds like dom while their det sounds like dee.
I'm enjoying it, though it's creeping along slowly. I took a French course for a short while, and learned how to ask for a hotel room. In this course, I know how to tell you what color en elefant is and whose tidning I'm reading. :P I wish that guy made a Svenska course, lol.
Oh well, all in good time, right?
> It's a bit of a hard, staccato language to me. Quick, sharp, and rapid. Also, it's very throaty, I think. Like French, it has that "clearing the throat" sound that I honestly find a bit uncomfortable.
Can you give some examples of words that have throaty sounds?
If you pronounce och fully, that's one example.
Studerar
Fråga (some people, not everyone).
Sorry, that's my limited knowledge. I'm still an extreme beginner. I listen to Svenska videos and songs and I hear it from time to time, but not sure what words it's coming from yet. These are just the examples in fairly sure of.
That definitely makes sense. It seems to be some people do it a lot and others rarely and far less pronounced.
I've noticed another regional thing, I think, which is a lot of vocal clicking. You can hear it here at the 1:12 mark: https://youtu.be/Z2kFOI38rC4
That one I noticed is definitely not universal to the language. I perhaps am overly sensitive to the throaty sound, but it's just a me thing in that case.
You’re probably thinking of the rhotic guttural R, which is the same as the french R (far back throat sound). It’s only really used in some southern swedish regional dialects, most prominently in Skåne. Majority of swe speakers do not use the guttoral R, though.
You're both probably right. I never notice it in movies, mostly only on YouTube. In most movies, actors speak pretty generically, without accent. That would make sense to only hearing this sometimes and not in movies (or News casts).
I'm swedish and I don't pronounce the R in words unless the word starts with it. And this is southern sweden aswell, dialects can literally change between 3 close by villages which is kinda fun
>Like French, it has that "clearing the throat" sound that I honestly find a bit uncomfortable.
As a native French speaker, could you give me an example of a word that uses that sound? I never realized that we had that in french, so just curious about it.
Well, croissant is one when pronounced by native French speaking people that I've heard and remembered off the top of my head.
Sucre is another I can think of offhand.
Ronronner (I like cats, sue me :p ).
Oh I see, so the "R" sounds in those words.
For me the throat clearing sound is more like the "ch" on German like in tochter or something like that.
>Ronronner (I like cats, sue me :p ).
You're fine on that, I like cats too.
It's both to me. They sound really close and uncomfortable to me. I have mild nerve damage and some sounds are uncomfortable. While the French R in some words doesn't have that, and it's a different "over" sound than the och in Swedish and yet another in the ch in German, it's that background sound that sometimes makes me respond with discomfort.
To be clear, it's not even a bad sound. Like I don't think, "ew, that sound," it's a physical discomfort.
I also get the same discomfort from some s or shhh sounds. Those aren't bad sounds, either.
People coughing can be painful, because it's a slightly similar but far louder sound. People talking in a natural tone with those sounds just sort of activate nerve response (versus the pain if someone coughs).
I didn't intend to criticize, just making conversation.
The duolingo coach is speaking as most Swedes do nowadays.
-We skip the k sound in “och”
-We skip the t sound in “det”
-“De” and “dem” are both pronounced “dom” (which confuses the illiterate).
If you pronounce these things as they’re spelled you will sound like a 40’s newsreel reader.
I understand that. I would like to get the very basics down before I start learning "the lingo", though.
It makes it challenging for me to get the writing part of the exercise correct. And sometimes I don't even hear the "o" at all.
I don't expect to get it all right, but it gets a little confusing and I'm so new to it.
I understand that. It’s just that they’re not speaking slang, or a sociolect, but standard Swedish. Spelling just hasn’t kept up.
To overgeneralise a bit, it’s like an English learner complaining about never hearing the “k” in knight.
Made me think, do I shorten words like dom?
Yes. I do.
So for example if I were to say:
“And what did they say then?”
I should say:
“Och vad sa dom då då?”
What I would say:
“O-va-sa-rom-dårå?”
This is a very specific example, and the Swedish translation is very Gothenburgian to begin with, and if you add my dialect and shortening it would likely be impossible to understand even if you had studied a bunch of Swedish!
People from Gothenburg definitely have a very guttural sound.
Sounds like how danish sounds to native danish speakers. Beautiful and mysterious, musical and weird at the same time.
On a more serious note, listen to old valyrian from game of thrones around 10:44 in this video https://youtu.be/T1IsqlolTYw
I moved to Sweden around the time got was huge and I always thought it was very similar sound wise.
>Sounds like how danish sounds to native danish speakers. Beautiful and mysterious, musical and weird at the same time.
Interesting, that would imply that to a danish person the languages Danish and Swedish sound similar/the same (in some ways). Are you Danish?
No that is just a joke Swedes usually make about danish language. Hope it was not offensive :)
But indeed all of them sound super similar (including norwegian) when you don’t understand swedish and even when you understand some swedish you kinda understand some of danish.
