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Swedish "sj" sound: "hwh" or "sh"? | ||
Tags: Swedish | Pronunciation | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| cwcowellshah Newbie United States Joined 4324 days ago 34 posts - 52 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Swedish | Message 1 of 10 17 January 2013 at 10:16pm | IP Logged | ||
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My Swedish learning materials have examples of native speakers pronouncing the "sj" consonant combination in two different ways: "hwh" and "sh". For example, "sju" is sometimes said as "hwh-oo" and sometimes as the English word "shoe".
Is this a regional difference? Rural/urban? Class? Personal preference? If it's regional, which regions pronounce it which way? Are both pronunciations OK? Tack så mycket! Edited by cwcowellshah on 17 January 2013 at 10:19pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| aloysius Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6185 days ago 226 posts - 291 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, German Studies: French, Greek, Italian, Russian | Message 2 of 10 17 January 2013 at 10:40pm | IP Logged | ||
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Welcome to HTLAL!
Both pronunciations are definitely OK. My feeling is that hwh is more common and I would pick that one, sh sounds a bit posh to me. Probably all those factors you mention come into play but it's not easy to explain how. //aloysius 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6854 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 3 of 10 17 January 2013 at 11:17pm | IP Logged | ||
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Yeah, it is possible to use an English /sh/ for all the spellings (sj, stj, sk, sch, kj, tj) but it's quite uncommon in Sweden (it sounds either posh or Northern), but what I think you're after is the [ɧ]. I usually explain it as "similar to when you're cooling a cup of hot chocolate" (without necessarily pouting the lips)
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| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6542 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 4 of 10 18 January 2013 at 12:23am | IP Logged | ||
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Jeff, how does that compare to the Russian щ?
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| sans-serif Tetraglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4504 days ago 298 posts - 470 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, German, Swedish Studies: Danish | Message 5 of 10 18 January 2013 at 7:04am | IP Logged | ||
I believe the standard pronunciation for tj, kj and the fricative k (and possibly some letter combinations I missed) is [ɕ], which is the same as for щ, right? My friend who's from Östersund pronounces all /ɧ/ and /ɕ/ as [ʂ] (so ш?). I'm not entirely sure if that's the same as the posh variant aloysius and jeff_lindqvist referred to. I'd also say that there are at least 2 distinct varieties of the sje-sound, some of them more posh, in my mind, than others. Wikipedia mentions something along these lines, too, but I find the descriptions thoroughly unhelpful. Edit: Having read jeff's latest post, I feel I need to do some further fact-checking. Now that I think about it, my friend might actually use [ɕ] for /rs/. What I'm sure of, however, is that he uses the same sound for 'rs' as for most of the letter combinations kj, tj, sk and so forth. Edited by sans-serif on 21 January 2013 at 4:16pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| cwcowellshah Newbie United States Joined 4324 days ago 34 posts - 52 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Swedish | Message 6 of 10 18 January 2013 at 8:16am | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks all--very helpful answers.
Too bad that "hwh" seems to be mildly preferred, since it's the one of the two Swedish sounds (the other being the odd nasal "ee" pronunciation of the vowel "i") that I find almost impossible to produce. I wonder if that's typical of native speakers of American English. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6854 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 7 of 10 18 January 2013 at 9:54am | IP Logged | ||
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If you say /sh/ for sj, stj, sk, sch, kj, and tj, it doesn't sound exactly the same in all positions (but still similarly enough). Most can take either form (I think!), but tj - щ, kj - ш. Not that it matters a lot, it's just how I hear them. Hmm...now that I think of it, it depends on the surrounding consonants and vowels. Swedish IPA has [ɕ] for the /sh/ sound. [ʂ] equals the supradental rs.
English p, t and k lose aspiration in some positions, but everyone still regard them the same sound. A traffic light is red and so is a rose. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| sans-serif Tetraglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4504 days ago 298 posts - 470 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, German, Swedish Studies: Danish | Message 8 of 10 18 January 2013 at 10:55am | IP Logged | ||
I think it's often perceived as one of the more difficult sounds in Swedish, along with the long u and the long y, and it doesn't help that there's a decent amount of socio-/dialectal variation. I first figured out how to produce the most exaggerated variant, the so called Lidingö i, and then toned it down. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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