Svenskt uttal / Swedish pronunciation

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Jurgen Wullenwever
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Re: Svenskt uttal / Swedish pronunciation

Postby Jurgen Wullenwever » 2015-01-27, 21:44

gfl87 wrote:Norstedts Svenska Uttalslexikon

NickPR wrote:Svenska språknämndens uttalsordbok

You can use those two with caution, as they represent some kind of government-defined rikssvenska, but normal speakers do not pronounce words their way. The major differences occur in some sensitive cases. :evil:

Not that there are any others to use for you. There are four such dictionaries for Swedish, the other two being Lyttkens-Wulff from around 1880 and the as yet unfinished SAOB, but neither is "true" to ordinary speech. :(

Then there is a number of dialectal dictionaries, some with phonetic or phonemic descriptions, but they naturally describe only that dialect, and not the common language. :|
Chekhov wrote:I don't know about naive worldviews, but Jurgen Wullenwhatever pisses me off to no end because of his extreme pessimism and cynicism. You'd think the world was going to end imminently when talking to that guy.

Jag är rebell: jag sockrar teet, saltar maten, cyklar utan hjälm, och tänder glödlampor.
(Ovanstående var förut, nu försöker jag minska sockret och saltet, och har gett upp mejeriprodukter.)

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Re: Svenskt uttal / Swedish pronunciation

Postby gfl87 » 2015-01-28, 0:01

Jurgen Wullenwever wrote:
gfl87 wrote:Norstedts Svenska Uttalslexikon

NickPR wrote:Svenska språknämndens uttalsordbok

You can use those two with caution, as they represent some kind of government-defined rikssvenska, but normal speakers do not pronounce words their way. The major differences occur in some sensitive cases. :evil:

:hmm: How do you mean it?
(Pronunciation) dictionaries (like Jones' EPD & Well's LPD... ) usually guide speakers by providing what should should pronounce in order to sound educated (but not too affected). Obviously people don't always pronounce words like they're given in those dictionaries, otherwise the dictionaries wouldn't have invented.
Do you Norstedts Svenska Uttalslexikon & Svenska Språknämndens Uttalsordbok too affected, or too artificial, or dated? Why would you disapprove some of their pronunciation. And it would be useful to see some example in that respect.

Jurgen Wullenwever wrote:Not that there are any others to use for you. There are four such dictionaries for Swedish, the other two being Lyttkens-Wulff from around 1880 and the as yet unfinished SAOB, but neither is "true" to ordinary speech. :(

:hug: Although old-fashioned, Lyttkens & Wulff's Svensk Uttals-ordbok is a very interesting clue! I didn't know it, thank you very much!
I didn't even know SAOB & SAOL; they don't give much about pronunciation, but there seem to be some remarks about it.

Jurgen Wullenwever wrote:Then there is a number of dialectal dictionaries, some with phonetic or phonemic descriptions, but they naturally describe only that dialect, and not the common language. :|

That's interesting, though. ;)

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Re: Svenskt uttal / Swedish pronunciation

Postby Jurgen Wullenwever » 2015-01-28, 21:00

gfl87 wrote:Do you Norstedts Svenska Uttalslexikon & Svenska Språknämndens Uttalsordbok too affected, or too artificial, or dated? Why would you disapprove some of their pronunciation. And it would be useful to see some example in that respect.

I can mention some things later on. I feel :shock: and :evil: when looking in them.

gfl87 wrote:I didn't even know SAOB & SAOL; they don't give much about pronunciation, but there seem to be some remarks about it.

SAOB gives as much of phonetic descriptions of the words as any of the other three. :shock:
It gives even more information, since it has graded stress on the vowels, while the others only have primary and secondary stress, and grave.

SAOL is very skeletal. It is only meant to serve as a normal for spelling and forms.
Chekhov wrote:I don't know about naive worldviews, but Jurgen Wullenwhatever pisses me off to no end because of his extreme pessimism and cynicism. You'd think the world was going to end imminently when talking to that guy.