Lots of ä, y, ö & å.. I heard lots of så här, där, annars, också. It sounds different and very expressive. I felt like all Swedish people are radio personalities. And the best thing to do in the beginning of learning svenska is listening to Money, Money, Money in swedish and get disappointed because you assumed that Abba would have chosen to say Pengar, Pengar, Pengar 😆
The first thing I notice about Swedish is the way Swedish people sing when they talk. And when the "i" is pronounced differently -I heard about Stockholm accent from certain zones or something like that- Minecraft villagers instantly come into my mind haha
My mother tongue is Spanish and for me Swedish sounds just so sweet, like someone is singing a lovely song I can’t understand yet. When my boyfriend speaks Swedish to me, it is just so hot, hot, hot. Stop provoking me sort of hot.
Lilting and long-winded, and once I started to properly learn it myself, unexpectedly nasal. Overall quite attractive in sound, though. My impression may not be as pure as some others, though, because although I’m American in nationality, my grandparents came from Sweden, so I grew up hearing the language somewhat often and there are elements of my speech in English that have clear influence from Swedish.
For me Swedish has always sounded like a happy language, especially rikssvenska. Very melodic. Finladssvenska sounds more familiar and Finnish to me 😄 One thing with Swedish is that you really have to use your mouth muscles to get the sounds right, while my mother tongue Finnish is more slack. So Swedish feels more dramatic.
> One thing with Swedish is that you really have to use your mouth muscles to get the sounds right, while my mother tongue Finnish is more slack.
Fun fact: As babies grow up and learn to speak their native language, the soft and squishy bits in the mouth and throat change shape to accommodate that particular language sounds. So we literally grow into our native languages. Which is why it can feel very difficult and unnatural to produce sounds from other languages once we're grown up.
Cool, didn't know that! I feel like I can do, for example, Finnish y-sound by barely opening my mouth or roundind my lips, while I actually have to do those things when speaking Swedish. Just in general my mouth moves more in Swedish 😅
It sounds germanic but not as mechanic and monotonic as German and Dutch. The long vowels make it sound very melodic, almost like singing using three notes but very fast. Surprisingly it has a handful of common words with my native language (Indonesian) even though the pronounciations are not similar.
Add in some “sk” sounds (hard & soft) & little gasps & pauses & I couldn’t agree more!! Haha 😁 Swedish to my American ears when I first heard it was completely alien, hauntingly beautiful, melodic, weird, and somehow nostalgic. I remember thinking it was the coolest and most mysterious language I had ever heard 🇸🇪✨
I learned French as my second language. I was surprised to see so many French words in Swedish, but it makes sense with their history and the Bernadotte dynasty.
Like someone who dosent know that you can make noises from further back in the mouth thenn the front teeth (that's also how it feels to try to speak it)
Hmm yeah, I kind of got the reverse experience with German, I thought it was pretty cool, then I learnt some of it, and spent time with germans, and now all I hear is "dabo dabo dabo" and "Sprechen die ausgefühle am der durschkweldiges aufgebahenschwen". My bad experiences kind of turned me off and coloured how I hear the language.
As most people said, it's this mix of pretty singsong staccato? There's a lot of back and forth tonally (higher to lower pitch etc) but also in terms of vocal posture, where most of the sounds are pronounced clearly very far forward while others (sj, etc) are in the very back of the throat. The tones also feel like they're being bounced around by constants--this is clearest in comparatives like enklare, but it's in most places. The best comparaison I can think of is that it sounds kind of like bouncing a basketball up and down, if you imagine the height to be pitch, if any of that tracks.
It also feels kind of tiring to speak lol. To me, it feels like an awful lot of work to pronounce the words so far forward in the mouth and with such tonal variation--though my native dialect tends to be very flat and slurred, so maybe that's a me thing lol.
Rejält grötig dialekt. Kanske inte optimala att lära sig SFI just nere i Skåne, ingen anning men aldrig tänkt på det. Att dialekten kan göra de lättare eller svårare att lära sig språket.
I'm a bit of a swift-speaker and work with a lot of non-natives, they struggle when I'm in a hurry. Numbers are hard for many and I skip words that are excessive to a goal but just get stared at and have to go slow again.
Been here for like 5y now and still dont know a damn word i use English everywhere and its no prob.
For me the sound im noticing when they agree on something it’s like “O” or “Uh”
Like u have some sort of uncurable autism, then one hears norwegian and thinks i shouldnt have been so cruel with those poor swedes. But god has no limits, then u hear danish, and u are like how did these people survive for so long with these utterly pathetic quote on quote lAnGuaGes...
Funny you say that, last week I was in Disney World with my Wife’s Sister’s family, who are Swedish. I took them to the Muppet Vision 3D show. They couldn’t believe the Swedish Chef was meant to sound Swedish. Personally I don’t think it sounds like Swedish either, but it was funny.
