This pitch system is so specific that you instantly know if someone’s non-native, even if they’ve been speaking it for 10+ years. It also changes throughout the regions of Sweden, which makes it really easy for a native to know which region you are from by the implementations of the pitches
That's right, and that's why very many Swedes think that the grave accent is "accent on the last syllable" though it is not the case. The only thing said about anden/anden, tomten/tomten in school was "hear the difference" and everybody had a fun time about joking around with the accents.
As a swedish person, there is no way I would have been able to grasp all those rules of the accents during my school years. I didnt even know we had rules for them until today 😅
You can never be a "Gothenburger" if you're not born one. If you're not, you'll never be accepted, you'll be an outcast.... Knowing by experience......
A tip is to listen to Swedish films with English subtitles. This is how we learn English pronunciation etc. By hearing English and seeing it in Swedish. Then you learn bit by bit.
Actually a really good idea. A few films for him to watch are Joker or Drömkåken, the Beck films, Tomten är far till alla barnen...or practically any movie when I think about it :P
Iirc I’ve read somewhere that this is one of the major reasons why swedes, or any country who uses subtitles instead of voice over, in general speak a very good english. We get to hear it spoken practically every day when tv is on or streaming movies and series. So yes, watching swedish movies and series with english subtitles is a friggin good advise 🙌🏼
Well we do with some words like ”idé, café, filé” but generally you are right. I always wondered why we only use it for a few words and not just use it fully or not at all.
I'm impressed 👍. I'm Swedish and I understand this as much as you do. I learned English by ear, and I'm fluent in English, just like most Swedes are. So you do you. You are doing very good on pronouncing Swedish words 👏👏👏 Cheers!
You didn't learn English by ear! In that case, almost every word in your sentences above would be spelled incorrectly. (English is one of worst languages in the world regarding the (lack of) correlation between pronunciation and spelling.)
7:16 "I have seen the little symbols above the words, but I never knew what they meant." The á and ã accents put above the letters in the video you're watching are *not* written out in Swedish. They're only there to show how to pronounce the words. So in Swedish text you can't tell if it says "the spirit" or "the duck" without context. No, this doesn't usually cause any confusion. Without the definite article the words for "spirit" is "ande", and "duck" is "and", so it's only potentially confusing when writing about specific spirits or ducks as they are then written with the same letters. But it's not like English doesn't have homographs. Think of words such as "unionized" or "content". If you're reading about a plumber who's content with being unionized you will pronounce both words differently than if you're reading about a chemist having the content of the beaker they're holding be an unionized acid. The umlauts you've seen in Swedish are those of the letter åäö/ÅÄÖ. These are their own letters, and they're the 3 last letters of the Swedish alphabet, in that order. They're all vowels with their own vowel sounds: * Å sounds like the A in (English's) "call" or the O in "boring". * Ä is trickier for where it's used in English as it often depends on the accent/dialect of the English-speaker. But for the long Ä, think of the A's in the English words "say" and "mad", and a short Ä would be the first E in "berries". * Ö sounds like the I in "bird" or "girl".
Trying to pin down å, ä, and ö sounds in English is very dependent on which accent and dialect of English one is using. Personally, I go with the examples of doors, air, and d'uh. (dårs, är, d'ö) as I _think_ they work with most English dialects.
Being swedish, its super easy to hear that the guy is from sweden, but we tend to lean towards the american accent rather than british, even tho we learn the british way in school ^^
The thing is, this isn’t actually taught in school- as preschoolers and toddlers we pick up this trait of knowing when to stress what thing without really thinking about it
I am impressed by your willingness to learn the Swedish language. I have never realized how difficult my language is, since I am born with it. Your channel helps me learn more about my culture and language. Thank you!
Sedan skall vi inte underskatta inflytandet från plattyskan från 1200-talet och framåt. Jämför exempelvis var betoningen ligger i "betala" (från tyskans Bezahlen) och "Motala". Författaren Victor Rydberg på 1800-talet var galen på alla tyska inlån och ville rensa ut dem från svenskan. Exempelvis "betala" ville han ersätta med det äldre, pursvenska "gälda". Men Rydberg var en ropandes röst i öknen, ingen annan var intresserad av hans försök att "sanera" svenskan från tyska inflytelser. Nu för tiden är det istället engelska uttryck som alltmer tar över svenska språket.
As a Finn, I finally understand the thing with Swedish sounding like they are singing when they talk. Now, it makes sense. I have Swedish-speaking relatives, but their Swedish mostly stresses the first syllable only, with a few exceptions. The Swedish spoken in Finland is said to be frozen in a time capsule due to the separation from Sweden in 1809, so it has remained the same while the Swedish in Sweden has evolved and changed. Maybe the fact that Finnish has always stress on the first syllable has some effect to the Swedish spoken here.
I think it's the later with Finnish influence on the accent. I think a lot of Finnish people mistake the use of old words also means that the entire dialect is frozen in time. As a side note, Icelandic is most likely the most similar to ancient Nordic and nobody understands them. I can read Icelandic, but spoken is like noway.
You did very good! I think you really have an ear for languages 😊 Also, I can't really remember learning this in Swedish class growing up. Usually it's just the context that tells you what pitch to use
@@AnnikaK87 But they are used in different situations and have slightly different meaning. It's about if you are informing: who are leaving, where you are going or how you are going. But it change more then that as making a sentence into a question or other larger difference.
Dwane you pronounce swedish very well. I can comfort you that you will be understood even if you do not use this pitch accent. I am from Finland and my mother language is swedish but we don't have these pitch-accents in Finland. I have wisited Sweden multiple times and everybody understands me. The swedes say that my language sounds like finnish, but it is only an other dialect of swedish. I think you learn the pronounciation better by listening to people talking swedish and forget about these rules. Good luck I am sure you will learn swedish it is not SO difficult if you have an english background.
Yes because if you say tomten and speak about christmas or you say tomten and talk about your property its hard not to understand which tomten you are talking about :)
@@Tech2Rush A Santa on top of another Santa? Or a Santa in the back yard? Or perhaps one or both of these "tomten" refers to gnomes, small trolls, wights, leprechauns or other creatures (gårdstomtar/hustomtar, småtroll, vättar, pysslingar tex) we collectively call "tomtar"? Our language is very confusing at times LOL
It could be explaned a little bit easier. One needs to know the etymology and origin of the words to get it right. My advice (as a former assistant SFI teacher) is to learn the basic nouns with the correct definite article, as this determines the definite form of the word and will also help with the accents. I can see in the comments that many say not to bother. That attitude is typical Swedish self-deprecation, and those saying so most often do not understand how flippant this stance is, especially toward people who really do want to understand in order to learn our language well. En katt - katten. The pronounciation of the indefinite form never change, thus katten will be pronounced KATT-en as it is a one syllable word. This rule works well to see how there is a difference between the different meanings for words such as anden and tomten. En and - a duck. Anden - the duck. (AND-en). And is perforce an Accent 1 word as it is has only one syllable. En ande - a spirit. Anden - the spirit. Ande in its indefinite form is pronounced AN-DE, thus the Accent 2 carries over to the definite form, AN-DE-n. En tomt - a property/lot. Tomten (TOM-ten) - the lot. En tomte (TOM-TE) - a gnome. Tomten (TOM-TEN) - the gnome. The next easy category are the compound words. The reason these use different types of accents depends on the separate words and syllables. The examples in the video are: lastbil, sjukhus, örngott and brandman. The rule is that 1 Accent 1 is 1 accent. 2 Accents 1 are 2 accents. Lastbil - a lorry, is a car (bil) that can carry a charge (last). Last is an Accent 1 word having only one syllable. Bil too is an Accent 1 word with only one syllable, thus the accents carry over to the compound that will become an Accent 2 word; LAST-BIL. Sjukhus - a hospital, is a compound of sick (sjuk) and house (hus). Both words are Accent 1 words. The accents carry over into the compound word making it an Accent 2 word. Etc. There are other compound words, with three or four parts as Swedish is an agglutinating language. In that case the parts determine the outcome. Varuförpackning - Vara (goods, ware) is an old word that still has the old genetive ending of u. Förpackning is a compound word made of för- and -packning, in itself a form I would like to call "Accent 3", as we have quite a few words that are compounds but are treated as single words, were the first syllable isn't stressed, but the second is. för-PACKning. Thus the double compound word of varuförpackning is really a three word compound and will become VARu-för-PACK-ning. An internet connection is "internetuppkoppling". Here the irregulariites of loan words makes itself obvious. Internet is IN-ter-net, or in-ter-NET. It hasn't quite touched ground in Swedish yet. Internet is a compound word and I believe Swedes treat it as "Accent 3" with a stress on the second syllable in compounds with endemic words. Connection is uppkoppling, another Accent 2 word. So, even though we often say INTER-net, the Accent 2 of UPP-KOPP-ling will influence the first part, turning UPP-KOPP-ling into an Accent 3 word, often making it sound like: in-ter-NET-upp-KOPP-ling. Dividing compounds will change the lexical classes of the words. English has had a detrimental effect on Swedish, and many people believe it doesn't matter if you compound words or not. They are idiots. A few horrendous examples are: Sjuksköterska - sjuk = ill, sköterska= nurse, but sjuksköterska is a title for a staff nurse, not an ill nurse (sjuk sköterska). Kassapersonal - kassa = checkout, personal = staff, but kass means bad, and plural of kass is kassa. Thus, in stores you may actually see signs at the checkout saying things about the store's kassapersonal (checkout staff), but in the form of kassa personal (bad staff). In a restaurant I saw signs that smoking was (supposedly) prohibited during lunch hour. But instead of rökfritt (smoke free), the signs said rök fritt (smoke freely). Särskrivning - divided compound. Sär - apart, skrivning - spelling. Sär skrivning means strange writing, which it really is. Most of the time it's obvious that the word is spelled wrong, but I have read texts, even academic ones, were it was not obvious if words were compounds or not. That may become costly if these errors occurr in legal texts.
