Svenskt uttal / Swedish pronunciation

[Johanna]

Thick l is definitely seen as regional and has been ever since spoken Standard Swedish was invented; Jurgen is the only person I've ever encountered who would even entertain the idea that some groups would think that the absence of it is non-standard in any way.

That being said, there are accents of Standard Swedish in which it's quite common, but the key here lies in the very first sentence of this post: regional, it's not a sound that you'll hear on national news, and barely even on regional news in the areas where normal people use this sound. I also think Norrland is the only macro region where you can speak Standard Swedish in everything but prosody and exact pronunciation of the usual phonemes and still have thick l, around here only those who speak full-blown dialect or retain quite a lot of it in their everyday Swedish have both l sounds, but then you use non-standard vocabulary, grammar and a phonology that plays completely by its own rules too, not just an extra allophone of /l/.

Anyway, I made a recording of a few words with both sounds so that you can compare them
https://www.dropbox.com/s/75pl5f6b7mseh ... l.mp3?dl=0
bli, valv, älg, stol

Edit: I'll also try to find something in the local dialect that I can record so you can hear the sound in a bit more natural setting, recording individual words without exaggerating things is hard

[Jurgen Wullenwever]

Well, if you named yourself after this historical German person, then I think I should

His name was also written Georg Wollweber on one (charicatural?) image of him, so there are alternatives.

...I'm listening again, it really sounds like r.

Germans often think so, and Japanese r actually is similar to this sound.

Thick l is definitely seen as regional and has been ever since spoken Standard Swedish was invented; Jurgen is the only person I've ever encountered who would even entertain the idea that some groups would think that the absence of it is non-standard in any way.

One man against Rome, then. To me, rikssvenskan is non-standard.

That being said, there are accents of Standard Swedish in which it's quite common, but the key here lies in the very first sentence of this post: regional, it's not a sound that you'll hear on national news, and barely even on regional news in the areas where normal people use this sound. I also think Norrland is the only macro region where you can speak Standard Swedish in everything but prosody and exact pronunciation of the usual phonemes and still have thick l, around here only those who speak full-blown dialect or retain quite a lot of it in their everyday Swedish have both l sounds, but then you use non-standard vocabulary, grammar and a phonology that plays completely by its own rules too, not just an extra allophone of /l/.

The thing is, since pre-rikssvensk Standard Swedish was based on Gnellbeltian dialects, over here there is so little that would differ from the standard language, except for the peculiarities of rikssvenskan.

And of course one does not hear normal speech in the news after a century of hard bolshevisation of the pronunciation.

[Woods]

I made a recording of a few words with both sounds so that you can compare them
https://www.dropbox.com/s/75pl5f6b7mseh ... l.mp3?dl=0
bli, valv, älg, stol

Thank you so much Janjan!


By the way, today I acquired a new Comprehensive Swedish Grammar, 750 pages! Hopefully I will soon have time to read it

Germans often think so, and Japanese r actually is similar to this sound.

Really?
I don’t know almost anything about Japanese, but I have a friend who’s got the letter l in his name and the Japs replaced it by r when he was in Japan.

[Jurgen Wullenwever]

Thick l is definitely seen as regional

That is only due to the ruling classes' prejudices during the 1700s and later. Can something objectively be regarded as regional when it encompassed the entire country except the formerly Danish provinces?

And the thick l does not sound particularly vulgar or disgusting when used in normal speech.

I don’t know almost anything about Japanese, but I have a friend who’s got the letter l in his name and the Japs replaced it by r when he was in Japan.

East Asians do not separate l from r, so they see all of them as the same sound, it is said.

[Unknown]

Vad för slags svensk accent har du svårt att förstå? För mig är det skånska.

[Woods]

Can something objectively be regarded as regional when it encompassed the entire country except the formerly Danish provinces?

Looking at the picture, I’m getting curious about the present status of this tjockt l in Norway.

East Asians do not separate l from r, so they see all of them as the same sound, it is said.

Okay, but I thought in Japan in particular it was pronounced as the Swedish/Spanish/Italian/Bulgarian r. And that they did not have l at all and therefore assimilated it to r (like Bulgarians assimilate ð to d, the French to z and so on).

[Jurgen Wullenwever]

around here only those who speak full-blown dialect or retain quite a lot of it in their everyday Swedish have both l sounds, but then you use non-standard vocabulary, grammar and a phonology that plays completely by its own rules too, not just an extra allophone of /l/.

