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Is Swedish difficult to understand ?

  Tags: Swedish
 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages Post Reply
29 messages over 4 pages: 13 4  Next >>
1e4e6
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 Message 9 of 29
20 December 2013 at 10:53pm | IP Logged 
I think that this may be attributed due to the first language of the learner--Swedish,
and English, and other languages that combine syllables and drop consonants, sometimes
severely in colloquial speech, can be troublesome. Something like, "Y'gon cmovere?"
instead of the correct, enunciated, "Are you going to come over here?" would most
likely
be unintelligble for a learner of English unless they have massive exposure and are
familiar with the colloquiallisms.

But since the first language of the poster is Italian, which, as I seem whilst learning
it now, is very phonetic--everything is properly enunciated, even in fast speech,
consonants are pronounced clearly, and pronounced like it is written, like standard
Spanish, to accustom oneself to non-phoneticisms is troublesome. So perhaps it is a
problem of switching from a very phonetic language (Italian)
to a language that is not as phonetic as the former (Swedish).

Edited by 1e4e6 on 20 December 2013 at 10:54pm

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tarvos
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 Message 10 of 29
20 December 2013 at 11:01pm | IP Logged 
All languages are phonetic. They have phonemes, you know.

What you mean is that the orthography does not always have a 1-to-1 correspondence with
the pronunciation.
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Serpent
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 Message 11 of 29
20 December 2013 at 11:02pm | IP Logged 
If it's hard for you now, putting it off will only make it harder.

Edited by Serpent on 20 December 2013 at 11:02pm

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1e4e6
Octoglot
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 Message 12 of 29
20 December 2013 at 11:15pm | IP Logged 
I guess that what I meant was something like "Buona sera" in Italian one can say it like
how
it looks, and "deg" in Swedish, an Italian speaker might be tempted to pronounce every
letter, including the <g>.

Edited by 1e4e6 on 20 December 2013 at 11:16pm

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Serpent
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 Message 13 of 29
20 December 2013 at 11:33pm | IP Logged 
You meant a phonetic spelling :)
I'm not sure how much it has to do with your native language having it. I mean English native speakers pronounce the h in hola all the time.
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1e4e6
Octoglot
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Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian
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 Message 14 of 29
20 December 2013 at 11:45pm | IP Logged 
I guess that what I mean is that the speaker might accidentally, subconsciously utilise
the alphabet of their own language into the other language to pronounce and listen to
speech. "H" in "hola" for English speakers happens in the beginning stages, because "h"
is in English and they try to use the English "h" for other languages, with the result
that "hola" with the English alphabet sounding quite gross. Likewise, pronouncing "g" in
<deg> in Swedish would probably sound very strange, in any dialect. I think that FSI
Swedish had a good explanation of the alphabet and pronunciation, viz. diphthongs,
vowels, etc. that lasted for quite few pages. Perhaps the poster could try that course.
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tarvos
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 Message 15 of 29
20 December 2013 at 11:52pm | IP Logged 
1e4e6 wrote:
I guess that what I meant was something like "Buona sera" in Italian one
can say it like
how
it looks, and "deg" in Swedish, an Italian speaker might be tempted to pronounce every
letter, including the <g>.


That's because it's a) spelled "dig" (not deg) and b) because the spelling is phonetic
and has a 1-to-1 correspondence to its orthography. This isn't so in Swedish but it's not
that bad.

I find Swedes reduce vowels way less than I do.
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eyðimörk
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 Message 16 of 29
20 December 2013 at 11:55pm | IP Logged 
1e4e6 wrote:
I guess that what I meant was something like "Buona sera" in Italian one can say it like how it looks, and "deg" in Swedish, an Italian speaker might be tempted to pronounce every letter, including the <g>.


1e4e6 wrote:
Likewise, pronouncing "g" in <deg> in Swedish would probably sound very strange, in any dialect.

The G in "deg" is always pronounced. Probably in all dialects.

Do you maybe mean "dig"? It's not a matter of not pronouncing the G, though, it's a matter of using fossilised spelling. "Mig", "dig", and "sig" are usually pronounced, and today often written, "mej", "dej" and "sej". Similarly, "de" and "dem" have a new accepted (and horrible, in my opinion, as someone who doesn't pronounce those words identically) spelling "dom".


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