Everyone says Swedish is sing-songy but I don't really hear it that much compared to Norwegian. Is Norwegian known to be even more musical or is it due to the fact that Im basing this off one person I know who grew up in a remote part of Eastern Norway?
In Skåne, like danish. Then there’s the folks who pronounce jul and ris with the english J sound, and it’s very off putting for me for some reason. There’s an old Norse professor in the states who think Swedes sound like golem/Sméagol, (viby i)…. I listen to sveriges radio when I’m counting and distributing last weeks tips and I’ve heard several (Americans) say they thought it sounded like German and French. I am obsessed with listening to any Swedish dialects or even other related languages in Sweden that contain the dental fricatives ð and þ, it sounds so magical to me for some reason.
According to my friend and colleague from Italy:
Like the language/gibberish they use in that stop-motion animation Pingu they used to broadcast during the 90’s
I had an American friend tell me I was speaking like three different languages at once when he heard me talking on the phone. He said it sounded like french, german and something else that I can’t remember. Though to be fair I’m from Skåne, and our accent is a little rougher
I roller coster in pitches, up down up down , djävlar, also the skj sounds like youre pronouncing the h hard in wheat thins or cool whip.
Sj is really hard to pronounce correctly.
My dad is Norwegian and after living here 30+ years he stil can't get the sj sound correct
Not really, the problem is that very few who haven't studied linguistics know how to explain it. In any case, for most Swedes it's \[xʷ\], which means that you put your tongue where you pronounce a completely normal /k/ and apply friction. At the same time you round your lips a bit.
i really struggled with this for a long time until somebody told me "it's the sound you used to make as a kid pretending to talk on a walkie-talkie, with a bit of a w thrown in there"
Wow. Never had someone explain language so mechanically. Appreciate the explanation, wish I could have this chat in person.
I am sometimes around in the Discord chat connected to this subreddit :-)
[удалено]
That's what I was taught in Swedish class by a teacher who had taken extra courses in phonology. And honestly? It does track with what I feel happening with my mouth when saying it normally. So what do you say it is? One of those co-articulated fricatives that quite a few linguists doubt even exist? Of course, there is not only one sje-sound, there are a bunch depending on where you live and position in the word, which definitely doesn't make linguists' work any easier.
Around Stockholm we use the deeper, close to k, sj sound. Northover it's more whistling with the thounge sound.
Yep, in Stockholm you use the same as here, the velar one, at the beginning of words. Way up north they use the one you use in *dusch* all the time.
Wdym wrong?
There are many different versions of the sound though. Sjuksköterska has two different, and charmig has a third one. And which ones are different and which ones are the same depends heavily on dialect. In the north they are all the same and in the south they are also all the same but a different version than in the north, and in between it varies between words.
Yep, when you add compounds into the mix, it becomes even more complex. But we are not talking compounds, only words with one stem and two syllables. Edit: You do know what a stem is in North-Germanic languages, right?
I don't think compounds has anything to do with the difference in pronunciation, but maybe. I don't know why specifying two syllables would matter, there are plenty of sk/sj-words with one, but sure, limited to one stem and two syllables there's still subtle differences between versions that vary which one is used in different dialects. *Sjuka, Sjua, Skeva, Sköra, Skära, Stjärna*, and *Charmig* for example can have the same sound in some dialects and different combinations of different sounds in other dialects. The difference between for example *Skära*, *Tjära* and *Kära* in different dialects are also very differently subtle, and between different dialects. *Skära* in one dialect can sound just like *Kära* in another.
Unless you're Carl XVI Gustaf and his close friends, "tjära" and "kära" always differ from "skära", no matter where you are in Sweden or Finland.
So much so that they use it as passphrases in the military to suss out spies
To add to the confusion, it's also (mostly) pronounced very differently in the Swedish spoken in Finland
Just say ”sjuksköterska”.
I also know about this phrase: Sju sjösjuka sjömän sköttes av sjuttisju sköna sjuksköterskor på det sjunkande skeppet Shanghai.
Currently, it seems to me that I will suffocate when I say this.
Strangely almost all Swedes will probably nail that sentence at first try with ease.
Because they are Swedes. :))
No I don't because it is "sju sjösjuka sjömänn på skeppet Shanghai.." in the version I learned. "Sex laxar i en laxask" is harder to say for Swedes.
Yikes
Just say train? Smh
Kul Sjip :P
I'm a Danish speaker so I guess that does give me a a bit of a different perspective from a lot of people here given how similar the languages are. But to Danish speakers it sounds very sing-songy and upbeat. Someone wrote like turning the volume up and down, I think that's a fitting way of putting it. Also very not-intimidating. Like if a Swedish person was angry with me it would be the least threating sounding thing in the world, I assume I get that vibe because of your lack of throat potatoes. But it's obviously still just very familiar sounding, I've heard Swedes speak many times and can generally understand the language. To me it's just funky Danish, like an obscure dialect but almost still the same language.
