Finland Swedish

[Päiväperhonen]

So, because I'm a finn I have learned some Finland Swedish at school. I'm curious to know how different it is from the swedish spoken in Sweden. For example, how does the vocabulary differ? I know that swedish people wouldn't use the word jättekiva.

[linguoboy]

I tried to learn Finland Swedish because I like the pronunciation better. There's a summary of major differences, including lexical variants, in this Wikipedia article. I think I remember Varislintu or someone telling us that some of the Finnish terms given are no longer in common use but I can't remember which ones.

[Päiväperhonen]

Thank you for the article. It is interesting!

[Woods]

The most noticeable things for me are that what Swedes pronounce as /hw/ (oversimplification, I don't know what the phonetic symbol for it is and where to find it), the Swedish-speaking Finns pronounce as /ʃ/ (examples: "sju" - /hwy/ vs. /ʃy/); Then, what Swedes pronounce as /ʃ/ is pronounced /tʃ/ in Finland (sounds very ugly to me) - example: kilo /'tʃilu/ instead of /'ʃilu/ (I guess they also say /'tʃærlek/ instead of /'ʃærlek/?) And at the end - things like "rs" sound like /ʃ/ in Swedish, whereas in Finland-Swedish "rs" is still /rs/ (e.g. Helsingfors - /'hɛlsingfors/ instead of /'hɛlsingfo^rʃ/. It might be similar with other combinations with r - like bort (/bu^rt/ vs. /burt/), but I'm not sure.

[Johanna]

What do you mean?

Standard Finland-Swedish is pretty straightforward: the 'sj-sound' is /ʃ/ (sometimes realised as [ɕ] or [ʂ]) and the 'tj-sound' is /t͡ʃ/. It's way more consistent than the treatment these phonemes get in most Geatic and Sweonic accents and dialects, that's for sure.

It's not ugly in any way, it's just different.

Heck, things differ way more within Standard Swedish! Like how in the south the 'sj-sound' is [xʷ] all the time, and in the north it's [ʂ] all the time. And in most of Sweden, it's [xʷ] in initial position, medially it can be either [xʷ] or [ɕ~ʃ~ʂ], depending on the word and accent in question, and in final position, it's [ʃ~ʂ].

[Jurgen Wullenwever]

Heck, things differ way more within Sweden! Like how in the south the 'sj-sound' is [xʷ] all the time, and in the north it's [ʂ] all the time. And in most of Sweden, it's [xʷ] in initial position, medially it can be either [xʷ] or [ɕ~ʃ~ʂ], depending on the word and accent in question, and in final position, it's [ʃ~ʂ].

It is [x] in my world. Say [xɛ:] and [xʉ˒:β]. Then [xɛ:] are both unrounded with the same open lips, while [xʉ˒:β] have the first sound unrounded and the second rounded, so the lips are open with [x] and then closes with [ʉ˒].

[Johanna]

Heck, things differ way more within Sweden! Like how in the south the 'sj-sound' is [xʷ] all the time, and in the north it's [ʂ] all the time. And in most of Sweden, it's [xʷ] in initial position, medially it can be either [xʷ] or [ɕ~ʃ~ʂ], depending on the word and accent in question, and in final position, it's [ʃ~ʂ].

It is [x] in my world. Say [xɛ:] and [xʉ˒:β]. Then [xɛ:] are both unrounded with the same open lips, while [xʉ˒:β] have the first sound unrounded and the second rounded, so the lips are open with [x] and then closes with [ʉ˒].

[x] or [xʷ] doesn't matter, they are complete allophones in Sweden Swedish.

Jurgen, you are a nice person and I usually like discussing things with you, but can you please butt out? This thread is about Finland Swedish, not Sweden Swedish, which is why I kept to the very basics in the comparison.