Do you only have two l-sounds? As I have recently mentioned on several places on this forum, I seem to have an initial apical alveolar thin l (liten, laga), and a medial and final dorsal postalveolar thin l (kallt, ila) and some others (thick l, supradental l (rl), toneless l (dl/tl).

[isusbellus]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0M2Mtpqfdho

Jag är finlandssvensk men talar inte som österbottningarna.

Kolla alla videon. De är jättebra!

[Järvi]

Hej,
ämnet sj-ludet har redan mycket diskuterats här men jag har ännu en fråga:
Jag har läst många gånger att uttalet av sj-ljudet inte bara varierar mellan olika regioner utan också mellan sociala grupper. Jag är nyfiken på konkreta exmpel men jag hittar inga ... Känner ni till några?

[Jurgen Wullenwever]

Jag har läst många gånger att uttalet av sj-ljudet inte bara varierar mellan olika regioner utan också mellan sociala grupper. Jag är nyfiken på konkreta exmpel men jag hittar inga ... Känner ni till några?

Tidigare under 1900-talet förekom något som kallades "fruntimmers-sje" som innebar att främre sj användes av kvinnor som ville verka förnämare, medan männen använde bakre sj. Jag har aldrig stött på något sådant själv, men jag kanske bara har glömt det. Vi som talar centralsvenska har ju också en växling mellan främre och bakre sj.

Det bakre sj-ljudet har ju vunnit mark trots myndigheternas motstånd, och blivit helt dominerande, men det betraktades som mindre önskvärt för hundra år sedan.

[TeneReef]

An auditory, acoustic, articulatory and sociophonetic study of Swedish Viby-i

http://theses.gla.ac.uk/7382/

[Järvi]

Tack så mycket för upplysningen, Jurgen!
Om jag förstår rätt, anses det främre sj-ljudet inte speciellt förnämt nuförtiden?

[Jurgen Wullenwever]

Om jag förstår rätt, anses det främre sj-ljudet inte speciellt förnämt nuförtiden?

Inget är förnämt nu längre, och det vulgära är allestädes närvarande i medierna, men i just detta fall verkar myndigheterna ha givit vika för språkutvecklingen. Sj-ljudet var troligen främre från början (kring år 1700), men övergick sedan till ett bakre ljud. I sydsvenskan är sj alltid bakre, och i nordsvenskan är sj alltid främre, men i centralsvenskan växlar vi mellan bakre sj och främre sj beroende på plats i ordet, och därtill kommer att det främre sj ofta har sammanfallit med rs och tj.

[Järvi]

Inget är förnämt nu längre, och det vulgära är allestädes närvarande i medierna, men i just detta fall verkar myndigheterna ha givit vika för språkutvecklingen. Sj-ljudet var troligen främre från början (kring år 1700), men övergick sedan till ett bakre ljud. I sydsvenskan är sj alltid bakre, och i nordsvenskan är sj alltid främre, men i centralsvenskan växlar vi mellan bakre sj och främre sj beroende på plats i ordet, och därtill kommer att det främre sj ofta har sammanfallit med rs och tj.

Tack ska du ha!

[Johanna]

Tack så mycket för upplysningen, Jurgen!
Om jag förstår rätt, anses det främre sj-ljudet inte speciellt förnämt nuförtiden?

Jag skulle säga att är man inte kungen och extremt förnäma personer i hans ålder så är sje-ljudet helt och hållet geografiskt. Kronprinsessan Victoria använder det som andra stockholmare (bakre där flesta svenskar har det) till exempel, och hon är väl så förnäm det går att bli i sin generation.

Kungen själv och överklassfolk födda i mitten av 1900-talet använder främre överallt, men de är ju - som du redan förstått - gamla nu.

Edit: För att låta extra förnäm för 50 år sedan var man tvungen att ha ett överklassuttal rent generellt, att ha främre sje-ljud som lulebo (person från Luleå) lät lika bonnigt ("peasant-y") som ett bakre från Simrishamn.

[TeneReef]

Viby-I exposed

https://youtu.be/wwPrl690sqM

[Jurgen Wullenwever]

Det där med "överkäkens tandrad" låter egendomligt. Jag uttalar det inte så, åtminstone.

Och jag bor i Viby ...

[Sanna Lys]

In southern sweden (skåne) is r pronouced as a uvular r (ʁ or ʀ). In Svealand och Norrland (north and middle sweden) is r pronouced as a trilled r (r). In the Stockholm region is r sometimes a alveolar approximant (ɹ)