You know your shit. You should start a TH-cam channel. How do you pronounce Apotekarnes julmust ? I know of a person who focuses on the Arne bit and also believes it is named after a person named Arne.
"Förpacking" är väl rimligtvis inte ett sammansatt ord, utan "packning" med prefixet "för"? Om man behandlar det som ett sammansatt ord skulle det väl istället betyda en packning som sitter i fören på en båt. Då skulle uttalet inte följa det du kallar accent 3, utan snarare samma mönster som i exempelvis "förskola", som ju dock inte är ett sammansatt ord, utan använder det andra prefixet "för". Förövrigt (och utan relevans för det du skrev) tycker jag att det är underhållande att det finns två prefix "för" på svenska som beter sig olika. Det ena kommer från före, som i exempelvis förskola eller förbokning, medan det andra är någon form av betydelseförstärkare/-ändrare. Tänk "stärka" jämte "förstärka", eller "packning" jämte "förpackning". Den sistnämnda följer det du kallar accent 3 medan den första beter sig som en del av ett sammansatt ord. Det verkar nämligen mer allmänt som att vissa prefix följer vad du kallar accent 3, som det andra "för":et och "be" (förbättra och förband, och beivra och besök o.s.v.), medan andra prefix som "in" och "av" beter sig som delar av sammansatta ord. (intala och insikt, och avvakta och avverka o.s.v.). De orden som följer det du kallar accent 3 förändrar också accenten på orden de sätts framför. Se exempelvis bättra jämte förbättra, eller söka jämte besöka. Inte heller internet är ju ett sammansatt ord, utan "net" med prefixet "inter", som vanligtvis inte beter sig som en del av ett sammansatt ord(internationell, interagera o.s.v.). Att många, mig själv inkluderad, uttalar internet som IN-ter-net måste bero på att det är ett engelskt lånord, och att många använder det engelska uttalet. Om man istället hade översatt internet till "internät" hade nog ingen använt den engelska betoningen. Dock tycker jag det väldigt intressant att betoningen av internet försvenskas när det ingår i sammansatta ord; även i exempelvis internetcafé skulle åtminstone jag ändra betoningen, även om jag tror mig ha hört både -IN-ternetcafé och inter-NET-café) Att betoningen av uppkoppling förändras i internetuppkoppling har väl inte direkt något att göra med accenten i internet? Det följer väl snarare samma mönster som andra längre sammansatta ord. Om ett sammansatt ord bildas genom att slå ihop två andra sammansatta ord så bibehåller de uppbyggande sammansatta orden inte nödvändigtvis sina uttalsmönster. Tänk brandman kontra fritidsbrandman. I "fritidsbrandman" så försvinner betoningen av "brand" (åtminstone i min stockholmsdialekt, det kanske finns variationer här?), på samma sätt som betnoningen av "upp" i internetuppkoppling, även om internet och fritid har olika accenter. "Upp" är ju ett av prefixen som beter sig som en del av ett sammansatt ord. Dock kan jag inte lista ut varför vissa längre sammansatta ord beter sig på detta viset, medan andra inte gör det. I exempelvis "fotbollsmålvakt" skulle jag inte avbetona "mål" på samma sätt som "brand" i fritidsbrandman". Kanske har du någon tillfredställande förklaring i enlighet med din SFI-bakgrund? (edit: Jag insåg att det beror på att jag inte uttalar målvakt på stockholmskt vis, med accent 2, utan på min mors norrbottniska vis med en helt annan accent. Om jag använder stocholmska betoningsregler så kan jag inte komma på något exempel på ett längre sammansatt ord som inte följer samma mönster som internetuppkoppling och fritidsbrandman.) Jag avvundas definitivt inte någon uppdraget att försöka beskriva och skapa regler för hur accenter beter sig i svenskan, och om du lyckats skapa ett system som underlättar vid inlärning av svenska så vill jag inte gärna försöka sänka den. Jag inser efter en korrekturläsning att jag framstår som lite väl negativ. Det var inte min mening och jag hoppas att du inte tar illa upp. Jag kan bara inte låta bli att engagera mig i denna typ av diskussionsämne, och kände mig tvungen att skriva av mig.
@@erikd6124 Eftersom apotekarnes är en böjning av grundordet apotek, så bibehålls betoningen av apotek, med några extra, obetonade suffix på slutet. E:et där vi idag hade förväntat oss ett A (apotekarnas istället för apotekarnes) är mig veterligen en rest från en äldre genetivböjning, d.v.s. att pluralböjningen följde ordets genus på ett sätt som inte längre förekommer. Att uttala det som Apotek-Arnes och insistera på att musten är döpt efter apotekaren Arne är dock höjden av humor, och något som gärna sker på de oinvigdas bekostnad! Jag tror dock att det har följt en liknande utveckling som plattjordsteorin; även om det började som ett internskämt så är det numera så många som tror på vad de säger att det tappat lite av sin charm.
@@erikd6124 ”Apotekarne” is just an older (and now dead) definite plural form of ”apotekare”. So you should say it exactly as you’d say ”apotekarnas”, only with an E instead of the final A. 😊
Dwayne, you would have no problem learning full Swedish at all. Your pronunciations are really good for such a hard language. and to anyone visiting southern Sweden region Skåne (Malmo region) all bets are immediately off. I wish you good luck. You should find a video and compare it lol. It's like being introduced to Scouse from never hearing a single word of English 😂
7:16 Important: As others point out: the symbols used for the pitches here, like ´ and ~ are not part of the Swedish language and only used in this video to distinguish between the pitch accents. We write anden and well ... anden, as well as tomten and tomten, it's literally only in pronunciation. The only Swedish symbols above the letters are in Å, Ä and Ö and that only dictates how that specific letter is pronounced. Also, I'm native Swedish and I've never heard of 'accent 1' or 'accent 2' or any rules, it's just not something we learn or think about as a native unless you study language at a higher level.
Then to complicate it more: a word like pojke (boy) is stressed differently in different accents. As a southerer, Skåne, I use pitch one for it, while pitch 2 is what he used.
I’ve lived in Sweden for most of my life, but I literally just realized this. I think it’s a thing that you learn just by hearing the language. But this was really cool to “discover”❤
Oh wow, 😂 I'm so happy I learned this as a native kid! I didn't know swedish was this complicated... I recently listened to someone explaining tones in Vietnamese 😵💫 I was lost instantly! I don't think the "singsongy" swedish help me distinguish the different vietnamese tones.
Honestly, as a swede who has spoken swedish since forever, I didn’t know about these rules. I can pretty much always tell when someone is foreign but can’t explain what they are doing wrong. This makes so much sense now. I can’t imagine how hard this would be to learn
👩🏼🌾🎄🌲👋😊 Hello, Dwayne! I'm a Finland Swede and like the guy said in the beginning, we don't have that sing song sentence structure although we otherwise speak Swedish. It must be very difficult to learn as an adult! Otherwise, our Swedish is the same, with a few differences.
