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Swedish: long vowel "i" pronunciation | ||
Tags: Swedish | Pronunciation | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Skandinavisk & Nordisk |  | |
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4616 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes  Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 9 of 28 13 November 2013 at 7:29pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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At the risk of over-simplifying the problem, I wonder if you are over-thinking it?
I was just wondering if listening to recordings of native speakers saying words with this sound, and just experiment with moving your speech organs around until it sounds a bit closer, might be a more realistic approach than trying to force your lips etc into some theoretical ideal position? (Given that people seem to think it shouldn't be the most problematic sound in Swedish). Having said that, I had all sorts of problems with Danish final "d" (discussed at some length on HTLAL), although everyone seems to agree there is a bit of an issue there. .....hmmm...come to think, maybe it's only non-Danes who think it's an issue. I seem to remember Iversen wondering what on earth all the fuss was about .... 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Rameau Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5895 days ago 149 posts - 258 votes 4 sounds Speaks: English*, GermanC1, Danish Studies: Swedish, French, Icelandic | Message 10 of 28 14 November 2013 at 2:30pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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That's sort of the problem, though--we're not entirely sure how to experiment until it happens. Because the sound is like a "generic" i, but somehow different. And the precise nature of that "somehow" is what people are struggling with.
And of course Swedes don't think the Swedish i is a difficult sound (nor the Danes the soft d)--they hear it every day, and have been using it themselves for as long as they've been able to talk. Usually native speakers of a language will assume that the difficult sounds in that language are the comparatively unique and unusual ones (e.g. the sj sound in Swedish)--but that's not really the case. Those sounds may take some getting used to, but they're usually pretty easy to identify, and to specifically work on in order to master them. The really tricky sounds, however, are the ones (like Swedish i) that sound almost, but not quite, like those in a language you already know, or, worse yet, almost but not quite like another sound in the very same language (e.g. Swedish y, all the Korean consonants, etc.) The soft d in Danish is actually a very good comparison, because we have almost the same phenomenon as Swedish long i, or better still long as y, since it's often mistaken for "l". Native speakers will insist that it's completely identical to a sound learners are familiar with (in this case the ð-sound in English "that"). Learners will insist that it doesn't sound all that much like this second sound, instead suggesting a much closer connection to a third sound (in this case the aforementioned /l/), and cite a difficulty in distinguishing minimal pairs (say "vil" and "ved"). Natives will insist that this is complete nonsense--in the Danish case, that the soft d sounds nothing like l, nor is its articulation in any way similar, whereas it's identical to ð, vil and ved sound nothing alike, etc. And learning resources will largely ignore the problem altogether, making learners wonder if their losing their respective minds. Of course, the truth is, the soft d is similar to English ð, but it is not identical, and the difference is crucial (sure, you could pronounce it like English ð, and probably be understood, but you'd have an atrocious accent--and if English ð is a sound you never mastered in the first place, hoooooo dogey are you in a mess o' trouble). For unlike English ð, it is pronounced not with the tongue between the teeth, but instead touching the back of the lower teeth--a position which, coincidentally, is almost like a reverse l, which is probably the reason for learners confusing the two sounds to begin with. Of course, the key difference here is that most Danes know on some level or other that Danish pronunciation is insane, and have put a decent effort into analyzing it. As such, any in-depth treatment of Danish phonology which can use IPA diacritics will transcribe the soft d as ð̞, i.e. with a "lowered" symbol, citing its difference from "generic" ð. Swedish, conversely, has about 60 soft d analogues, and prefers to pretend that exactly none of them exist. Long i and long y are universally transcribed as run-of-the-mill /i:/ and /y:/, with no unique qualities cited. In fact, I don't think I've ever seen a single instance where Swedish long vowel were ever transcribes as anything but pure, monophthongal vowels (and some learning resources even explicitly describe them as such), when in reality they are almost always realized (at least in stressed positions) as diphthongs. Yet you will never see them transcribed in such a way. It's almost as there's some grand conspiracy to pretend that Swedish is much more phonetic (a phonetic North Germanic language? 'Tis to laugh!) and unremarkable in its soundset than it actually is. Ker-aaaaazy stuff, man. Edited by Rameau on 14 November 2013 at 2:31pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| eyðimörk Triglot Senior Member France goo.gl/aT4FY7 Joined 3887 days ago 490 posts - 1158 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French Studies: Breton, Italian | Message 11 of 28 14 November 2013 at 3:04pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Native speakers will also boggle at the thought of there being a singular sj sound. ;) Especially since our music teachers tried to drill our native sounds out of us so that we might sing in a more exalted accent. I've been publicly shamed for my inability to produce the "correct" pronunciation of stjärna more than once.
Heh, they tend to be prescriptive rather than descriptive, don't they? Crystal clear, monophthongs only, is, in my experience, a bit of a Holy Grail in Swedish. It's the Swedish that is spoken in Plato's Theory of Forms, if you feel nice about it, and the MasterRace of Swedish if you don't. Swedish isn't "supposed" to have accents, though certain accents are slightly more acceptable than others (such as that nasal abomination that doesn't distinguish between vowel sounds properly, spoken in the capital ;)). Most of my vowel sounds are triphthongs, but I too have learned that while our dialect definitely has diphthongs and triphthongs... Swedish (i.e. that exalted language one might strive to speak) doesn't . 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Sarnek Diglot Senior Member Italy Joined 4003 days ago 308 posts - 414 votes Speaks: Italian*, English Studies: German, Swedish | Message 12 of 28 14 November 2013 at 3:37pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I like where this is going... *grabs popcorns*
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| LaughingChimp Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4487 days ago 346 posts - 594 votes Speaks: Czech* | Message 13 of 28 14 November 2013 at 5:05pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Spectrographs of various recordings from Wiktionary and Forvo. I'm not sure what it is, but I feel some tenseness it the throat when I try to immitate the sound. I failed to find the exact sound, so it may be just an accident.
I don't think it's similar at all. Creating a fricative between the tongue and the lower teeth is physically impossible. It's a different sound, native speakrs have no idea how they pronounce it. Check out this or this sound for example. Both are accoustically closer to the Danish d than the English th. Maybe it is pronounced ð in some dialects, which makes native speakers believe it's always pronounced ð.
To be fair, you are not expected to transcribe every detail, especially not in [s]phonetic[/s]phonemic transcription. Such transcription would be very difficult to read. Edited by LaughingChimp on 14 November 2013 at 7:40pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6697 days ago 4250 posts - 5710 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 14 of 28 14 November 2013 at 5:11pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
You're not a fellow Gotlander, are you? :D 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| eyðimörk Triglot Senior Member France goo.gl/aT4FY7 Joined 3887 days ago 490 posts - 1158 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French Studies: Breton, Italian | Message 15 of 28 14 November 2013 at 5:23pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Naaäee... Scanian. :) I'll bet Gotlanders get to hear just as often what Swedish is supposed to sound like, though! ;) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Sarnek Diglot Senior Member Italy Joined 4003 days ago 308 posts - 414 votes Speaks: Italian*, English Studies: German, Swedish | Message 16 of 28 14 November 2013 at 6:24pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Yes you are. Especially in the phonetic transcription. That's why it's called that, otherwise I'll look at a transcription with an English/italian alphabet, which would be pretty pointless. For example, Italian and English "t" and "d" are articulated a bit differently. In Italian they are dental consonants whereas in English they are alveolar. In most transcription you don't see any differences as they are both transcribed as [t] and [d] respectively. But in some other transcriptions you can see the difference adding a diacritic below them [t̪] [d̪] (it's supposed to be right below it). It's just that Swedish lacks an accurate and precise phonology transcription. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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