Talk:Swedish phonology

I think the ɵ sound should be in the close-mid category

As the title says, I think the ɵ sound should be in the close-mid category and not the open-mid.

I think this chart speaks for itself: Swedish phonology#/media/File:Swedish monophthongs chart.svg

The ɵ sound is almost right in the middle but a little closer to close vowels, and certainly not open-mid as @Fdom5997 insists on. Pol Cəl (talk) 07:56, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

Phonemically, yes it is close-mid, but phonetically (and as also described in the chart) it is slightly lowered, as more open. Fdom5997 (talk) 08:27, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

Actually in the chart it's slightly raised* not slightly lowered. Take a ruler out and try to measure it, it's CLEARLY close-mid both phonetically and phonemically, as long as we're looking at the same chart File:Swedish monophthongs chart.svg Pol Cəl (talk) 14:58, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

It's not phonemically close-mid but close. It's the short counterpart of /ʉː/. Phonetically, it is as low as /ɛ/ and /œ/, being true-mid, right in-between close-mid and open-mid. Sol505000 (talk) 14:39, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

It could be either close, close-mid or true-mid both phonemically and phonetically, but for sure it is not open-mid as @Fdom5997 says. However, the vowel chart shows phonetically a more close-mid or true-mid position. Pol Cəl (talk) 07:21, 21 December 2022 (UTC)

If the sound is phonetically lowered (as addressed per source), then yes it is technically *closer* to being considered open-mid, but it is not considered to be close-mid, however; it is still phonologically transcribed as a close-mid, central, rounded vowel. Fdom5997 (talk) 20:13, 21 December 2022 (UTC)

It is NOT technically open mid, because to assert that you'd have to look at the diagrams, and it's clearly closer to being close than open. At best, it's true-mid but definitely not open-mid. It might have been more open historically, but that doesn't affect the reality of the sound in the present. Ask any competent linguist and they're going to tell you the same thing. Pol Cəl (talk) 16:44, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

kv and kn

The article states, right at the beginning, that "Swedish also features consonant clusters not seen in other Germanic languages such as the "kv" consonant cluster and the "kn" consonant cluster." As far as I can tell, this is simply wrong. If no-one can convince me otherwise, I will delete the sentence. See, amongst others:

• Norwegian: kvinne, knapp
• Danish: kvinde, knap
• Faroese: kvinna, knappur
• Icelandic: kvinna, knappur
• German: quälen /ˈkvɛːlən/, Knecht
• Dutch and North Frisian: knecht
• Saterland Frisian: Knächt
• West Frisian: knjocht

etc.

Tynnoel (talk) 18:49, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

Stress and pitch accent

I am somewhat bewildered by the signs marking stress and pitch accent in this article. They do not seem to be IPA. Is the author not satisfied with IPA's standards? 109.104.19.6 (talk) 06:45, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

Ungrammatical utterance: intended message unclear

The current article text contains:

”Some of the varieties specific, but not exclusive, to areas with a larger immigrant population that commonly realizes the phoneme as a voiceless uvular fricative [χ].”

This not a grammatical sentence and I am unsure about the intended message. The utterance, as it stands, requires a continuation or correction containing a finite verb.Redav (talk) 04:08, 28 August 2025 (UTC)

Moving notes into main text

Somebody has added a lot of examples in the notes of each phonetic phenomenon. They're quite helpful, though unsourced. I suggest the material is moved into the text body, as the article is not very long yet. Aspets (talk) 17:03, 7 January 2026 (UTC)

Hello Aspets.

I am the editor that separated examples from the main texts. I did so after having done the quickly thrown together the aspiration table as I found it didn't blend well with the structure of the articles (other tables are for or retroflexion, phenomena much more central to the language -at least for a learner perspective, absolute wise it definitely isn't-) and thought making it more consistent by extending it to other audio samples. Some examples also added several lines to a paragraph containing a single "informative sentence". I definitely understand where you're coming from and my reasoning is far from perfect, so if someone thinking likewise manifests itself, I'd edit it back myself.

Concerning the transcriptions, UwU. On a more serious note, they're a mess (and a bane to every reader not accustomed with phonetics). There are three levels of detail: "basic allophony" (/ˈtuːrsˌoːs/ as [ˈtʰûːʂˌoːs]), "focused allophony" ([ˈtʰɛ̂ʰkstɛɳa] -if you can't hear it, the /t/ is fricated-), (/ɛkspeˈdiːt/ as [ɛʰkspɪˈdɨːʰt]) and "attempt at being somewhat accurate" (/mîːra/ as [ˈmɨ̂ːᶻra]). But that's the guidelines my twisted mind tried to come up with (and transgressed right after), in reality there are inacuracies (Rådström^ⓘ has a non phonemic vowel before the R; in lakritsbåts^ⓘ the K is PRE-aspirated and what's heard is affrication -as can be deduced from the fact that the following R is pretty voiced-; Ingebjørg ⟨ɶ⟩...), unnecessary complications and inconsistencies ([ɒːʰʈ]; [ɛʰkspɪˈdɨːʰt] with ⟨ɨ⟩ when pre-aspiration is transcribed the same way across the board -[ˈʋɐ̞lɬ̆tæ̽ɾ͡ɹ̥] seemed too ulgy so I didn't go for narrow but didn't switch back for some things-; [ˈʏtːəʁə̆ˌdɶʁ], pretty broad but still deletes final length). However, I wouldn't want editors -notice the subtle distanciation from my own mistakes I could very well clean up (which I did in an edit I'll publish later, I'm just waiting for me to write a certain paragraph which I avoid)- to not try doing such transcriptions; people's ears (especially mine) seem sometimes not very functional, moreso when dealing with unkown sounds or possible variation in a given sound's realisation. Guiding people's earing is I'd say a necessity.

I seem to have focused on technicalities to avoid bigger points yet again, but if you allow me to continue for just a few more lines. On the "half sourced" transcriptions (those that aren't "standard textbook" but are backed by acoustic studies). They're indeed weird but so does Swedish sound to a foreigner, most of iɛ ɨːᶻ ɵ̝ are heavily hinted in cited sources (aka Persson (2024) bc God sent us his words through this wonderful woman).

What I won't make concessions on is the very existence of these transcriptions, we're talking speech phenomena and have a consequent corpus of recordings; the best way to vulgarise the matter is to use the audios and waiting for the very same recordings to be discussed in print is counter productive (blog are more likely to but are few. There's that one M. Liberman article on how Eyjafjallajökull gets pronounced uses a Commons file, Swedes are usually fond of their comarades' quirks, so here you are).

PS: Sorry for the eyesore. I'm Frenching but I was never taught proper writing stylistic.

PS2: I also updated the recorded passage's transcription... in another life. It'd benefit from a good clean up (I should maybe create a split between narrow V.S "more accessible" versions) and it's equally unsourced. Ʃouer (talk) 19:27, 14 January 2026 (UTC)