I think for anyone trying to learn Swedish, don't think about these rules. They are correct of course, but the only time they really matter are for the words where they have two different meanings depending on the pitch, but they aren't many. When you learn new words, eventually you will remember them sounding in a specific way, just like any language, and after enough repetition, the wrong pitch will just sound wrong or like an entirely new word. As you all can see in the comments here, no native Swedish speakers have learnt these rules, it's just based on what eventually sounds right and wrong. So, listen a lot is the best strategy if you don't find it simple to memorise this many rules. Also, many Swedish dialects blur the lines between these rules. So if you plan on learning a lot of rules on how words are supposed to be pronounced, be prepared to also learn even more of exceptions to the rules.
16:52 No, all you have to ”parrot” you will do fine! As they say it’s a bit sing-songy, that also mean that you can get away with a lot by just picking up the ”melody” and your pronunciation is really good! So keep parroting and don’t focus on the little grammar things just yet! You seem to have a good ”ear” for Swedish so keep having fun with it! ❤❤❤🇸🇪
Love your reaction to my native language! You are doing so great at pronouncing our words. It is very interesting to recognize in you my own process as I was learning English, such as it is. I mostly use English in writing nowadays so I readily admit I should use it more in speech. I would most likely sound very very Swedish now if i where to speak to you since it was more than 25 years ago I was studying English in Jersey. Thanks for great content, and keep it up!
Im 100% swedish, and even i had problems trying to follow this guide, he tried so hard to make it easier to understand, yet i found it way more difficult than it should have been xD
You did great! Would be fun to see what you think of our TJ/SJ sound. And any Swede who watches it would probably learn about as much as you about what the actual rules are.
The part around 6.10 the words on the left is Duck, Cage, Poland, Tomten is like yard,plot,property etc, gifter is usually used with Oss or Mig which is marry us or marry me and last we have Sounds. The right words means Spirit, Carried, the stake or a stake, Santa, Poisons and last Jew. And i also want to mention that Polen can also mean battery pole/terminal but then its pronounced with a long O instead of pronouncing with a Å like in Pålen. We are using loads of long and short vowels mixed with hard or soft consonants to make one word that is spelled the same way meaning something completely different😅 like for example Anden. When i grew up we also got taught that some words are spelled as they sound which doesn't help the ppl in the parts of Sweden with heavy dialects😂 btw you are doing a great work trying to get the words right and you are really improving with each video especially the words using å ä and ö.
Ànden = the duck Andèn = the spirit Búren = the cage Burén = carried Pólen = Polen (the country) Polén = The swimming pool Tómten = Lawn/Yard Tomtèn = Santa Claus Gífter = Marries Giftér = Poisons/toxins Ljùden = The sounds/noises Judén = The jew
Don't wanna make this any tougher but... I am from Gothenburg, and in this dialect we tend to put emphsis on the r's more, kind of like a mid-point of stressed and no-stressed. xD A little more often than not. :P
And in Skåne they do it their way, in Norrland another way, Finland Swedish don't do it at all, etc. But mastering the prosody of standard Swedish is good enough for a foreigner, to put it mildly.
Don't worry about it though if you wanna try to speak some Swedish! We can usually guess from the context what people mean even if they get the pitch wrong. Like "anden" for example... the spirit wouldn't be likely to be swimming around in a pond 😆
I think the most important thing when learning Swedish is to talk to native speakers. The biggest problem is keeping Swedes from switching to English out of courtesy. 😅
This is hilarious. I knew about this before but for the first time I actually realized why some people sound so funny when they speak Swedish, it’s because they actually try to use this different pitch but in the wrong place 😅😅. Well, no judgement here..I’m learning Arabic ❤😅
I just want to say, you did REALLY well! If you listen to Swedish regularly, (like having Eng subs on Swe videos) you'll get used to the pitches and it takes time for the brain to process and comprehend all the unfamiliar sounds so don't give up and give it time.
I am Swedish, I was borne here in Sweden, I have never noticed this about the swedish language before. Buren (cage) and Buren (having been carried) sound so different in my ears that it's like they have wastly different spellings. The same goes for Tomten (santa clause or the elfish folklore thing) and Tomten (a pice of land for home construction) and many more in this video.
Holy .... I am really glad I speak swedish as a native speaker. I would NEVER learn this today. (This also explain why I never managed to get a passing grade at university when we had a very short course in swedish grammar, for when I studied english. Apparently it was mandatory to have a short swedish grammar course when studying a foreign language... I did pass the english grammar, but not the swedish... )
Now that you are made aware of this pitch thing, you’ll probably learn quicker and get to a degree where we will be suitably impressed rather quickly 🙌🏼🔥🧡
11:18 This is not grammar really, and no Swedes except experts know all these patterns. People basically just memorize the pronunciations, just like you do in English. You will get it! And it's pretty much the same with actual formal grammar actually - you don't need to understand it in order to speak well...
You're doing great at it! Coming from a Swede. Also to mention I also speak US accent English fluently as most Swedes are exposed to so much US made content stuff like movies and TV series from childhood. We only put subtiles to media and usually don't replace the audio unless it's for maybe children but that happens more rarely now days.
There are alsoSwedish words that have three or more completely different meanings. For example the word "För" which can mean "Push", "Because" or the Bow of a boat.
No it's not the same words with different accents. The different accent makes them in to another word. Polen for exampel is Poland and Pålen is the pole or stake.
As a Swedish kid I always thought the play by Ibsen which in Swedish is called Vildanden meant ”The Wild Spirit” which sounded so cool. Imagine my disappointment when I realized as an adult it was ”The Wild Duck” 😂😂😂 🐦 🦆
it would be fun to see you react to different Swedish accents, like regional accents. For example within an hour from where I live there are at least 3 different accents that we can tell the difference between in a second.
Many nonswedish asked me many times "why do you say that" and I cant explain I just feel its the right way. If I use the wrong word it just feel wrong in my mouth. And I never think like that before, that we have so many words that look the same but mean different things depend on how you say them.
I noticed that you pronounce most of the words with accent 2. Accent 1 is more like English, so I thought this would be easier for you. You will get there 😊
I have greek relatives and thought "well I've heard this language all my life, how hard can it be to learn". I started learning and now I am wondering how the people in Greece ever learned talking. 😅 But I also started understanding how difficult it must be for refugees and other immigrants to learn Swedish or whatever language they have to manage.
You pronounce Swedish very good but I'm sorry to tell you we got 13 different ways to say a ch- sound (like in chicken ) and it is crazy spelling going on there 🤪🤪 My tip would be try to listen to how we pronounce our vowels, that will be fun to watch👍
This is actually extremly imoortant if you want to sound native. The most important (especially as a English soeaker) is to nail the sounds every letter makes in the alphabet (it can be hard to rewire the brain to make defferent sounds for the same letter, seems especially hard for english speakers). The second most important thing is master the pitch accent and the use of tones and stresses. First after that comes the actual vocabulary, the amount of words you can, which is a forever ongoing process.
Always love Sweden day. I hope you find one covering the central west accent I speak with. The way to know with intonation to use comes mostly from just learning it word by word. For every rule there are exceptions to the rule. I'm sad he only included one pronunciation and meaning of cykel. If you ever want to have a conversation in Swedish, I volunteer 😊
I'm Swedish and this is the first time I ever hear of this. This was not taught at school, not at my school at least. I think this is a thing that we learn with learning to talk. It just sound right or wrong to us, but most people could not explain why or what grammar rules apply. You do most words really well! I know people who have lived here for years that pronounce some of these way worse. If you really want to learn Swedish I'm sure you could do it faster than most people! :D I just want to add an advice if you want to learn faster without having to grind pitch accent grammar. Watch Swedish movies, TV-shows and such with English subtitles. We have a few TV-channels with mainly Swedish content like news and Swedish movies, but for most of our entertainment channels English is the main language. Sitcoms like Friends, How I met your mother and Big bang theory are huge. The Simpsons and Family Guy too. Movies are in the original language, so most movies on TV are in English with subtitles. This means we are hearing English all the time (besides the older generations that prefer the Swedish spoken TV-channels). We hear all these most common words in English again and again and get a feeling of how they should sound without grinding grammar all the time. We also start learning English at like 6 or 7 years of age which gives us a huge advantage ofc. We also have an advantage in English being everywhere so when we get past those first steps of learning we kind of consume English organically. If I want to learn about something there will be so so much more sources in English than in Swedish. This might be something like learning about ancient Egypt - there is a vast range of sources in English to choose from. The Swedish ones are much more limited and the most recent studies will not be translated and put into Swedish works yet. I also learned how to crochet through TH-cam, and I don't even know the Swedish terms as I learned from English spoken videos. Long story short - consume Swedish spoken content with subtitles and you have a fast track to pronunciations and pitch :D For spelling reading while listening worked best for me when learning English in the beginning. Then I read short news articles and books for older children, looking up words as I went. When I felt comfortable with these easier materials I then moved on to regular books. I know my grammar is off at times, my pronunciations are wrong a lot of the time and my spelling is awful (thanks autocorrect) but I know English well enough to understand in most situations and make myself understood too. Just keep at it man, you'll learn in no time :D
"Ja KOMMER hem" would possibly be a teen upset/angry on their parents for wanting them to come home because it's late and after some argument agreeing to without actually not at all wanting to come home but lost the argument or just wanted to buy some time haha 😂😂😂
The swedish-english accent is an age thing, intantly revealing the guy as quite young. The people who still communicated with relatives in the US, i.e people born up to and through the 1930-ies speak english with their native swedish accent. Hillarious to listen to. After that they are generally quite bad at english until you get to gen-x who were taught the Queen's English. After that everything got more and more yankee-fied. Hence why you can tell that the bloke is younger than gen-x. It's a sliding scale of course. Early millenials started learning Queen's English and had it switch sometime during their education.