Jag är rebell: jag sockrar teet, saltar maten, cyklar utan hjälm, och tänder glödlampor.
(Ovanstående var förut, nu försöker jag minska sockret och saltet, och har gett upp mejeriprodukter.)

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Re: Svenskt uttal / Swedish pronunciation

Postby gfl87 » 2015-01-31, 17:33

Jurgen Wullenwever wrote:I can mention some things later on. I feel :shock: and :evil: when looking in them.


I'm curious about it. :)

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Re: Svenskt uttal / Swedish pronunciation

Postby Jurgen Wullenwever » 2015-01-31, 22:07

I will take this piecemeal, to highlight some points, but it will not be a complete critique or anything. I find the two dictionaries useful, but they have to be taken with a LOT of salt.

These dictionaries show a pronunciation of rikssvenskan, but it is not the earlier rikssvenska of the mid-twentieth century, but a slightly evolved form, so they have changed some of the more extreme differences from common speech, for instance "sje-ljudet", earlier [ʃ], is now rendered as [ɧ] with that double front and back pronunciation. I have very seldom heard that double sound. My speech has only the back sound [x] for back "sj". Now in the initial descriptions of the books, they actually say that they primarily mean the back dorso-velar sound, but use the double sign phonemically to adhere to all types of "sj" sounds, so they have their backs covered, but the dictionary might be misinterpreted by the casual reader, who will imagine a very difficult sound, instead of the actual simple one.

The "sj" is a complicated affair in Swedish. It is not just one sound with lot of spellings, instead it has (in Central Swedish, we disregard Southern and others here) two basic allophones, the usual is back [x], and the other is front [ɕ]. Some words always have [x], other words always have [ɕ], and some words can have both, depending on the speaker. To make things worse, the [ɕ] is also the way to say "tj" and "rs".

The two dictionaries handle these a little differently. Hedelin tries to differentiate front and back "sj", while Garlén mostly does not. They both depict "tj" as [ɕ] and "rs" as [ʂ], and Hedelin uses [ʂ] for front "sj" as well. They then, as most other descriptions of Swedish, differentiate two actually similar sounds, [ɕ] and [ʂ], which is unnecessary. They and their surroundings perhaps speak like that, but many do not nowadays.
Chekhov wrote:I don't know about naive worldviews, but Jurgen Wullenwhatever pisses me off to no end because of his extreme pessimism and cynicism. You'd think the world was going to end imminently when talking to that guy.

Jag är rebell: jag sockrar teet, saltar maten, cyklar utan hjälm, och tänder glödlampor.
(Ovanstående var förut, nu försöker jag minska sockret och saltet, och har gett upp mejeriprodukter.)

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Re: Svenskt uttal / Swedish pronunciation

Postby Jurgen Wullenwever » 2015-01-31, 22:31

The l sounds. Spoken Central Swedish has four l-sounds, I think, namely "thin l" [l], "rl" [ɭ], "thick l" [ɽ] and the "dl" and "tl" that perhaps is toneless or something. The thick l is not shown in these dictionaries, although Hedelin mentions it in the introduction, so only thin l and rl occur. This is so, since rikssvenskan does not accept [ɽ], and it is considered dialectal and rural. It is still a very basic sound in Swedish, so it should really be shown in a pronouncing dictionary. The distribution of [ɽ] follows some general principles, but then there are a number of exceptions.

The r-sound varies greatly and has no definite pronunciation, so I do not comment on that. Mine own r is mostly like Welsh "rh".
Chekhov wrote:I don't know about naive worldviews, but Jurgen Wullenwhatever pisses me off to no end because of his extreme pessimism and cynicism. You'd think the world was going to end imminently when talking to that guy.

Jag är rebell: jag sockrar teet, saltar maten, cyklar utan hjälm, och tänder glödlampor.
(Ovanstående var förut, nu försöker jag minska sockret och saltet, och har gett upp mejeriprodukter.)

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Re: Svenskt uttal / Swedish pronunciation

Postby Jurgen Wullenwever » 2015-01-31, 23:58

And then there are the vowels. The original Standard Swedish had ten vowels eiyäö aouåô, and all could be long and short. The long and short allophones had approximately the same quality and mostly differed in quantity, except for a and u, that also were qualitatively different.

