Re: Palatals, labials and velars in Swedish

The Scandinavian vowel pronounciation differ from dialect to
dialect. In standard Norwegian and the Oslo dialect (close to
standard) you have this:

u - a mid half-closed roundeed wovel. (nearly a rounded schwa-sound,
but a little more closed than a schwa-sound.

y - a front very closed rounded wovel. (actually a rounded shap i-
sound, so closed that it approximates to a palatale fricative)

All standard Norwegian vowels can be long or short in any position,
even though long unstressed vowels are little frequent.

Also i (unrounded) has the same palatal near-fricative
pronounciation.But if you close it even more to give a real
fricative, you suddenly make a consonatal phoneme (usually spelt j,
and sometimes g) Example gi - to give. This word is
pronounced "ji:", with a very slight difference between the palatal
consonant and the very closed vowel.



In some other Norwegian dialects, u is very similar to the english
sound in the word "full".

Even though I can clearly hear the swedish sounds to be clearly
related, they sound different than the norwegian ones.



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--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "squilluncus" <grvs@...> wrote:
>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Andrew Jarrette <anjarrette@>
> wrote:
> >
>
> > Thank you for this information, but what I actually meant to
ask
> >you was whether Swedish "long u" really had /y/ as its first
> >element, followed by /w/.
>
> No, it is not /y/ nor /ü/ or similar. I quote Bertil Malmberg,
> Lärobok i fonetik, Lund 1969, p88: "This typical Swedish
vowelsound
> has always given phoneticians difficulties when classifying it
> accurately. Formerly it was considered a middle-tongue vowel, but
> later research has shown that the vowel is purely palatal having a
> tongue position somewhat more close than the one for [e] but more
> open than for [i]. The sound is also diphthongic as is the case
with
> [i] and [y] finishing with with a consonantic friction sound
> (bilabial for /u,/). The vowel is best described thus: it unites a
> half closed position of the tongue with a very special
> labialisation . The lips are not protruded as is the case for [y]
> but contracted in a very characteristic way (photo)." (my hasty
> translation).
> Further Malberg says that it has evolved from a former velar
> articulation via middletongueposition to a fronted vowel.
> So far Malmberg. Note though from this last statement that it is
> still considered a 'hard' vowel not palatalizing /k/: "kul" is
> pronounced /ku,:l/ whereas "kyla" is pronounced /c^y:la/.
>
> > But I am quite surprised to hear that all Swedish long vowels
are
> >diphthongs. I thought English was the ugly duckling in this
> >regard. Is even "long e" pronounced as a diphthong, and if so,
how
> >is it different from the diphthong "long ä" might be? And
is "long
> >a" a diphthong? If so, what combination of sounds is it?
>
> Sorry, under influence of fatigue and a glass of wine I made too
> hasty a statement; it is only the closed /i: y: u,: and u: (as in
> mo:der)/ that have 'consonantic friction' as mentioned above.
>
> I invite to the following site where you can get exact Hertz
number
> of the Swedish vowels as well as listen to them:
>
> http://www.ling.su.se/staff/hartmut/svok.htm
>
> There you can hear the difference between vowels with friction and
> those without. A warning though: the /ä/ is pronounced too open by
> the Stockholmers who in their dialect are unable to distinguish
> between /e/ and /ä/. (It's a good thing that they don't display
> their vulgar /xw/ on the world wide web!)
>
> Lars
>