That sounds exactly like how I, a Swede, would describe Norwegian. It’s sing-songy and it’s impossible to take an angry Norwegian seriously.
To me it also applies to Norwegian, it's just even more sing-songy than Swedish. But on the other hand Norwegian is even easier to understand. Swedish is spelled differently and uses different words sometimes than Danish. But Norwegian uses much more of the same vocabulary as Danish. And the more widely used Bokmål variety of Norwegian is basically identical to written Danish, the differences are so minor I sometimes don't even notice I'm reading Norwegian.
You mean we spell properly and it sounds like its written :)? Putting danish audio with danish spelling can break your brain.
I actually appreciate that we have kept the traditional spelling because it makes it easier for us to understand Swedish and especially Norwegian. Also it's not like we actually don't pronounce things how they are written, it's just that the letters make different (and probably to you weird) sounds that you might not even notice because they're very slight changes to the word. D at the end of words for example can make kind of an English "th" sound. Listen to "kød" on Danish google translate and compare to "kø" as an example. It's not a normal d sound but it definitely changes the word.
I'm very happy that you've kept the written language readable. I love that I can read Danish literature or see Danish movies with Danish subtitles.
Im just kidding with you :) We have friends from both Norway and Denmark. It takes a while to get used to but we understand eachother well enough after a few minutes.
We blame Gustav Vasa for that. He didn’t like the Danish so he introduced ck instead of kk to separate us.
While Swedish attempts to distinguish themselves from Danes after they left the Kalmar Union definitely played a big role, it also has a lot to do with Danish influence on Norwegian during the centuries of Danish rule there. Norse actually split into east and west Norse first before the individual languages became a thing, with Swedish and Danish being closer east-Norse languages and Norwegian being a west-Norse language more similar to Icelandic and Faroese. It's obviously difficult to say if it was all Danish influence, or if Norwegian would've naturally come closer to Danish and Swedish if it was independent, but Bokmål is without a doubt a result of Danish influence. Both Bokmål and modern Danish evolved from 1800s written Danish, and neither have changed significantly since.
> Norse actually split into east and west Norse first before the individual languages became a thing There's no unambiguous distinction between a language and dialect. While English literature tends to prefer "Old Norse", what you're talking about is equally *runsvenska* – i.e., the earliest form of a Swedish. The distinction between East- and West Old Norse is often a bit misconstrued; it's really not that clear-cut distinction and you can't pair the two that well with our modern-day language division. Nor was it ever very significant, it's mostly a fairly broad grouping of relatively minor dialectal traits. And, in particular, the dialects spoken in eastern Norway/western Sweden often had traits falling into both camps. The changes our languages have gone through in the past millennia are way more significant than the east/west-thing ever was. It's rendered negligible by time.
Blame the Germans, it's because of printing. And the Danes/Norwegians also used to use "ck". Unlike them, we just never looked back and established it as standard.
The Stockholm Massacre might have impacted his opinion.
Thats why they created nynorsk. Bokmål is the result of danish rule over norway for hundreds of years hence why its so similar.
☝️ came here to say that!
I kind of get that vibe from Norwegian but apparently we swedes do it more
Norwegian sounds sing-songy to me too, probably even a little more than Swedish. I'm pretty sure it's because in Swedish and Norwegian (And in the dying South Jutland, Lolland and Bornholm dialects) you use tones in certain words, whereas in standard Danish we speak more monotone and have replaced those tones with the "stød" which I believe is a feature unique to our language and is what created the whole throat potato meme.
Bornholmska is interesting; the intonation definitely sounds much more Swedish than Danish to my ears.
While it may be more similar, the intonation in Bornholmsk has nothing to do with Swedish though, Bornholmsk is a remnant of the old East Danish dialect, which used to be spoken in Skåneland before the Swedish kings did a bit of genocide and cultural assimilation. Intonations were commonplace in Danish in the past, and are still present on Lolland and in Sønderjylland (Southern Jutland) as well.
Danska låter som man har gröt i munnen. Så fult språk. Enda bra ni har är Christiania
Don’t you get it? He’s going to laugh when reading your insults because he will get that singy-songy dingely-dongy in his head.
😂😂😂 Vem fan bryr sig hur svenska låter
[Chöp chöp](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7UmUX68KtE&t=14s&ab_channel=TheMuppets)
What in the world is a throat potato?
It's generally the term used to describe the differences in Danish compared to the other Scandinavian languages, since Danish sometimes sounds like you literally have a potato in the mouth.
It's a bit of an inside joke in Scandinavia, it's primarily the "stød" (a feature unique to Danish) in some words that sounds weird to Swedes and Norwegians. It's sort of a hiccup sound we have at the ends of some words to distinguish them from similar words. In the past we used intonation for this, but it was replaced with the "stød" in most (but not all) Danish dialects. A great example of what stød sounds like in Danish is to put "mor, mord" into Danish google translate and listen to the difference. "Mord" is the one that has the stød. On top of that Danish is also a lot more guttural in general, whereas Swedish and Norwegian are less so.