Rikssvenskan does not accept the vowel ô, but has it merged with å, and this is the stand of these two dictionaries, with the addition of special open allophones of ä and ö when followed by r.

In ordinary speech, it is frequent with loss of short e, using short ä instead, and this is considered normal, while loss of short ö, replaced by short u is frequent, but frowned upon.

I would prefer a ten long/ten short system in the dictionaries, without any special deviants, but if we stay with their system there are both general and particular cases of maldescription.

{need to sleep}
Chekhov wrote:I don't know about naive worldviews, but Jurgen Wullenwhatever pisses me off to no end because of his extreme pessimism and cynicism. You'd think the world was going to end imminently when talking to that guy.

Jag är rebell: jag sockrar teet, saltar maten, cyklar utan hjälm, och tänder glödlampor.
(Ovanstående var förut, nu försöker jag minska sockret och saltet, och har gett upp mejeriprodukter.)

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Re: Svenskt uttal / Swedish pronunciation

Postby gfl87 » 2015-02-01, 1:59

:? As I tried to point out earlier, authors like P. Hedelin and K. Garlén describe the educated, non-regional, «neutral» accent; how to put the blame on them, in that respect?! It's like you expected to find glottal stops in EPD or LPD transcriptions...

I believe that one of the major problems of some pronunciation dictionaries, like the Swedish ones, is to confuse between phonemic & phonetic levels (probably not in theory, but in their very transcriptions); I'm convinced a good pronunciation dictionary should provide purely phonemic transcriptions – also providing a careful description of their actual realisations, of course!

Anyway, all that you had pointed out is highly intriguing!! :)

Jurgen Wullenwever wrote:My speech has only the back sound [x] for back "sj".

I listened to some recording of yours, and to those of some other Swedish speakers, and it's actually roðunded: [xʷ]. ;)

Jurgen Wullenwever wrote:Now in the initial descriptions of the books, they actually say that they primarily mean the back dorso-velar sound, but use the double sign phonemically to adhere to all types of "sj" sounds, so they have their backs covered, but the dictionary might be misinterpreted by the casual reader, who will imagine a very difficult sound, instead of the actual simple one.

Here the purpose of the authors isn't completely inconsistent, I reckon, as their transcriptions show much many details to be phonemic, but they use a diaphone(me) for the «sj-sound». :/
Actually, a good neutral Swedish accent has a velarised postalveo-palatal «[ʆᶭ]» or, using more official symbols [ ʃʲˠ]; thus it has (or «should have») both a dorso-potalveo-palatal articulation and a slight/lax dorso-velar one.

Jurgen Wullenwever wrote:{...} the usual is back [x], and the other is front [ɕ]. Some words always have [x], other words always have [ɕ], and some words can have both, depending on the speaker.

All the words you recorded have the back articulation: :oops: would you please give me some words where you pronounce the front(er) allophone/taxophone? And some where I can find both?

Jurgen Wullenwever wrote:To make things worse, the [ɕ] is also the way to say "tj" and "rs".
{...}
They then, as most other descriptions of Swedish, differentiate two actually similar sounds, [ɕ] and [ʂ], which is unnecessary. They and their surroundings perhaps speak like that, but many do not nowadays.

:shock: Do you merge "tj" & (the front) "sj" altogether in the same phone(me)? And do you seriously pronounce "rs" the same way?!? It's very surprising to me, although I realise they have different distribution, then there'll hardly be any homophonous words.

Jurgen Wullenwever wrote:The distribution of [ɽ] follows some general principles, but then there are a number of exceptions.

I wasn't aware of this variant. It seems to me like the sound which is frequent in Norwegian for /l/ in the Oslo area.
Can you give me some more hints of the distribution of this sound in the lexicon: where is it avoided?

Jurgen Wullenwever wrote:{need to sleep}

Sleep tight.