and then you go to the southern part of Sweden and all of a sudden all the rules change, such as pronouncing every syllable, pitch accent changing etc. Wild language truly...
I'm born and raised in Sweden, 26 years now. While I totally understand what the dude in the original video is saying, and I agree with it, I've never ever been taught these rules and neither am I able to teach it. The way you're pronouncing them are totally perfect and very well understandable. I come from a farmer's community in Värmland where we speak like texans. We speak monotone and lazy as one could be and I can barely hear the difference between the two accents sometimes. I think it's close to impossible to learn these rules just by 'learning'. I think the methdo that actually works the best is to put oneself out there and learn from native speakers. I know people that came to sweden 20 years ago and they still have trouble with these things, no matter how much they've spoken the language since it's not in their native tongue.
You did so great with pronunciation including the pitch accent. I am Swedish as Second Language Teacher and the majority of Swedish learners don´t even hear the pitch accent until they studied Swedish (I am talking about people living in Sweden and learning Swedish btw) for a looong time, often years. The only sound you didn´t get right (and that was only when you try to read before the person said the) but after he said it you got it right, were "kyckling". If you want to pracitise the Swedsh prosody in a easy wa I can recommend the page "uttalarkivet". Unfortunetaly the instructions in "uttalsarkivet" in Swedish. But most exercises is with pictures so you don´t have to know the word. And the exercises are to distinguish prosody pattern, distinguish different sound and imitate prosody pattern, sounds. The page is made of people experts in the sounds of Swedish and how to teach it.
13:33 We consume far more American media than British media here in Sweden, and without being surrounded by Brits in our day-to-day lives, American becomes the accent we pick up. But overall, it varies, as does our spelling. Since we get good grades in school regardless of if we use British or American, we use whichever one we're most exposed to.
A classic one is stégen vs stẽgen. The first one means "the steps". The second one means "the ladder" Both are, of course, spelled "stegen". As far as I know this is one of the more difficult to hear/say for foreigners. NOTE - that, what already have been said, this is absolutely nothing we learn at school. The first time I understood this was when foreigners had problem with it. Before that I did not notice that I pronounced them differently. You also have the word sluten, that, depending on pronunciation can either mean "closed" or "the endings".
Don't bother with the pitch. It's only meaningful for a few words that have the same spelling but different meanings depending on the pitch. But even if you use the wrong pitch on these words, a swede will be able to figure out what word you want to say from the context of the conversation.
The correct prosody makes the speech much easier to understand. So saying "don't bother" is not a good idea. That's what they say at SFI, hence only kids born here gets it reasonably right.
@@herrbonk3635 "Don't bother" may actually be really useful for some people, because a lot of students will feel overwhelmed and afraid of actually talking if they think there are too many things they have to get right. For beginners, there's a lot of things that needs to be filtered out to just get started with using what you know and improving. There are some things in the prosody that are really important and that cannot be left out, like the length of vowels and consonants or which syllable in a word should be stressed, but if someone doesn't get the pitch accent right it's usually not a big deal. Of course it's much better if people get all of it right, but that's often too much to ask of someone who is still struggling with putting their thoughts into words in a new language.
@@jonathangranlund9628 Yeah, getting the accent right is mostly for being able to pretend to be native Swede, it's not a requirement for being understood. It's also something that can be learned with time by listening to how others say words and copying it.
I think there's another video where he explains how these rules vary in different dialects, 'cause some of those examples are not pronounced that way everywhere. Here, in Dalarna (DÁlárna), people speak like the landscape⛰⛰⛰⛰⛰
This is pretty much how we were taught Swedish pronunciation in school. And then you take a Finn with Swedish as the second language to Skåne and throw all this to trash 😁
Actually, there are some dialects, like Finland Swedish but also skånska for instance, where you don't have pitch accent, but if you listen closely you can hear the difference all the same. Then two words with different accent (anden/anden) have the same pitch, but in the grave accent both syllables have a certain stress or emphasis, while in acute accent the second syllable is completely unstressed.
This was interesting. I think you did well. and most of the words you guessed the meaning off, was correct. A lot of them are the same in Danish and English, just pronounced differently, and with a few differences in the spelling.
”I didn’t know you had all this in your language”
Well, neither did we…
😅
Hahaha word 😂!
This pitch system is so specific that you instantly know if someone’s non-native, even if they’ve been speaking it for 10+ years. It also changes throughout the regions of Sweden, which makes it really easy for a native to know which region you are from by the implementations of the pitches
We don't learn the accents in school. This is assimilated by speaking with others.
Yeah, that's the only way it's gonna work. Speak with Swedish people (in Swedish)👍🏼
100% true, but it certainly help knowing a bit of why i would guess .. its not something u rly think of as a swede rly .. its just natural
@@Patrik6920 Wonder how many book we got wrong. Maybe it was Aladin and the duck, not the spirit 🤣
@@Mongolicious well, if it was in speech .. some UK dialects r rly hard .. sometimes u feel like Manuel in Falwty Towers .. que?
That's right, and that's why very many Swedes think that the grave accent is "accent on the last syllable" though it is not the case.
The only thing said about anden/anden, tomten/tomten in school was "hear the difference" and everybody had a fun time about joking around with the accents.
As a swedish person, there is no way I would have been able to grasp all those rules of the accents during my school years. I didnt even know we had rules for them until today 😅
Yes, native swedes just know
@@Tekzoned Actually, as a Norwegian I seem to know, too.
Same here, we got the rules in the milk.
Same!
Some geezer in Lund University actually says that native speakers has the hardest to describe their own rules
I must say I'm impressed by your prononciation. I know people who lived here for years that don't do it as well as you.
I agree.
Yeah, me too. But he's not a Göteborgare (Gothenburger) yet!
You can never be a "Gothenburger" if you're not born one. If you're not, you'll never be accepted, you'll be an outcast.... Knowing by experience......
ya its very good even åäö
om folk vill lära sig svenska så gör dom det. annars lär dom alrig det
A tip is to listen to Swedish films with English subtitles. This is how we learn English pronunciation etc. By hearing English and seeing it in Swedish. Then you learn bit by bit.
Actually a really good idea. A few films for him to watch are Joker or Drömkåken, the Beck films, Tomten är far till alla barnen...or practically any movie when I think about it :P
Yes, I think Swedish TV and film industry kind of put in extra effort to speak properly making it really good for learning purposes.
Iirc I’ve read somewhere that this is one of the major reasons why swedes, or any country who uses subtitles instead of voice over, in general speak a very good english. We get to hear it spoken practically every day when tv is on or streaming movies and series.
So yes, watching swedish movies and series with english subtitles is a friggin good advise 🙌🏼
That's also why swedes often speak american English, even though we learn brittish English in school. We watch a lot of american movies.
The accent signs he's showing are for visualisation purposes in that video only. We don't use them on all words like that.
Native speakers don't need it.
Well we do with some words like ”idé, café, filé” but generally you are right. I always wondered why we only use it for a few words and not just use it fully or not at all.
@@babematerial5796 it is because all those words are loan words, and you will find they are almost exclusively French in origin.
@@babematerial5796, we never use them for pitch accent, just to tell you where to put the stress if it doesn't comply to normal rules
I'm impressed 👍.