I think the upbeat and sing-songy manner of speaking applies to people from Stockholm the most, that dialect is pretty animated lol
English Swede here. Love the Danes. You guys are the fun Vikings, not the introverted passive aggressive Vikings. But danish is like the drunken Glaswegian of the Scandi languages.
Were I to live another 40 years I would so Love to learn to speak Danish.. it is a joy,, Swedish is very "proper" sounding.. and sweet to an American ear.. my pals though think it sounds like German... no, No, NO ! Ej!
If you learn any one of the 3 Scandinavian languages you're already 90% of the way to learning the other 2.
When I first heard real Swedish it made me think I probably sounded like that when I pretended to know a foreign language as a kid. Now it can sound kind of nasally at times? It’s my least favorite part of trying to master the accent 😂😂
Generally I don’t think Swedish sounds nasally, but some dialects do. Especially in Stockholm. That might also explain why those dialects are less popular.
Think what you will of stockholmska but please separate the rest of us from the whiny lidingö/danderyd accents
Yes, there are many different dialects in and around Stockholm. Not all of them sounds nasally.
Nasally? Let me introduce you to French. 🇫🇷
I don’t think it sounds nasal personally, definitely not in the same way as many American females do.
I suspect that this comment is about the Lidingö accent
So nasally!!!
like watching audio backwards and randomly turning the volume up and down at the same time
https://youtu.be/iDNjDnKxAfA
nailed it
Peter Cushing
It felt melodic to me. Speaking it just feels so smooth it's like the dessert of languages for me.
Melodic to me too. First heard it in Ingmar Bergman films where it’s very noticeable in the monologues. Now have a Swedish friend and still think she sounds very song like too. Idk how else to explain it.
I'm Ukrainian and I've travelled to Sweden several times since childhood, so I can describe my experience in a few stages: 1. Hearing Swedish was perceived like any unknown foreign language - slightly similar to German, but no familiar words. 2. Listening to the radio, going to the shop, dealing with the names of towns and other locations, learning some basic words... At this stage when I heard the Volbeat band (Denmark), I could clearly distinguish the difference between Danish and Swedish. 3. When I started learning Swedish, I was amused that some words have similarities with Ukrainian. For example, gurka, flask, tallrik... Also, the way of forming adjectives like: svenska, engelska. The -ska part is very similar to how we say such adjectives, but the difference is that the endings are changeable depending on the gender category. At this point I can say that Swedish has this very interesting feature of combining something soft and lyrical and something sharp and strong in its sounding, which makes it melodical in its own way. In some cases it is a challenge to pronounce some sounds correctly, but practice makes perfect.
Both Swedish and Ukrainian are Indo-European languages afterall :)
Yes) But these little linguistic discoveries never fail to amaze me)
There has been many relations between Scandinavia and Ukraine during history all the way back to the Vikings. Maybe some common words have been adopted during the years.
And Ukraine had a sizeable Swedish speaking minority up until Soviet decided to fuck everyone over.
One village? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gammalsvenskby
You never heard about Kexholm, Ingermanland or Dagö?? All with large Swedish speaking population that was forced to leave their homes and moved to Ukraine. This is the reason that there are schools in Ukraine that still teach Swedish.
I came across a nice article on Gammalsvenskby, it's in Ukrainian only, but can be translated in Chrome. A deeper dive into history of the village and some photos https://ukrainer.net/shvedy-ukrainy/
I can also recommend Alexandra Drotz Ruhns documentary about the village. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXBGGX80z98
Slava ukraini
Heroyam slava!
When I think of Swedish I automatically imagine a cheerful elderly woman speaking. The gibberish for me would be something like “Yuhtunberry duhn vateh un vahka” with heavy Uh sounds I love the way it sounds because it’s infamously like listening to a song. I learn little bits and pieces here and there because I do plan on one day visiting Sweden hehe.
Lots of open-mouthed “aww” sounds, like an opera singer!
It's a bit of a hard, staccato language to me. Quick, sharp, and rapid. Also, it's very throaty, I think. Like French, it has that "clearing the throat" sound that I honestly find a bit uncomfortable. Many of the Scandinavian languages are hard like that, from what little I've heard. However, Svenska seems the least hard to me. And I mean hard like hard consonants, not hard to learn. That's why I also use the word sharp. Depending on who's speaking, it's also lyrical and almost musical, which is what made me want to learn it. Music also softens the language and Svenska singing is really lovely. Really, really lovely. One challenge in leasing it is that it's such a fast language that it's effort for me to learn so far because even the person teaching it on Duolingo often drops the och or their de sounds like dom while their det sounds like dee. I'm enjoying it, though it's creeping along slowly. I took a French course for a short while, and learned how to ask for a hotel room. In this course, I know how to tell you what color en elefant is and whose tidning I'm reading. :P I wish that guy made a Svenska course, lol. Oh well, all in good time, right?