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Re: Svenskt uttal / Swedish pronunciation

Postby Johanna » 2015-02-01, 4:44

gfl87 wrote:Actually, a good neutral Swedish accent has a velarised postalveo-palatal «[ʆᶭ]» or, using more official symbols [ ʃʲˠ]; thus it has (or «should have») both a dorso-potalveo-palatal articulation and a slight/lax dorso-velar one.

That sounds ridiculous to be honest, the most common and neutral pronunciation of the sj-sound is to have a back and a front one, with the back one being something close to [x], which I guess indeed means [xʷ], at least before rounded vowels.

So what this so-called good neutral accent is said to should have is definitely not neutral ;) Though, it might have been about 50 years ago when they didn't care one bit about how people actually spoke and instead tried to push an artificial standard accent upon everyone, and that was naturally the only one allowed to be heard on TV and radio. That accent was around until the 80's, at least among the older hosts and presenters, but by the 90's it was definitely gone.

gfl87 wrote: :shock: Do you merge "tj" & (the front) "sj" altogether in the same phone(me)? And do you seriously pronounce "rs" the same way?!? It's very surprising to me, although I realise they have different distribution, then there'll hardly be any homophonous words.

Those of us who have both back and front sj have merged the front one with the tj-sound, yes. It's not really surprising, they were quite similar to begin with and the only position in which the distinction is important to keep is one where the sj-sound always is a back one, i.e. at the beginning of word roots.

skjuta /ˈxʉːta/ – tjuta /ˈɕʉːta/
shock /ˈxɔkː/ – tjock /ˈɕɔkː/
skära /ˈxɛːra/ – tjära /ˈɕɛːra/
skända /ˈxɛnda/ – kända /ˈɕɛnda/

(Very broad transcription)

But, I'm pretty sure that the front sj isn't [ɕ] all the time, [ʃ] is definitely also a possibility, and depending on the environment maybe even [ʂ]. The tj-sound of course follows the same rules, which means it's always [ɕ] in the position that matters as far as I know.

About /rs/, yes, I think it has pretty much merged with this tj-sound/front sj, but I'm not sure since I can't really hear the difference between [ɕ] and [ʃ] in those positions, not unless I'm specifically listening for it, which almost never happens and even then it's hard. People probably realise it as [ʂ] in a few more words though, but that might just be due to where in the syllable you find the sound compared to tj/sj.

gfl87 wrote:All the words you recorded have the back articulation: :oops: would you please give me some words where you pronounce the front(er) allophone/taxophone? And some where I can find both?

I know that this was aimed at Jurgen, but since we pronounce these sounds in a neutral way here too, I thought I could make a recording so you could listen to it sooner, if you're still awake that is :)

Starting with the back sj-sound, then the front one, then the tj-sound, and lastly /rs/.

sjal, ske, jour, skjuta, sjö
projekt, regi, fusion

hässja, kanske, broschyr

tjata, kela, kjol, tjuta, köl
fascist, crescendo

borste, Märsta, fars, fors


https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/459 ... j%2Crs.mp3


Edit: In this post from a few years back, there's a list of a bunch of words and what sj-sound I use in each of them, and I wasn't the only one making such a list either :)
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Re: Svenskt uttal / Swedish pronunciation

Postby Jurgen Wullenwever » 2015-02-01, 12:30

One thing to mention, I have not yet come to my actual complaints concerning these dictionaries. What I have posted so far is more part of an introduction, while the complaints mostly concern individual words.

gfl87 wrote:I listened to some recording of yours, and to those of some other Swedish speakers, and it's actually roðunded: [xʷ].

Are you sure about that? :?: I make no liprounding when saying them, unless the following vowel is rounded, and we have lots of rounded and overrounded vowels.
Chekhov wrote:I don't know about naive worldviews, but Jurgen Wullenwhatever pisses me off to no end because of his extreme pessimism and cynicism. You'd think the world was going to end imminently when talking to that guy.

Jag är rebell: jag sockrar teet, saltar maten, cyklar utan hjälm, och tänder glödlampor.
(Ovanstående var förut, nu försöker jag minska sockret och saltet, och har gett upp mejeriprodukter.)

