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Swedish pronounciation of the letter G | ||
Tags: Swedish | Pronunciation | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Skandinavisk & Nordisk |  | |
| slav Bilingual Triglot Groupie United States Joined 5010 days ago 43 posts - 54 votes  Speaks: Slovak, Czech*, English* Studies: Spanish, Swedish | Message 1 of 7 22 May 2011 at 6:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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I haven't found a good source on this yet.
I've been studying Swedish, and I think I'm at basic fluency... but the letter G still confuses me. I know it's pronounced sometimes, but I've read that it's silent in modern spoken Swedish, or that it's pronounced in certain words, or after certain letters(without telling me what letters). Is it silent? Is it pronounced as a j? What kind of words typically have it pronounced as a hard g, or a j, or not pronounced? After what letters? I know it's not pronounced in Jag. What about dig? It's at the end of the word as well but a different vowel. Berg? Förrgar? Morgon? They're all in different parts of the word... it's very confusing to me. Is there even a rule? Or does it depend on the word itself? Edited by slav on 22 May 2011 at 6:40pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6585 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 2 of 7 22 May 2011 at 7:22pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm a native speaker and as such I have no idea whether there's a rule or not. It seems very chaotic to me. Justr
looking at the end of words, it's silent in "jag, dag" (unless you are overenunciating, in which case those are all hard 'g's). It's pronounced as a hard 'g' in "lag, hög, feg". It's a soft 'j' sound ('y' for you English speakers) in "mig, dig, färg, sorg". A guess says that after an 'r' it's soft, but otherwise it's usually hard, with a lot of exceptions in common words. In many common words it's silent, but this doesn't seem to follow any pattern. In the beginning of words it's also sometimes soft, as in "gäss" (but note it's hard in the singular "gås"), "gissa" and "Göteborg". I suspect this has to do with what vowel follows it. I remember learning something about soft and hard vowels in school, but can't remember which ones are what. The 'g' is pronounced as 'ng' when followed by an 'n' as in "regn, lögn, ägna". There are some loan words where the 'g' can have even other sounds, like in "garage", "genre", "generös" and "generad" (is that a load word?). Special cases include: * Jag (silent) * Mig, dig, sig (pronounced "mej, dej, sej") * Riksdag (silent, but I think some people pronounce it with a hard 'g') * Dag, idag, måndag-söndag 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| slav Bilingual Triglot Groupie United States Joined 5010 days ago 43 posts - 54 votes Speaks: Slovak, Czech*, English* Studies: Spanish, Swedish | Message 3 of 7 22 May 2011 at 7:51pm | IP Logged | ||
Thank you, but... god, that's even more confusing... D: 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| t123 Diglot Senior Member South Africa https://github.com/t Joined 5614 days ago 139 posts - 226 votes Speaks: English*, Afrikaans | Message 4 of 7 22 May 2011 at 8:28pm | IP Logged | ||
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Here are the rules according to Assimil:
If the g is in the same syllable with an e,i,y,ä or ö it is pronounced j. Ge is pronounced je (gymnastik, giro, gärna, Sverige, Norge, göra). Also a g in the same syllable as an l or an r (älg, arg, berg, borg, Göteborg). In all other cases it is a hard g like good. If the end syllable is -ig the g is clearly pronounced (not like the German ch sound in Tochter). In foreign load words the g is pronounced as in good and the words mig,dig and sig are pronounced mij,dij and sij. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6585 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 5 of 7 22 May 2011 at 9:26pm | IP Logged | ||
Hey, those rules are pretty sweet! They sound correct to me, except for the last two:
The final 'g' in syllables ending with '-ig' is pronounced by some and not by others. In fact, there's probably even some variation in the pronunciations of a single speaker. Many pronounce it in slow speech, but drops it as the speed increases. You can pronounce it or skip it and nobody will think you sound strange, though you might want to keep it in if you're making a formal speech or somesuch. HOWEVER, don't pronounce it in the ending '- igt'. So "duktigt" is pronounced "duktit". If you pronounce the 'g' there it sounds really weird. Same with "trevligt", "roligt" and so on. The same actually applies to a 'k' in the ending '-skt', so the 'k' is silent in "faktiskt", "romantiskt" and "hemskt". If you try to pronounce the 'g' and the 'k' in the simple phrase "hemskt trevligt" you'll most likely stumble over your own tongue. Not all foreign loan words have a hard 'g'. Many from French have a 'sch' ("genre", "genera") or 'sj' (most words ending in '-age', like "garage") sound. Sometimes both a 'sj' and a 'sch' sound are correct for these. You know, when I grew up I actually thought the Swedish spelling system was clear and logical … EDIT: Also, as I mentioned earlier, "mig, dig, sig" are pronounced "mej, dej, sej", not "mij, dij, sij", but I suspect the writer just emphasized the "g->j" change, not the change in the sound of the vowel. Edited by Ari on 22 May 2011 at 9:29pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| t123 Diglot Senior Member South Africa https://github.com/t Joined 5614 days ago 139 posts - 226 votes Speaks: English*, Afrikaans | Message 6 of 7 22 May 2011 at 10:38pm | IP Logged | ||
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That was supposed to be be mäj, däj and ßäj. The book is in German so it might not match up exactly with English. Most of the exceptions
are in the book, but unfortunately they're notes to the lessons and not in the pronunciation guide. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6912 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 7 of 7 22 May 2011 at 11:30pm | IP Logged | ||
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As for -ig and -igt, I'd say that it's quite common for the g to be totally silent in both cases, e.g. duktig - [dukti'], duktigt - [dukti't]. Those syllables happen to be unstressed, which is also the case with comparative adjective forms, e.g. duktigare [dukti'are].
At the moment I can't think of any word with a hard g after a hard vowel (a, o, u, å), but whether the g is pronounced like sj ([ɧ] or [ʃ]) or a soft g/j sound depends on if it's a loan word. Some loan words have both pronunciations (genial, genialisk). More info here (in Swedish): http://www.kotus.fi/index.phtml?l=sv&s=1617 1 person has voted this message useful |
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