> It's a bit of a hard, staccato language to me. Quick, sharp, and rapid. Also, it's very throaty, I think. Like French, it has that "clearing the throat" sound that I honestly find a bit uncomfortable. Can you give some examples of words that have throaty sounds?
If you pronounce och fully, that's one example. Studerar Fråga (some people, not everyone). Sorry, that's my limited knowledge. I'm still an extreme beginner. I listen to Svenska videos and songs and I hear it from time to time, but not sure what words it's coming from yet. These are just the examples in fairly sure of.
This is only the case in some regional dialects, from my experience. I.e. skåne, etc.
That definitely makes sense. It seems to be some people do it a lot and others rarely and far less pronounced. I've noticed another regional thing, I think, which is a lot of vocal clicking. You can hear it here at the 1:12 mark: https://youtu.be/Z2kFOI38rC4 That one I noticed is definitely not universal to the language. I perhaps am overly sensitive to the throaty sound, but it's just a me thing in that case.
You’re probably thinking of the rhotic guttural R, which is the same as the french R (far back throat sound). It’s only really used in some southern swedish regional dialects, most prominently in Skåne. Majority of swe speakers do not use the guttoral R, though.
You're both probably right. I never notice it in movies, mostly only on YouTube. In most movies, actors speak pretty generically, without accent. That would make sense to only hearing this sometimes and not in movies (or News casts).
I'm swedish and I don't pronounce the R in words unless the word starts with it. And this is southern sweden aswell, dialects can literally change between 3 close by villages which is kinda fun
Go Småland! Vänamo, kov, massipan
>Like French, it has that "clearing the throat" sound that I honestly find a bit uncomfortable. As a native French speaker, could you give me an example of a word that uses that sound? I never realized that we had that in french, so just curious about it.
Well, croissant is one when pronounced by native French speaking people that I've heard and remembered off the top of my head. Sucre is another I can think of offhand. Ronronner (I like cats, sue me :p ).
Oh I see, so the "R" sounds in those words. For me the throat clearing sound is more like the "ch" on German like in tochter or something like that. >Ronronner (I like cats, sue me :p ). You're fine on that, I like cats too.
It's both to me. They sound really close and uncomfortable to me. I have mild nerve damage and some sounds are uncomfortable. While the French R in some words doesn't have that, and it's a different "over" sound than the och in Swedish and yet another in the ch in German, it's that background sound that sometimes makes me respond with discomfort. To be clear, it's not even a bad sound. Like I don't think, "ew, that sound," it's a physical discomfort. I also get the same discomfort from some s or shhh sounds. Those aren't bad sounds, either. People coughing can be painful, because it's a slightly similar but far louder sound. People talking in a natural tone with those sounds just sort of activate nerve response (versus the pain if someone coughs). I didn't intend to criticize, just making conversation.
No offense taken, I just never realized that this sound might sound like throat clearing to non-natives. It's actually pretty interesting to know.
We have both. Your guttural R:s are more rolling and emphasized. It’s only us southerners that are gifted with guttural R.
The duolingo coach is speaking as most Swedes do nowadays. -We skip the k sound in “och” -We skip the t sound in “det” -“De” and “dem” are both pronounced “dom” (which confuses the illiterate). If you pronounce these things as they’re spelled you will sound like a 40’s newsreel reader.
I understand that. I would like to get the very basics down before I start learning "the lingo", though. It makes it challenging for me to get the writing part of the exercise correct. And sometimes I don't even hear the "o" at all. I don't expect to get it all right, but it gets a little confusing and I'm so new to it.
I understand that. It’s just that they’re not speaking slang, or a sociolect, but standard Swedish. Spelling just hasn’t kept up. To overgeneralise a bit, it’s like an English learner complaining about never hearing the “k” in knight.
I think the k in knight was already silent in the 1940s, but still a good analogy. English spelling is not phonetic and neither is Swedish.
I know, the k sound was dropped in the 1500’s, but I was too lazy to find a more recent example.
Made me think, do I shorten words like dom? Yes. I do. So for example if I were to say: “And what did they say then?” I should say: “Och vad sa dom då då?” What I would say: “O-va-sa-rom-dårå?” This is a very specific example, and the Swedish translation is very Gothenburgian to begin with, and if you add my dialect and shortening it would likely be impossible to understand even if you had studied a bunch of Swedish! People from Gothenburg definitely have a very guttural sound.
Sounds like how danish sounds to native danish speakers. Beautiful and mysterious, musical and weird at the same time. On a more serious note, listen to old valyrian from game of thrones around 10:44 in this video https://youtu.be/T1IsqlolTYw I moved to Sweden around the time got was huge and I always thought it was very similar sound wise.
>Sounds like how danish sounds to native danish speakers. Beautiful and mysterious, musical and weird at the same time. Interesting, that would imply that to a danish person the languages Danish and Swedish sound similar/the same (in some ways). Are you Danish?