I'm Swedish and I understand this as much as you do. I learned English by ear, and I'm fluent in English, just like most Swedes are. So you do you. You are doing very good on pronouncing Swedish words 👏👏👏
Cheers!
Also we start learning english in school in the age between 6-8.
You didn't learn English by ear! In that case, almost every word in your sentences above would be spelled incorrectly.
(English is one of worst languages in the world regarding the (lack of) correlation between pronunciation and spelling.)
I LOVE that he put the graph to illustrate the accent, as someone who has cognitive dyssfunction it made it really easy for me to understand :)
7:16 "I have seen the little symbols above the words, but I never knew what they meant."
The á and ã accents put above the letters in the video you're watching are *not* written out in Swedish. They're only there to show how to pronounce the words. So in Swedish text you can't tell if it says "the spirit" or "the duck" without context. No, this doesn't usually cause any confusion. Without the definite article the words for "spirit" is "ande", and "duck" is "and", so it's only potentially confusing when writing about specific spirits or ducks as they are then written with the same letters. But it's not like English doesn't have homographs. Think of words such as "unionized" or "content". If you're reading about a plumber who's content with being unionized you will pronounce both words differently than if you're reading about a chemist having the content of the beaker they're holding be an unionized acid.
The umlauts you've seen in Swedish are those of the letter åäö/ÅÄÖ. These are their own letters, and they're the 3 last letters of the Swedish alphabet, in that order. They're all vowels with their own vowel sounds:
* Å sounds like the A in (English's) "call" or the O in "boring".
* Ä is trickier for where it's used in English as it often depends on the accent/dialect of the English-speaker. But for the long Ä, think of the A's in the English words "say" and "mad", and a short Ä would be the first E in "berries".
* Ö sounds like the I in "bird" or "girl".
Trying to pin down å, ä, and ö sounds in English is very dependent on which accent and dialect of English one is using. Personally, I go with the examples of doors, air, and d'uh. (dårs, är, d'ö) as I _think_ they work with most English dialects.
Being swedish, its super easy to hear that the guy is from sweden, but we tend to lean towards the american accent rather than british, even tho we learn the british way in school ^^
He's such a Stockholmare!
About half way into the video, I got to thinking "why the heck am I watching this, I already know swedish" 😂
The thing is, this isn’t actually taught in school- as preschoolers and toddlers we pick up this trait of knowing when to stress what thing without really thinking about it
I am impressed by your willingness to learn the Swedish language.
I have never realized how difficult my language is, since I am born with it. Your channel helps me learn more about my culture and language. Thank you!
Sedan skall vi inte underskatta inflytandet från plattyskan från 1200-talet och framåt. Jämför exempelvis var betoningen ligger i "betala" (från tyskans Bezahlen) och "Motala". Författaren Victor Rydberg på 1800-talet var galen på alla tyska inlån och ville rensa ut dem från svenskan. Exempelvis "betala" ville han ersätta med det äldre, pursvenska "gälda". Men Rydberg var en ropandes röst i öknen, ingen annan var intresserad av hans försök att "sanera" svenskan från tyska inflytelser. Nu för tiden är det istället engelska uttryck som alltmer tar över svenska språket.
As a Finn, I finally understand the thing with Swedish sounding like they are singing when they talk. Now, it makes sense. I have Swedish-speaking relatives, but their Swedish mostly stresses the first syllable only, with a few exceptions. The Swedish spoken in Finland is said to be frozen in a time capsule due to the separation from Sweden in 1809, so it has remained the same while the Swedish in Sweden has evolved and changed. Maybe the fact that Finnish has always stress on the first syllable has some effect to the Swedish spoken here.
I think it's the later with Finnish influence on the accent. I think a lot of Finnish people mistake the use of old words also means that the entire dialect is frozen in time. As a side note, Icelandic is most likely the most similar to ancient Nordic and nobody understands them. I can read Icelandic, but spoken is like noway.
@@znail4675 I agree! There are definitly a huge Finnish influence on the Swedish spoken in Finnland.
You did very good! I think you really have an ear for languages 😊
Also, I can't really remember learning this in Swedish class growing up. Usually it's just the context that tells you what pitch to use
The meaning can vary too. Jag går hém=I'll go home. Jag g´år hem=i'll walk home.
Or JAG går hem.
this is just standard stress which a lot of languages have, english has precisely the same thing.
Those two sentences mean exactly the same it’s just which word you put more force behind.
@@AnnikaK87 But they are used in different situations and have slightly different meaning. It's about if you are informing: who are leaving, where you are going or how you are going. But it change more then that as making a sentence into a question or other larger difference.
@@AnnikaK87emphasis and pitch accent go hand in hand a lot of the time while context carries them
You have a great pronunciation! 🙂
Dwane you pronounce swedish very well. I can comfort you that you will be understood even if you do not use this pitch accent. I am from Finland and my mother language is swedish but we don't have these pitch-accents in Finland. I have wisited Sweden multiple times and everybody understands me. The swedes say that my language sounds like finnish, but it is only an other dialect of swedish. I think you learn the pronounciation better by listening to people talking swedish and forget about these rules. Good luck I am sure you will learn swedish it is not SO difficult if you have an english background.
Yes because if you say tomten and speak about christmas or you say tomten and talk about your property its hard not to understand which tomten you are talking about :)
@@erikstenviken2652 Tomten på tomten :)
@@Tech2Rush A Santa on top of another Santa? Or a Santa in the back yard? Or perhaps one or both of these "tomten" refers to gnomes, small trolls, wights, leprechauns or other creatures (gårdstomtar/hustomtar, småtroll, vättar, pysslingar tex) we collectively call "tomtar"? Our language is very confusing at times LOL
I'll probably learn a bit of Swedish at some point, but Finnish is the language that I love the most. It's so wildly beautiful.
It could be explaned a little bit easier. One needs to know the etymology and origin of the words to get it right. My advice (as a former assistant SFI teacher) is to learn the basic nouns with the correct definite article, as this determines the definite form of the word and will also help with the accents. I can see in the comments that many say not to bother. That attitude is typical Swedish self-deprecation, and those saying so most often do not understand how flippant this stance is, especially toward people who really do want to understand in order to learn our language well.
En katt - katten. The pronounciation of the indefinite form never change, thus katten will be pronounced KATT-en as it is a one syllable word.
This rule works well to see how there is a difference between the different meanings for words such as anden and tomten.
En and - a duck. Anden - the duck. (AND-en). And is perforce an Accent 1 word as it is has only one syllable.
En ande - a spirit. Anden - the spirit. Ande in its indefinite form is pronounced AN-DE, thus the Accent 2 carries over to the definite form, AN-DE-n.
En tomt - a property/lot. Tomten (TOM-ten) - the lot.
En tomte (TOM-TE) - a gnome. Tomten (TOM-TEN) - the gnome.
The next easy category are the compound words. The reason these use different types of accents depends on the separate words and syllables. The examples in the video are: lastbil, sjukhus, örngott and brandman. The rule is that 1 Accent 1 is 1 accent. 2 Accents 1 are 2 accents.
Lastbil - a lorry, is a car (bil) that can carry a charge (last). Last is an Accent 1 word having only one syllable. Bil too is an Accent 1 word with only one syllable, thus the accents carry over to the compound that will become an Accent 2 word; LAST-BIL.
Sjukhus - a hospital, is a compound of sick (sjuk) and house (hus). Both words are Accent 1 words. The accents carry over into the compound word making it an Accent 2 word. Etc.
There are other compound words, with three or four parts as Swedish is an agglutinating language. In that case the parts determine the outcome.
Varuförpackning - Vara (goods, ware) is an old word that still has the old genetive ending of u. Förpackning is a compound word made of för- and -packning, in itself a form I would like to call "Accent 3", as we have quite a few words that are compounds but are treated as single words, were the first syllable isn't stressed, but the second is. för-PACKning. Thus the double compound word of varuförpackning is really a three word compound and will become VARu-för-PACK-ning.
An internet connection is "internetuppkoppling". Here the irregulariites of loan words makes itself obvious. Internet is IN-ter-net, or in-ter-NET. It hasn't quite touched ground in Swedish yet. Internet is a compound word and I believe Swedes treat it as "Accent 3" with a stress on the second syllable in compounds with endemic words. Connection is uppkoppling, another Accent 2 word. So, even though we often say INTER-net, the Accent 2 of UPP-KOPP-ling will influence the first part, turning UPP-KOPP-ling into an Accent 3 word, often making it sound like: in-ter-NET-upp-KOPP-ling.