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Re: Svenskt uttal / Swedish pronunciation

Postby NickPR » 2015-02-01, 13:12

gfl87 wrote:I'm convinced a good pronunciation dictionary should provide purely phonemic transcriptions – also providing a careful description of their actual realisations, of course!

I don't share your belief. It's nice to have fairly narrow phonetic transcriptions in e.g. Deutsches Aussprachewörterbuch by Krech et al.

gfl87 wrote: :shock: Do you merge "tj" & (the front) "sj" altogether in the same phone(me)? And do you seriously pronounce "rs" the same way?!? It's very surprising to me, although I realise they have different distribution, then there'll hardly be any homophonous words.

To me, it's not so surprising. In some speakers of Trondheim Norwegian you can find a three-way /ɕ/ - /ʃ/ - /rs/ merger (with [ʂ] as output); and the /ʃ/ - /rs/ merger (with [ʂ] as output) is very widespread in dialects with /rs/ -> [ʂ] - so much so that e.g. Vanvik (1979) treats them as the same sound.

On the other hand, Bergen Norwegian has the /ɕ/ - /ʃ/ merger (with [ʃ] as output), and /rs/ is [ʁs].

AFAIK, in Swedish, the /ɧ/ - /rs/ merger (with [ʂ] as output) is found in northern accents. If it's true, it is the same as the /ʃ/ - /rs/ merger in Norwegian.

Yeah, I know that Norwegian /ɕ/ is more commonly transcribed /ç/, but phonetically, [ɕ] is more common - at least according to Kristoffersen (2000).

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Re: Svenskt uttal / Swedish pronunciation

Postby TeneReef » 2015-02-01, 22:07

The most common word with two apparently different pronunciations is kanske.
Even outside Norrland, you can hear the sh-like pronunciation, but the [xw]-one is spreading:
http://youtu.be/0x761kJZ0nM?t=1m50s
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Re: Svenskt uttal / Swedish pronunciation

Postby gfl87 » 2015-02-02, 2:52

@ Johanna: you have /xʷ/ [xʷ] in <sjal, ske, jour, skjuta, sjö, projekt, regi, fusion>; /ɕ/ [ɕ] (= [ ʃʲ]) – but with a very slight lip rounding too, I would say – in <hässja, kanske, broschyr, tjata, kela, kjol, tjuta, köl, fascist, crescendo>; /rs/ [ʂ].

Johanna wrote:
gfl87 wrote:All the words you recorded have the back articulation: :oops: would you please give me some words where you pronounce the front(er) allophone/taxophone? And some where I can find both?

I know that this was aimed at Jurgen, but since we pronounce these sounds in a neutral way here too, I thought I could make a recording so you could listen to it sooner, if you're still awake that is :)

Thank you very much!!

Johanna wrote:Edit: In this post from a few years back, there's a list of a bunch of words and what sj-sound I use in each of them, and I wasn't the only one making such a list either :)

Thank you once more: it actually answers to the original question I asked to Jurgen.
They're useful lists to compare.
But if Jurgen wants to add anything, he's most welcome. :)

Jurgen Wullenwever wrote:One thing to mention, I have not yet come to my actual complaints concerning these dictionaries. What I have posted so far is more part of an introduction, while the complaints mostly concern individual words.

What words, then?

Jurgen Wullenwever wrote:
gfl87 wrote:I listened to some recording of yours, and to those of some other Swedish speakers, and it's actually roðunded: [xʷ].

Are you sure about that? :?: I make no liprounding when saying them, unless the following vowel is rounded, and we have lots of rounded and overrounded vowels.

Yes Jurgen, I'm sure: [xʷ]: there's a (not too) slight labialisation; possibly, instead of regular rounding, it's more a vertical labialisation: [xᵝ], like the Mandarin contoid [ɕᵝ] (but I'm more inclined to describe it as [xʷ] – listen to your pronunciation in <skena, skett, skina, schism>: in the transition from the contoid to the unrounded vocoid the labialisation clearer); the labial feature's quite clear to my ears.

