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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| badger2 Senior Member Finland Joined 6609 days ago 156 posts - 156 votes  2 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: Swedish, Finnish | Message 1 of 12 12 August 2009 at 10:26pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Hi All.
I'm having some trouble with the long Swedish Y, especially in the following drill for the verb "flyga". "flyger, flög, flugit, flyg" My Scandinavian vowels start off with a background in Finnish, I have been trying to map the Swedish vowels to the Finnish vowels. The Swedish U sounds to me like the Finnish Y. The Swedish Ö sounds like the Finnish Ö. But the Swedish Y is problematic... it sounds like a cross between the Finnish Y and the Finnish I. I'm not sure how to pronounce it... it always comes out like the Finnish Y, which I already mapped to the Swedish U. So in the drill above, I end up saying: "fluger, flög, flugit, flug" Anyone have any pointers? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| aloysius Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6238 days ago 226 posts - 291 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, German Studies: French, Greek, Italian, Russian | Message 2 of 12 12 August 2009 at 11:36pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Unfortunately, I don't know any Finnish. I suspect, however, that Finnish Y mighy be closer to Swedish Y than U. Swedish U is not that widely spread.
Spontanously I would say that Swedish Y can be approximated by German ü (für) or French ue in rue ... But perhaps you don't want to emulate standard Swedish but "finlandssvenska". That might be a different matter. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6907 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 3 of 12 13 August 2009 at 1:10am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Yes, Swedish Y is close enough to German ü/French ue. Second language learners often use I (/ee/) instead: fliga, flig, licklig, micket.
The U is more similar to the sound in English hue, beauty, phew. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5836 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian | Message 4 of 12 13 August 2009 at 1:57am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Well Jeff and aloysius have already explained it, but just one comment:
I think the Finland-Swedish pronounciation of these vowels is a bit different from the regular Swedish pronounciation. Not sure which accent you are aiming for, but perhaps not standard Swedish, or? Just think of Mumintrollet which can become Mooomintrollet :-) with the Finnish pronounciation. This sounds great though -- that accent sounds cool and is very popular in Sweden. So, as long as you get reasonably close to the mark it doesn't matter if it isn't perfect. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
 Hencke Tetraglot Moderator Spain Joined 6892 days ago 2340 posts - 2444 votes Speaks: Swedish*, Finnish, EnglishC2, Spanish Studies: Mandarin Personal Language Map | Message 5 of 12 14 August 2009 at 9:27pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I agree that it depends on whether you are aiming for a Swedish-Swedish or a Finland-Swedish pronunciation.
And sorry Cordelia, but I think you are not quite right about the Finland-Swedish U-sound when you represent it as "Moomin" (unless you meant the pronunciation of Finnish-speakers). The Finland-Swedish U is every bit as distinct from O as the Swedish-Swedish U. It's just that Swedes can sometimes hear it as O because they are not familiar with it. It is close to the vowel sound you find in English "you". For the same reason many Swedes pronounce "thank you" as "thank yOO" (Swedish O-sound).
I don't think this is right. This sound does not exist in Finnish at all and Finns have a hard time learning it. Instead, try the (UK) English vowel sound in "you", or the o-sound in "do". That will be closer to the Finland-Swedish U but still a good starting point even if you are aiming for the Swedish-Swedish accent. Finland-Swedish U is pronounced with slightly pouting lips, while the Swedish-Swedish U is achieved by drawing the lips inwards towards your teeth.
Close enough yes. But note that the Swedish Ö shifts to a different, more open sound when followed by R. This shift does not happen in Finnish (and afaik it doesn't happen in the Värmland dialect in Sweden either).
I think the Finnish Y is a good starting point and not terribly off here. The Finnish Y is very close to German Ü, while the Swedish Y is a little "sharper", like between Y and I as you say. If you just get rid of that initial Y-U mapping the rest of the bits should fall into place more easily. Edited by Hencke on 14 August 2009 at 9:40pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Albin Tetraglot Newbie Sweden Joined 5939 days ago 13 posts - 14 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, German, French | Message 6 of 12 15 August 2009 at 2:50am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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To me the Swedish Y in flyga, is not very close to the German Ü (in Mühle for instance) which in turn isn't the same sound as the French U as in minute.
Both the German Ü and the French U are in fact closer to the Swedish U while a Swedish Y sounds more I-like, at least in my ears. Basically you just need to learn to pout your lips while trying to produce an U and an I at the same time. Good luck! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| caam_imt Triglot Senior Member Mexico Joined 4860 days ago 232 posts - 357 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2, Finnish Studies: German, Swedish | Message 7 of 12 05 January 2013 at 3:25am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I definitely agree with Hencke and Albin. I've been learning Finnish for more than
three years and I just started learning Finland Swedish this last autumn (I live in Finland). The sound of the Finnish letter 'y' is indeed different from the one represented by the same letter in Swedish(no matter the variety). German 'ü' is very close to Finnish 'y', as they are both represented by the same phonetic symbol [y]. The phonetic symbol for the Swedish one is [y̫] (wikipedia). What I do is produce an 'i' sound, but with my lips protruded, instead of rounded. Might not be the best way, but it seems to work so far. The Swedish sound represented by the letter 'u' is also different from Finnish 'y', and just as Hencke said, my teacher commented that it is a sound Finns tend to find problematic, as they tend to use [y]. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close_front_rounded_vowel Edited by caam_imt on 05 January 2013 at 3:26am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| sans-serif Tetraglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4557 days ago 298 posts - 470 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, German, Swedish Studies: Danish | Message 8 of 12 05 January 2013 at 11:49am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Nice find caam_int! There must be hundreds of interesting threads like this hiding in the murky depths of the forum, where no one but Google has been in years. It's a shame they're so hard to find unless you know exactly what you're looking for.
Anyhow, reading this discussion reminds me of my long struggle with the Swedish vowels. :-) I used to hear the Swedish long Y as an I, the long U as a Y, the long A as an O/Å, and the long I sounded just plain weird. The short vowels, on the other hand, gave me no trouble at all, and this dichotomy of difficult long vowels and easy short vowels only added to my confusion, I think. Downloading a bunch of sound files from Lexin and making an Anki deck of minimal pairs and tricky words REALLY helped. I started with listening drills and moved onto pronunciation when I was confident I could hear the sounds correctly. Come to think of it, I should probably write an extended 'Lessons learned' post in the Team Viking thread about this... Edited by sans-serif on 05 January 2013 at 11:57am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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