Dividing compounds will change the lexical classes of the words. English has had a detrimental effect on Swedish, and many people believe it doesn't matter if you compound words or not. They are idiots. A few horrendous examples are:
Sjuksköterska - sjuk = ill, sköterska= nurse, but sjuksköterska is a title for a staff nurse, not an ill nurse (sjuk sköterska).
Kassapersonal - kassa = checkout, personal = staff, but kass means bad, and plural of kass is kassa. Thus, in stores you may actually see signs at the checkout saying things about the store's kassapersonal (checkout staff), but in the form of kassa personal (bad staff).
In a restaurant I saw signs that smoking was (supposedly) prohibited during lunch hour. But instead of rökfritt (smoke free), the signs said rök fritt (smoke freely).
Särskrivning - divided compound. Sär - apart, skrivning - spelling. Sär skrivning means strange writing, which it really is.
Most of the time it's obvious that the word is spelled wrong, but I have read texts, even academic ones, were it was not obvious if words were compounds or not. That may become costly if these errors occurr in legal texts.
You know your shit. You should start a TH-cam channel. How do you pronounce Apotekarnes julmust ? I know of a person who focuses on the Arne bit and also believes it is named after a person named Arne.
"Förpacking" är väl rimligtvis inte ett sammansatt ord, utan "packning" med prefixet "för"? Om man behandlar det som ett sammansatt ord skulle det väl istället betyda en packning som sitter i fören på en båt. Då skulle uttalet inte följa det du kallar accent 3, utan snarare samma mönster som i exempelvis "förskola", som ju dock inte är ett sammansatt ord, utan använder det andra prefixet "för". Förövrigt (och utan relevans för det du skrev) tycker jag att det är underhållande att det finns två prefix "för" på svenska som beter sig olika. Det ena kommer från före, som i exempelvis förskola eller förbokning, medan det andra är någon form av betydelseförstärkare/-ändrare. Tänk "stärka" jämte "förstärka", eller "packning" jämte "förpackning". Den sistnämnda följer det du kallar accent 3 medan den första beter sig som en del av ett sammansatt ord.
Det verkar nämligen mer allmänt som att vissa prefix följer vad du kallar accent 3, som det andra "för":et och "be" (förbättra och förband, och beivra och besök o.s.v.), medan andra prefix som "in" och "av" beter sig som delar av sammansatta ord. (intala och insikt, och avvakta och avverka o.s.v.). De orden som följer det du kallar accent 3 förändrar också accenten på orden de sätts framför. Se exempelvis bättra jämte förbättra, eller söka jämte besöka.
Inte heller internet är ju ett sammansatt ord, utan "net" med prefixet "inter", som vanligtvis inte beter sig som en del av ett sammansatt ord(internationell, interagera o.s.v.). Att många, mig själv inkluderad, uttalar internet som IN-ter-net måste bero på att det är ett engelskt lånord, och att många använder det engelska uttalet. Om man istället hade översatt internet till "internät" hade nog ingen använt den engelska betoningen. Dock tycker jag det väldigt intressant att betoningen av internet försvenskas när det ingår i sammansatta ord; även i exempelvis internetcafé skulle åtminstone jag ändra betoningen, även om jag tror mig ha hört både -IN-ternetcafé och inter-NET-café)
Att betoningen av uppkoppling förändras i internetuppkoppling har väl inte direkt något att göra med accenten i internet? Det följer väl snarare samma mönster som andra längre sammansatta ord. Om ett sammansatt ord bildas genom att slå ihop två andra sammansatta ord så bibehåller de uppbyggande sammansatta orden inte nödvändigtvis sina uttalsmönster. Tänk brandman kontra fritidsbrandman. I "fritidsbrandman" så försvinner betoningen av "brand" (åtminstone i min stockholmsdialekt, det kanske finns variationer här?), på samma sätt som betnoningen av "upp" i internetuppkoppling, även om internet och fritid har olika accenter. "Upp" är ju ett av prefixen som beter sig som en del av ett sammansatt ord. Dock kan jag inte lista ut varför vissa längre sammansatta ord beter sig på detta viset, medan andra inte gör det. I exempelvis "fotbollsmålvakt" skulle jag inte avbetona "mål" på samma sätt som "brand" i fritidsbrandman". Kanske har du någon tillfredställande förklaring i enlighet med din SFI-bakgrund? (edit: Jag insåg att det beror på att jag inte uttalar målvakt på stockholmskt vis, med accent 2, utan på min mors norrbottniska vis med en helt annan accent. Om jag använder stocholmska betoningsregler så kan jag inte komma på något exempel på ett längre sammansatt ord som inte följer samma mönster som internetuppkoppling och fritidsbrandman.)
Jag avvundas definitivt inte någon uppdraget att försöka beskriva och skapa regler för hur accenter beter sig i svenskan, och om du lyckats skapa ett system som underlättar vid inlärning av svenska så vill jag inte gärna försöka sänka den. Jag inser efter en korrekturläsning att jag framstår som lite väl negativ. Det var inte min mening och jag hoppas att du inte tar illa upp. Jag kan bara inte låta bli att engagera mig i denna typ av diskussionsämne, och kände mig tvungen att skriva av mig.
@@erikd6124 Eftersom apotekarnes är en böjning av grundordet apotek, så bibehålls betoningen av apotek, med några extra, obetonade suffix på slutet. E:et där vi idag hade förväntat oss ett A (apotekarnas istället för apotekarnes) är mig veterligen en rest från en äldre genetivböjning, d.v.s. att pluralböjningen följde ordets genus på ett sätt som inte längre förekommer. Att uttala det som Apotek-Arnes och insistera på att musten är döpt efter apotekaren Arne är dock höjden av humor, och något som gärna sker på de oinvigdas bekostnad! Jag tror dock att det har följt en liknande utveckling som plattjordsteorin; även om det började som ett internskämt så är det numera så många som tror på vad de säger att det tappat lite av sin charm.
@@erikd6124 ”Apotekarne” is just an older (and now dead) definite plural form of ”apotekare”. So you should say it exactly as you’d say ”apotekarnas”, only with an E instead of the final A. 😊
Det här var jä-ligt intressant! Fann mig själv sitta och nicka åt det du skrivit. Så tydligt och bra förklarat 🙌🏼🔥
Dwayne, you would have no problem learning full Swedish at all. Your pronunciations are really good for such a hard language.
and to anyone visiting southern Sweden region Skåne (Malmo region) all bets are immediately off. I wish you good luck. You should find a video and compare it lol. It's like being introduced to Scouse from never hearing a single word of English 😂
You did great! When it was explained so thoroughly I realized how difficult it must be to learn. I felt bad each time it got more complicated💀
7:16 Important: As others point out: the symbols used for the pitches here, like ´ and ~ are not part of the Swedish language and only used in this video to distinguish between the pitch accents. We write anden and well ... anden, as well as tomten and tomten, it's literally only in pronunciation. The only Swedish symbols above the letters are in Å, Ä and Ö and that only dictates how that specific letter is pronounced. Also, I'm native Swedish and I've never heard of 'accent 1' or 'accent 2' or any rules, it's just not something we learn or think about as a native unless you study language at a higher level.
Really well done, Dwayne! You got the two types of pitch accent at once! 👏👏👏
Then to complicate it more: a word like pojke (boy) is stressed differently in different accents. As a southerer, Skåne, I use pitch one for it, while pitch 2 is what he used.
Syster with accent one as well. I'm also from Skåne.
Påg heter det på skånska
As a swede with a mom that was a language teacher, I enjoy listening to you. Languages are fun, and especially comparing them.
U did great actually. Like unusually good.
Well done
Teacher of Swedish here. You got it so fast! Usually students don't even hear the difference the first time around,
As a swede, I learned something new today
I’ve lived in Sweden for most of my life, but I literally just realized this. I think it’s a thing that you learn just by hearing the language. But this was really cool to “discover”❤
Oh wow, 😂 I'm so happy I learned this as a native kid! I didn't know swedish was this complicated... I recently listened to someone explaining tones in Vietnamese 😵💫 I was lost instantly! I don't think the "singsongy" swedish help me distinguish the different vietnamese tones.
Honestly, as a swede who has spoken swedish since forever, I didn’t know about these rules. I can pretty much always tell when someone is foreign but can’t explain what they are doing wrong. This makes so much sense now. I can’t imagine how hard this would be to learn
👩🏼🌾🎄🌲👋😊 Hello, Dwayne!