*(Edit: I was inaccurate! The Mandarin sound is [s̻ʲᵝ], not [ɕᵝ]. Sorry.)

NickPR wrote:
gfl87 wrote:I'm convinced a good pronunciation dictionary should provide purely phonemic transcriptions – also providing a careful description of their actual realisations, of course!

I don't share your belief. It's nice to have fairly narrow phonetic transcriptions in e.g. Deutsches Aussprachewörterbuch by Krech et al.

The phonemic transcriptions make clear what is functionally distinctive in the pronunciation. Thanks to this structure one can add on his own the phonetic features he needs:
gfl87 wrote:{...} also providing a careful description of their actual realisations, of course!

be it a neutral accent or a different social, or regional one.
When the dictionary provides phonetic transcriptions it's at first sight easier: you just have all you need at once; but you end up being a parrot repeating what you read – and let's hope you can do it properly, in such a case, at least! –.
Phonemic transcriptions build up a deeper consciousness in your research in pronunciation.
Don't forget phonetic transcriptions are supposed to be transcriptions of actual realisations; in a dictionary you only find idelised pronunciations as models for you: thus it is in some respect even inconsistent to provide phonetic transcriptions in dictionaries.

TeneReef wrote:The most common word with two apparently different pronunciations is kanske.
Even outside Norrland, you can hear the sh-like pronunciation, but the [xw]-one is spreading:
http://youtu.be/0x761kJZ0nM?t=1m50s

Yes, that's a good example of [xʷ], with lip rounding.
Last edited by gfl87 on 2015-02-06, 4:23, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Svenskt uttal / Swedish pronunciation

Postby Johanna » 2015-02-02, 4:29

gfl87 wrote:@ Johanna: you have /xʷ/ [xʷ] in <sjal, ske, jour, skjuta, sjö, projekt, regi, fusion>; /ɕ/ [ɕ] (= [ ʃʲ]) – but with a very slight lip rounding too, I would say – in <hässja, kanske, broschyr, tjata, kela, kjol, tjuta, köl, fascist, crescendo>; /rs/ [ʂ].

I just realised that I didn't give any examples of the sj-sound in final position (always front in the accents that have both front and back) :oops: I'll make an additional recording tomorrow that will include that :)
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Re: Svenskt uttal / Swedish pronunciation

Postby gfl87 » 2015-02-02, 4:33

Johanna wrote:I just realised that I didn't give any examples of the sj-sound in final position (always front in the accents that have both front and back) :oops: I'll make an additional recording tomorrow that will include that :)

Ahah, great, thank you! ;)

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Re: Svenskt uttal / Swedish pronunciation

Postby Johanna » 2015-02-02, 17:21

Swedish (sv) native; English (en) good; Norwegian (no) read fluently, understand well, speak badly; Danish (dk) read fluently, understand badly, can't speak; Faroese (fo) read some, understand a bit, speak a few sentences; German (de) French (fr) Spanish (es) forgetting; heritage language.

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Re: Svenskt uttal / Swedish pronunciation

Postby Jurgen Wullenwever » 2015-02-02, 21:13

gfl87 wrote:Yes Jurgen, I'm sure: [xʷ]: there's a (not too) slight labialisation; possibly, instead of regular rounding, it's more a vertical labialisation: [xᵝ], like the Mandarin contoid [ɕᵝ] (but I'm more inclined to describe it as [xʷ] – listen to your pronunciation in <skena, skett, skina, schism>: in the transition from the contoid to the unrounded vocoid the labialisation clearer); the labial feature's quite clear to my ears.

If you say so, but I do not notice any liprounding when saying [x], and you seem to be more into phonetic details than I have ever been. I prefer coarse rough outlines myself.

gfl87 wrote:What words, then?

I could say, those pronunciations in Lyttkens/Wulff that do not occur in Garlén, but you might want it more explicit, I suppose ... so I will write something in a close future.
Chekhov wrote:I don't know about naive worldviews, but Jurgen Wullenwhatever pisses me off to no end because of his extreme pessimism and cynicism. You'd think the world was going to end imminently when talking to that guy.