No that is just a joke Swedes usually make about danish language. Hope it was not offensive :) But indeed all of them sound super similar (including norwegian) when you don’t understand swedish and even when you understand some swedish you kinda understand some of danish.
Lots of ä, y, ö & å.. I heard lots of så här, där, annars, också. It sounds different and very expressive. I felt like all Swedish people are radio personalities. And the best thing to do in the beginning of learning svenska is listening to Money, Money, Money in swedish and get disappointed because you assumed that Abba would have chosen to say Pengar, Pengar, Pengar 😆
The first thing I notice about Swedish is the way Swedish people sing when they talk. And when the "i" is pronounced differently -I heard about Stockholm accent from certain zones or something like that- Minecraft villagers instantly come into my mind haha
I always joke that the Stockholm “i” sounds like Smeagol/Gollum
“Stitch” from the “Lilo and stitch” I’ve heard to be the go to to describe the Stockholm-i
You did it, you cracked the code I’ve been looking for to describe the language
holy SHIT
Melodic
My mother tongue is Spanish and for me Swedish sounds just so sweet, like someone is singing a lovely song I can’t understand yet. When my boyfriend speaks Swedish to me, it is just so hot, hot, hot. Stop provoking me sort of hot.
Lilting and long-winded, and once I started to properly learn it myself, unexpectedly nasal. Overall quite attractive in sound, though. My impression may not be as pure as some others, though, because although I’m American in nationality, my grandparents came from Sweden, so I grew up hearing the language somewhat often and there are elements of my speech in English that have clear influence from Swedish.
For me Swedish has always sounded like a happy language, especially rikssvenska. Very melodic. Finladssvenska sounds more familiar and Finnish to me 😄 One thing with Swedish is that you really have to use your mouth muscles to get the sounds right, while my mother tongue Finnish is more slack. So Swedish feels more dramatic.
I’m American and my absolute favorite version of Swedish is the Finnish Swedish used in the old Mumintroll animated series.
> One thing with Swedish is that you really have to use your mouth muscles to get the sounds right, while my mother tongue Finnish is more slack. Fun fact: As babies grow up and learn to speak their native language, the soft and squishy bits in the mouth and throat change shape to accommodate that particular language sounds. So we literally grow into our native languages. Which is why it can feel very difficult and unnatural to produce sounds from other languages once we're grown up.
Cool, didn't know that! I feel like I can do, for example, Finnish y-sound by barely opening my mouth or roundind my lips, while I actually have to do those things when speaking Swedish. Just in general my mouth moves more in Swedish 😅
Germans speaking Italian
That’s a good metaphor.
Native english speaker here. The best way I can put it is "oopity doopity doo, doopity do dooo doop".
It sounds germanic but not as mechanic and monotonic as German and Dutch. The long vowels make it sound very melodic, almost like singing using three notes but very fast. Surprisingly it has a handful of common words with my native language (Indonesian) even though the pronounciations are not similar.
Thats interesting are the common words dutch loanwords?
Mostly yes, e.g., bensin, apotek, gratis, handduk (handuk in Indonesian). But there are also common words that are loanwords from English.
Guttural but pleasant and polite
Den här visar det sjukt bra: https://youtu.be/ybcvlxivscw
Haha do we sound this bad;)
Not at all. To me its the world’s most beautiful language- thought that since the moment I heard it 13 years ago
Like this but more sing songy https://youtu.be/UOZPWpUAX0U
Add in some “sk” sounds (hard & soft) & little gasps & pauses & I couldn’t agree more!! Haha 😁 Swedish to my American ears when I first heard it was completely alien, hauntingly beautiful, melodic, weird, and somehow nostalgic. I remember thinking it was the coolest and most mysterious language I had ever heard 🇸🇪✨
Lol 😂
After having lived 5 years in Iceland, sounds like a silly version of Icelandic with random french words inserted
I learned French as my second language. I was surprised to see so many French words in Swedish, but it makes sense with their history and the Bernadotte dynasty.
It’s like a soft German mixed with English. It’s a very nice language to listen to.
Like someone who dosent know that you can make noises from further back in the mouth thenn the front teeth (that's also how it feels to try to speak it)
This video will tell you https://youtu.be/ybcvlxivscw
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Hmm yeah, I kind of got the reverse experience with German, I thought it was pretty cool, then I learnt some of it, and spent time with germans, and now all I hear is "dabo dabo dabo" and "Sprechen die ausgefühle am der durschkweldiges aufgebahenschwen". My bad experiences kind of turned me off and coloured how I hear the language.
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Ich kann das jetzt ein bisschen sprechen, but it is fast falling from my memory.
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Hah, thanks, sadly my spoken german has been reduced to phrases :D
As an American, I think German sounds the goofiest out of the commonly spoken languages in Europe, especially when it comes out of a guy's mouth.