I'm a Finland Swede and like the guy said in the beginning, we don't have that sing song sentence structure although we otherwise speak Swedish. It must be very difficult to learn as an adult! Otherwise, our Swedish is the same, with a few differences.
I think for anyone trying to learn Swedish, don't think about these rules.
They are correct of course, but the only time they really matter are for the words where they have two different meanings depending on the pitch, but they aren't many.
When you learn new words, eventually you will remember them sounding in a specific way, just like any language, and after enough repetition, the wrong pitch will just sound wrong or like an entirely new word. As you all can see in the comments here, no native Swedish speakers have learnt these rules, it's just based on what eventually sounds right and wrong.
So, listen a lot is the best strategy if you don't find it simple to memorise this many rules.
Also, many Swedish dialects blur the lines between these rules. So if you plan on learning a lot of rules on how words are supposed to be pronounced, be prepared to also learn even more of exceptions to the rules.
Such fun!
The poor guy actually doing the second syllable higher
when the demonstration shows the lowering of the second syllable.
16:52 No, all you have to ”parrot” you will do fine! As they say it’s a bit sing-songy, that also mean that you can get away with a lot by just picking up the ”melody” and your pronunciation is really good! So keep parroting and don’t focus on the little grammar things just yet! You seem to have a good ”ear” for Swedish so keep having fun with it! ❤❤❤🇸🇪
Love your reaction to my native language! You are doing so great at pronouncing our words. It is very interesting to recognize in you my own process as I was learning English, such as it is. I mostly use English in writing nowadays so I readily admit I should use it more in speech. I would most likely sound very very Swedish now if i where to speak to you since it was more than 25 years ago I was studying English in Jersey. Thanks for great content, and keep it up!
Great fun to watch your videos ❤
Damn, you put the inflections exactly where they needed to be in the first example. Kudos!
11:34 Through conversation you will pick up the ”melody ” of the word and as long you will still be able to talk Swedish!❤❤❤🇸🇪
Im 100% swedish, and even i had problems trying to follow this guide, he tried so hard to make it easier to understand, yet i found it way more difficult than it should have been xD
You are catching the differences reall really well! Quite impressive pronounciations actually.
You did great! Would be fun to see what you think of our TJ/SJ sound. And any Swede who watches it would probably learn about as much as you about what the actual rules are.
And how completely different the SJ is pronounced in Skåne and Stockholm respectively.
The part around 6.10 the words on the left is Duck, Cage, Poland, Tomten is like yard,plot,property etc, gifter is usually used with Oss or Mig which is marry us or marry me and last we have Sounds. The right words means Spirit, Carried, the stake or a stake, Santa, Poisons and last Jew. And i also want to mention that Polen can also mean battery pole/terminal but then its pronounced with a long O instead of pronouncing with a Å like in Pålen. We are using loads of long and short vowels mixed with hard or soft consonants to make one word that is spelled the same way meaning something completely different😅 like for example Anden. When i grew up we also got taught that some words are spelled as they sound which doesn't help the ppl in the parts of Sweden with heavy dialects😂 btw you are doing a great work trying to get the words right and you are really improving with each video especially the words using å ä and ö.
Ànden = the duck
Andèn = the spirit
Búren = the cage
Burén = carried
Pólen = Polen (the country)
Polén = The swimming pool
Tómten = Lawn/Yard
Tomtèn = Santa Claus
Gífter = Marries
Giftér = Poisons/toxins
Ljùden = The sounds/noises
Judén = The jew
Don't wanna make this any tougher but... I am from Gothenburg, and in this dialect we tend to put emphsis on the r's more, kind of like a mid-point of stressed and no-stressed. xD A little more often than not. :P
And in Skåne they do it their way, in Norrland another way, Finland Swedish don't do it at all, etc.
But mastering the prosody of standard Swedish is good enough for a foreigner, to put it mildly.
As a Swede this is both funny and weird to watch as it all comes naturally to us. Keep it up =)
I did not like the Swedish lessons at school.
But it was quite fun to see this together with an English speaker. And you seem to learn quickly.
Don't worry about it though if you wanna try to speak some Swedish! We can usually guess from the context what people mean even if they get the pitch wrong. Like "anden" for example... the spirit wouldn't be likely to be swimming around in a pond 😆
I think the most important thing when learning Swedish is to talk to native speakers. The biggest problem is keeping Swedes from switching to English out of courtesy. 😅
This is hilarious. I knew about this before but for the first time I actually realized why some people sound so funny when they speak Swedish, it’s because they actually try to use this different pitch but in the wrong place 😅😅.
Well, no judgement here..I’m learning Arabic ❤😅
Well done ! I'm impressed by your prononciation
I think it's also interesting because it's not something we think about. :)
I just want to say, you did REALLY well! If you listen to Swedish regularly, (like having Eng subs on Swe videos) you'll get used to the pitches and it takes time for the brain to process and comprehend all the unfamiliar sounds so don't give up and give it time.
I am Swedish, I was borne here in Sweden, I have never noticed this about the swedish language before. Buren (cage) and Buren (having been carried) sound so different in my ears that it's like they have wastly different spellings. The same goes for Tomten (santa clause or the elfish folklore thing) and Tomten (a pice of land for home construction) and many more in this video.
Holy .... I am really glad I speak swedish as a native speaker. I would NEVER learn this today. (This also explain why I never managed to get a passing grade at university when we had a very short course in swedish grammar, for when I studied english. Apparently it was mandatory to have a short swedish grammar course when studying a foreign language... I did pass the english grammar, but not the swedish... )
Now that you are made aware of this pitch thing, you’ll probably learn quicker and get to a degree where we will be suitably impressed rather quickly 🙌🏼🔥🧡
11:18 This is not grammar really, and no Swedes except experts know all these patterns.
People basically just memorize the pronunciations, just like you do in English. You will get it!
And it's pretty much the same with actual formal grammar actually - you don't need to understand it in order to speak well...
You're doing great at it! Coming from a Swede. Also to mention I also speak US accent English fluently as most Swedes are exposed to so much US made content stuff like movies and TV series from childhood. We only put subtiles to media and usually don't replace the audio unless it's for maybe children but that happens more rarely now days.
There are alsoSwedish words that have three or more completely different meanings. For example the word "För" which can mean "Push", "Because" or the Bow of a boat.
Like in any language..
I’m a native swede and this is blowing my mind. Like… I instinctively know this, but I never thought about it
No it's not the same words with different accents. The different accent makes them in to another word. Polen for exampel is Poland and Pålen is the pole or stake.
As a Swedish kid I always thought the play by Ibsen which in Swedish is called Vildanden meant ”The Wild Spirit” which sounded so cool. Imagine my disappointment when I realized as an adult it was ”The Wild Duck” 😂😂😂 🐦 🦆
Very good, and many great guesses too with the words! Godis is indeed candy and so on!
Wow, you got talent! Seriously, I think you could learn Swedish pretty quickly.
Swede here. I had never even reflected on this stuff. We just learn it by ear as kids.
it would be fun to see you react to different Swedish accents, like regional accents. For example within an hour from where I live there are at least 3 different accents that we can tell the difference between in a second.
Like Adam said in the beginning, pitch accent praxis also differs between regional dialects. Sometimes greatly so.
You have a good ear 👍 As others suggests, watch a lot of Swedish high quality series on the TV like the "Bron" and "Kurt Wallander"
Or Nilecity.
Very impressed!
Many nonswedish asked me many times "why do you say that" and I cant explain I just feel its the right way. If I use the wrong word it just feel wrong in my mouth. And I never think like that before, that we have so many words that look the same but mean different things depend on how you say them.
I noticed that you pronounce most of the words with accent 2.
Accent 1 is more like English, so I thought this would be easier for you. You will get there 😊
Haha me to 😂❤
You should react to his follow-up video about the dialectal variation of the pitch accent
You're doing well. Keep at it!
I have greek relatives and thought "well I've heard this language all my life, how hard can it be to learn". I started learning and now I am wondering how the people in Greece ever learned talking. 😅 But I also started understanding how difficult it must be for refugees and other immigrants to learn Swedish or whatever language they have to manage.
You pronounce Swedish very good but I'm sorry to tell you we got 13 different ways to say a ch- sound (like in chicken ) and it is crazy spelling going on there 🤪🤪 My tip would be try to listen to how we pronounce our vowels, that will be fun to watch👍
Depends on where in sweden. I pronounce all the "sk" sounds as either sk or ch defending on the word.