Jag är rebell: jag sockrar teet, saltar maten, cyklar utan hjälm, och tänder glödlampor.
(Ovanstående var förut, nu försöker jag minska sockret och saltet, och har gett upp mejeriprodukter.)

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Jurgen Wullenwever
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Re: Svenskt uttal / Swedish pronunciation

Postby Jurgen Wullenwever » 2015-02-04, 23:19

gfl87 wrote: As I tried to point out earlier, authors like P. Hedelin and K. Garlén describe the educated, non-regional, «neutral» accent; how to put the blame on them, in that respect?! It's like you expected to find glottal stops in EPD or LPD transcriptions...

"Educated" in this case means that the words are pronounced as they are spelt. :(

I can begin with <det> which in normal Sweonic (that I speak) is [dɛ:], [dɛ], [rɛ], depending on the stress. Johanna has Geatic, so she can tell you what forms she uses, since I am not certain there.

Lyttkens/Wulff has [dɛ:t], [de], [ət].
Hedelin has [dɛ:t], [de:t], [de:], [dɛ], [t], [ə]. The [ə] comes from a faulty worddivision where he puts the r of "rä" with the preceding word.
Garlén has [de:t], [de:], [de].

So, the word really is a general "dä" [dɛ:] but none of these dictionaries gives that as the primary pronunciation and every one actually abstains from mentioning it at all. :shock: Talk about misrepresenting the language. :evil:
Chekhov wrote:I don't know about naive worldviews, but Jurgen Wullenwhatever pisses me off to no end because of his extreme pessimism and cynicism. You'd think the world was going to end imminently when talking to that guy.

Jag är rebell: jag sockrar teet, saltar maten, cyklar utan hjälm, och tänder glödlampor.
(Ovanstående var förut, nu försöker jag minska sockret och saltet, och har gett upp mejeriprodukter.)

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Re: Svenskt uttal / Swedish pronunciation

Postby Johanna » 2015-02-05, 5:14

To continue on Jurgen's note, [deːt] and [dɛːt] are pretty rare even among people who use spelling pronunciation for almost every other word, and even when they use them it's pretty much only when they really stress the word.

The normal pronunciation when that word is stressed or somewhat stressed is [deː] or [dɛː], depending on your exact accent. The important thing to know is that if you use the former you have to pronounce a stressed ⟨är⟩ as [eː], and if you use the latter [ɛː] or you'll sound weird, but as long as you keep to that, both options sound perfectly fine in educated speech.

Anyway, pronouncing ⟨det⟩ as it's spelled is not seen as particularly educated or neutral, if anything it sounds like the person is trying to speak a little too carefully, maybe because Swedish isn't their native language or they're trying to make up for something. Which is why it's weird that that pronunciation is given, together with the enclitic forms, which are seen as regional these days, but not the most common way of saying it, namely [dɛː].

Jurgen Wullenwever wrote:Johanna has Geatic, so she can tell you what forms she uses, since I am not certain there.

Around here it's [dɛː], [dɛ], [ɾɛ], but in the Gothenburg area at least, it's [deː] when stressed and it can't be anything else than [ɾɛ] when completely unstressed, but I'm not sure whether it's [de] or [dɛ] when it's more normally unstressed.
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Re: Svenskt uttal / Swedish pronunciation

Postby Jurgen Wullenwever » 2015-02-05, 18:20

Johanna wrote:Around here it's [dɛː], [dɛ], [ɾɛ],

Johanna wrote:the enclitic forms, which are seen as regional these days

I thought you would have some occurrence of [ɛt] or [t], which I do not have, but they are part of the traditional language, probably with some regional distribution.
Chekhov wrote:I don't know about naive worldviews, but Jurgen Wullenwhatever pisses me off to no end because of his extreme pessimism and cynicism. You'd think the world was going to end imminently when talking to that guy.

Jag är rebell: jag sockrar teet, saltar maten, cyklar utan hjälm, och tänder glödlampor.
(Ovanstående var förut, nu försöker jag minska sockret och saltet, och har gett upp mejeriprodukter.)


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