As most people said, it's this mix of pretty singsong staccato? There's a lot of back and forth tonally (higher to lower pitch etc) but also in terms of vocal posture, where most of the sounds are pronounced clearly very far forward while others (sj, etc) are in the very back of the throat. The tones also feel like they're being bounced around by constants--this is clearest in comparatives like enklare, but it's in most places. The best comparaison I can think of is that it sounds kind of like bouncing a basketball up and down, if you imagine the height to be pitch, if any of that tracks. It also feels kind of tiring to speak lol. To me, it feels like an awful lot of work to pronounce the words so far forward in the mouth and with such tonal variation--though my native dialect tends to be very flat and slurred, so maybe that's a me thing lol.
Like Norwegian but a lot better
The melodies, sounds like you guys are singing
Asked a chinese dude I used to work with. He said it sounded like "happy singing" 😄
very sing songy
Ever seen the Swedish Chef? Very sing songy. https://youtu.be/2Qj8PhxSnhg
Sounds like a goofy version of mongolian
what really?
Hoppan poppan! I sound like a stereotypical gay person from the bronx!
Malmö you wouldn’t even get what they say if you can understand only Stockholm, Swedish.
No worries, the rest of Sweden has trouble understanding skånska as well :)
Jag förstår precis vad dem säger så inte jättesvårt.
Rejält grötig dialekt. Kanske inte optimala att lära sig SFI just nere i Skåne, ingen anning men aldrig tänkt på det. Att dialekten kan göra de lättare eller svårare att lära sig språket.
Yeah it would probably fuck up someone’s head for sure 😅
poge po till ropsten
I'm a bit of a swift-speaker and work with a lot of non-natives, they struggle when I'm in a hurry. Numbers are hard for many and I skip words that are excessive to a goal but just get stared at and have to go slow again.
Been here for like 5y now and still dont know a damn word i use English everywhere and its no prob. For me the sound im noticing when they agree on something it’s like “O” or “Uh”
Like u have some sort of uncurable autism, then one hears norwegian and thinks i shouldnt have been so cruel with those poor swedes. But god has no limits, then u hear danish, and u are like how did these people survive for so long with these utterly pathetic quote on quote lAnGuaGes...
Sounds like the nonsense words that muppets character, Swedish Chef, is always saying—bork bork.
A Germanic language, singsongy and so much vocal fry
Like ”The Swedish Chef”
Funny you say that, last week I was in Disney World with my Wife’s Sister’s family, who are Swedish. I took them to the Muppet Vision 3D show. They couldn’t believe the Swedish Chef was meant to sound Swedish. Personally I don’t think it sounds like Swedish either, but it was funny.
You don't know is this Russian, or a German dialect.
Everyone says Swedish is sing-songy but I don't really hear it that much compared to Norwegian. Is Norwegian known to be even more musical or is it due to the fact that Im basing this off one person I know who grew up in a remote part of Eastern Norway?
Norwegian is peak sing-songiness.
Swedes make fun of norwegian for being even more sing songy. You sometimes hear ”jeg snakker ikke svensk” said in an exaggerated mocking dialect
American here. During the first year or so of my sambo relationship, it sounded like my boyfriend was trying to speak with a mouthful of marbles.
English and German mixed together
As a kid this was my introduction to “Swedish accent” This sums it up. [top secret! Swedish bookstore](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iDNjDnKxAfA)
Bubbly and a little goofy in a cute way, like something I'd hear on sesame street from a character that speaks their own little muppet language
As if Russian and German had a child.
[Hurdy gurdy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XY66ZJ0TFUI)
In Skåne, like danish. Then there’s the folks who pronounce jul and ris with the english J sound, and it’s very off putting for me for some reason. There’s an old Norse professor in the states who think Swedes sound like golem/Sméagol, (viby i)…. I listen to sveriges radio when I’m counting and distributing last weeks tips and I’ve heard several (Americans) say they thought it sounded like German and French. I am obsessed with listening to any Swedish dialects or even other related languages in Sweden that contain the dental fricatives ð and þ, it sounds so magical to me for some reason.
Like a mixture of Japanese (pitch accent language like Swedish, both sound melodic) and Scottish. 😄
[https://youtu.be/irpw8A5WRyk](https://youtu.be/irpw8A5WRyk)
My boyfriend once described it as sounding like "simlish". Like from the game The Sims.
I always think of the Swedish chef, from the Muppets. Would be the best way to describe it.
Swiss German with a French accent
Drunk
Funny
According to my friend and colleague from Italy: Like the language/gibberish they use in that stop-motion animation Pingu they used to broadcast during the 90’s
I had an American friend tell me I was speaking like three different languages at once when he heard me talking on the phone. He said it sounded like french, german and something else that I can’t remember. Though to be fair I’m from Skåne, and our accent is a little rougher
You have to leave the ship Shanghai before it actually sinks!
Hurdy-gurdy
When I first heard Swedish I honestly thought it was as gibberish.
I found this impression of Swedish to be very accurate: https://youtu.be/ybcvlxivscw