This is actually extremly imoortant if you want to sound native.
The most important (especially as a English soeaker) is to nail the sounds every letter makes in the alphabet (it can be hard to rewire the brain to make defferent sounds for the same letter, seems especially hard for english speakers).
The second most important thing is master the pitch accent and the use of tones and stresses.
First after that comes the actual vocabulary, the amount of words you can, which is a forever ongoing process.
Always love Sweden day. I hope you find one covering the central west accent I speak with.
The way to know with intonation to use comes mostly from just learning it word by word. For every rule there are exceptions to the rule.
I'm sad he only included one pronunciation and meaning of cykel.
If you ever want to have a conversation in Swedish, I volunteer 😊
Tackar, tackar Dwayne!! Fran en Svensk i Spanien!!!
You are very good lerning Swedish 🇸🇪 Dwayne 😊👍
I'm Swedish and this is the first time I ever hear of this. This was not taught at school, not at my school at least. I think this is a thing that we learn with learning to talk. It just sound right or wrong to us, but most people could not explain why or what grammar rules apply. You do most words really well! I know people who have lived here for years that pronounce some of these way worse. If you really want to learn Swedish I'm sure you could do it faster than most people! :D I just want to add an advice if you want to learn faster without having to grind pitch accent grammar. Watch Swedish movies, TV-shows and such with English subtitles. We have a few TV-channels with mainly Swedish content like news and Swedish movies, but for most of our entertainment channels English is the main language. Sitcoms like Friends, How I met your mother and Big bang theory are huge. The Simpsons and Family Guy too. Movies are in the original language, so most movies on TV are in English with subtitles. This means we are hearing English all the time (besides the older generations that prefer the Swedish spoken TV-channels). We hear all these most common words in English again and again and get a feeling of how they should sound without grinding grammar all the time. We also start learning English at like 6 or 7 years of age which gives us a huge advantage ofc. We also have an advantage in English being everywhere so when we get past those first steps of learning we kind of consume English organically. If I want to learn about something there will be so so much more sources in English than in Swedish. This might be something like learning about ancient Egypt - there is a vast range of sources in English to choose from. The Swedish ones are much more limited and the most recent studies will not be translated and put into Swedish works yet. I also learned how to crochet through TH-cam, and I don't even know the Swedish terms as I learned from English spoken videos. Long story short - consume Swedish spoken content with subtitles and you have a fast track to pronunciations and pitch :D For spelling reading while listening worked best for me when learning English in the beginning. Then I read short news articles and books for older children, looking up words as I went. When I felt comfortable with these easier materials I then moved on to regular books. I know my grammar is off at times, my pronunciations are wrong a lot of the time and my spelling is awful (thanks autocorrect) but I know English well enough to understand in most situations and make myself understood too. Just keep at it man, you'll learn in no time :D
u need to look in to Accents from South to North in sweden! that can be a fun one! :D
4:45 this is so fun! I am swedish n have worked w practising conversational swedish w new swedes, n this type of thing also carries into sentences XD
"Ja KOMMER hem" would possibly be a teen upset/angry on their parents for wanting them to come home because it's late and after some argument agreeing to without actually not at all wanting to come home but lost the argument or just wanted to buy some time haha 😂😂😂
The swedish-english accent is an age thing, intantly revealing the guy as quite young.
The people who still communicated with relatives in the US, i.e people born up to and through the 1930-ies speak english with their native swedish accent. Hillarious to listen to. After that they are generally quite bad at english until you get to gen-x who were taught the Queen's English. After that everything got more and more yankee-fied. Hence why you can tell that the bloke is younger than gen-x. It's a sliding scale of course. Early millenials started learning Queen's English and had it switch sometime during their education.
and then you go to the southern part of Sweden and all of a sudden all the rules change, such as pronouncing every syllable, pitch accent changing etc. Wild language truly...
This is why "can you use it in a sentence" is so important for swedes when asked about a word
Far får får får? Nä får får inte får får får lamm
I'm born and raised in Sweden, 26 years now. While I totally understand what the dude in the original video is saying, and I agree with it, I've never ever been taught these rules and neither am I able to teach it.
The way you're pronouncing them are totally perfect and very well understandable. I come from a farmer's community in Värmland where we speak like texans. We speak monotone and lazy as one could be and I can barely hear the difference between the two accents sometimes.
I think it's close to impossible to learn these rules just by 'learning'. I think the methdo that actually works the best is to put oneself out there and learn from native speakers.
I know people that came to sweden 20 years ago and they still have trouble with these things, no matter how much they've spoken the language since it's not in their native tongue.
We dont learn this in school. We learn this from birth just by listening so this was new to me also.
You did so great with pronunciation including the pitch accent. I am Swedish as Second Language Teacher and the majority of Swedish learners don´t even hear the pitch accent until they studied Swedish (I am talking about people living in Sweden and learning Swedish btw) for a looong time, often years. The only sound you didn´t get right (and that was only when you try to read before the person said the) but after he said it you got it right, were "kyckling". If you want to pracitise the Swedsh prosody in a easy wa I can recommend the page "uttalarkivet". Unfortunetaly the instructions in "uttalsarkivet" in Swedish. But most exercises is with pictures so you don´t have to know the word. And the exercises are to distinguish prosody pattern, distinguish different sound and imitate prosody pattern, sounds. The page is made of people experts in the sounds of Swedish and how to teach it.
13:33 We consume far more American media than British media here in Sweden, and without being surrounded by Brits in our day-to-day lives, American becomes the accent we pick up. But overall, it varies, as does our spelling. Since we get good grades in school regardless of if we use British or American, we use whichever one we're most exposed to.
A classic one is stégen vs stẽgen.
The first one means "the steps".
The second one means "the ladder"
Both are, of course, spelled "stegen".
As far as I know this is one of the more difficult to hear/say for foreigners.
NOTE - that, what already have been said, this is absolutely nothing we learn at school.
The first time I understood this was when foreigners had problem with it.
Before that I did not notice that I pronounced them differently.
You also have the word sluten, that, depending on pronunciation can either mean "closed" or "the endings".
Don't bother with the pitch. It's only meaningful for a few words that have the same spelling but different meanings depending on the pitch. But even if you use the wrong pitch on these words, a swede will be able to figure out what word you want to say from the context of the conversation.
The correct prosody makes the speech much easier to understand.
So saying "don't bother" is not a good idea. That's what they say at SFI, hence only kids born here gets it reasonably right.
Unless we are stressed or tired and get a brain freeze.
@@herrbonk3635 "Don't bother" may actually be really useful for some people, because a lot of students will feel overwhelmed and afraid of actually talking if they think there are too many things they have to get right. For beginners, there's a lot of things that needs to be filtered out to just get started with using what you know and improving. There are some things in the prosody that are really important and that cannot be left out, like the length of vowels and consonants or which syllable in a word should be stressed, but if someone doesn't get the pitch accent right it's usually not a big deal. Of course it's much better if people get all of it right, but that's often too much to ask of someone who is still struggling with putting their thoughts into words in a new language.
@@jonathangranlund9628 Regarding feeling overwhelmed, I agree. (See my other comment about what he said at 11:18, where I kind of talk about that.)
@@jonathangranlund9628 Yeah, getting the accent right is mostly for being able to pretend to be native Swede, it's not a requirement for being understood. It's also something that can be learned with time by listening to how others say words and copying it.
I think there's another video where he explains how these rules vary in different dialects, 'cause some of those examples are not pronounced that way everywhere.
Here, in Dalarna (DÁlárna), people speak like the landscape⛰⛰⛰⛰⛰
As a swede I didn't realize we had that in our language. So I don't blame you. I like your pronunciation.
Did you never play around with accents as a kid, saying peoples' names wrong f.e?
@redadder4325 i probably did, it was a long time ago. But I never thought of that the ánden-ándén thing. Wonder how many books I got wrong 🤣
Ah Academy Cervena, he uploads way too rarely.
This is pretty much how we were taught Swedish pronunciation in school. And then you take a Finn with Swedish as the second language to Skåne and throw all this to trash 😁
Actually, there are some dialects, like Finland Swedish but also skånska for instance, where you don't have pitch accent, but if you listen closely you can hear the difference all the same. Then two words with different accent (anden/anden) have the same pitch, but in the grave accent both syllables have a certain stress or emphasis, while in acute accent the second syllable is completely unstressed.
This was interesting. I think you did well. and most of the words you guessed the meaning off, was correct. A lot of them are the same in Danish and English, just pronounced differently, and with a few differences in the spelling.