Appendix talk:Swedish pronunciation

ERRORS?

All sound files are correct to my ears, if the speaker is some kind of Mälardal (Mälaren Valley) speaker. But the IPA usage seems incorrect (a non-Swede may compare what he/she hears with what he/she reads):

"ful" is not pronounced /fʉːl/, where /ʉ/ denotes high central rounded vowel – far from that! – but /fyʾːl/, where /yʾ/ is my best try to represent high front over-rounded vowel. Actually (and by the sound files), in real life it's pronounced /fyʾɥl/, where /ɥ/ unlike by it's Unicode description, represents bilabial frictionless continuant/semi-vowel, which is actually a correct alternative usage, possibly obsolete. However, by convention, and since all "long vowels" in Swedish actually are diphtongs, the long vowel marker ː is used in Swedish phonetics. /ʉ/ have never been used for high front over-rounded vowel as far as I know, however. In Swedish phonetics, one, from Unicode missing, glyph is used, like /ɯ/ but with the central bar only half long.

/ɵ/ for usage in "full" /fɵl/ is probably an error – it should instead be /fʉl/. There are central Svealand dialects where the distinction between "full" and "föll" is dissolved, but that is uncommon in Swedish in general, so that the pair is either pronounced /fʉl/ ~ /fɵl/ (my own dialect, two distinct central rounded vowels), or /fʉl/ ~ /føl/ (one high central rounded vowel, one semi-high front rounded vowel). Rursus 10:40, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Caveat: it may well be true that Swedish language authors use IPA glyphs erroneously to represent any phonetic sound, it has happened before. Rursus 10:54, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm a complete novice in this area, but a while ago someone on sv:wikt wanted to change all /ʉ/ to /ʉ̟/ - would that be (more) correct? But anyhow, if these are wrong, one would also need to take a look at w:Swedish_phonology (and sv:w:Svensk fonologi), as the same characters are used there. \Mike 21:41, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Differentiating /ʉ/ from /ʉ̟/ is relevant in an encyclopedic article discussing phonetics, but for a pronunciation guide it only adds IPA-dinkiness which is satisfying only to people with an in-depth knowledge of IPA. Pronunciation guides don't really benefit from using more symbols unless it's actually required to separate phonemes from one another. As for the description of the short "u", see The Handbook of the International Phonetic Association.

Peter ^Isotalo 11:34, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

The Swedish long u is quite problematic. I'd describe it as a near-front near-close overrounded vowel and write it phonetically as [ʏ̹ː]. When I try to teach foreigners how to pronounce the Swedish long u I usually tell them to form a y, assuming they know how to do that, and then to curl their lips inwards, a bit like when you whistle. That usually does the trick. I believe there are dialects however where it is in fact pronounced [ʉː]. I assume the use of /ʉ/ is because it's the closest sign available if one wants to avoid diacritics. It's also a good choice since it actually resembles a u. (The ɯ-like sign is from the Landsmålsalfabet. The fact that it is not available in Unicode makes it a bit hard to use.) Also, take a look at Swedish phonology and you'll see that /ɵ/ for short u is quite correct. Also, only four of the Central Swedish long vowels are pronounced as diphthongs: i as /ij/, y as /yɥ/, o as /uβ/ and u as /ʉβ/.

-- Tasnu Arakun 15:25, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

RFV discussion.

Note: the left-barred portion of the discussion below is copied from Wiktionary:Requests for verification archive/July 2007#Wiktionary:About Swedish/Pronunciation ERROR.

Wiktionary:About Swedish/Pronunciation seems to be misusing the IPA characters /ʉ/ and /ɵ/. I wrote more specifically about it in Wiktionary talk:About Swedish/Pronunciation. The errors might have be copied from a Swedish erroneous source. Rursus 11:07, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Unfortunately, RFV isn't really equipped to handle this sort of question. You may wish to bring it up with Peter Isotalo, who added that information. —Ruakh_TALK 15:26, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

A bit late, I know, but I think I'd like to stress once more that this is not an in-depth discussion of the finer details of phonetics and the phonemic (not phonetic) usage of IPA is very consistent with what's being used by Swedish linguists.

Peter ^Isotalo 13:00, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

The Fable

Why are the informal ”dom” (de/dem) and ”sej (sig)” written in the fable? It’s usually incorrect in written language but since this is about phonetics I thought that maybe it was written how it’s pronounced or is the last example supposed to be the correct text? I just thought I would ask instead of replacing it since there maybe was a good reason why it was written like that. :) Lundgren8 20:37, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Maybe there should be a note that it's non-standard/colloquial, on purpose? (Rather than hidden as a html-comment, that is.)Vaste 17:17, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

syl vs kyl

Audio:

(file)

Surely he's saying "kyl" rather than "syl"? I changed it, but the audiofile is still named "syl". Oh, and would kyl be [ɕyːl]? Vaste 17:09, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

No, that's definitely "syl". I'd elaborate but I don't think there's much more to say. Edited the wiki page. Anrza (talk) 22:37, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

Representing pitch accent

Right now the guidelines for representing pitch accent 2 is with a mark for secondary stress. This is nonstandard and quite incorrect. There are words with accent 2 that do not have secondary stress, e.g. penna , and there are those that do, e.g. lastbil. By writing /ˈpɛnˌna/ one is led to believe that there is secondary stress on the second syllable, which there is not. For this reason, Wikipedia moved away from this transcription a few years ago to showing accent 1 with /ˈ/ and accent 2 with /²/, e.g. /²pɛn.na/ and /²last.biːl/, but måndag /ˈmɔn.dɑːg/. This is the system used in Phonology of Swedish by w:Tomas Riad. I think it’s time for Wiktionary to do the same, but I wanted to bring it up here first before making any hasty edits. --Lundgren8 (t · c) 09:32, 12 October 2019 (UTC)

@Lundgren8: A bit late response, perhaps, but better late than never! I added /²vuːt.ɵm/ to votum. Is this in line with what you were proposing? Because if so, I have two questions. First, shouldn't at least "Appendix:Swedish pronunciation" be updated to reflect that this is indeed how we should do pitch accents on Wiktionary? Second, is this really proper IPA? I can't find superscripts used this way on the IPA chart. I notice that my second question was discussed on Help talk:IPA/Swedish, but I can't really determine what consensus emerged (if any). Gabbe (talk) 06:46, 4 September 2022 (UTC)

Since my proposal, there has been a lot of discussions on this on Wikipedia, which has resulted in using IPA tonal diacritics from Central Swedish to represent pronunciation. The positive side of this is that it is proper IPA, which acute/grave accents or superscript ¹/² are not as you mention. The downside is that the exact realisation of the pitch accent is very variable depending on accent, and ¹/² could be considered to be more ”phonemic”. Accent marks or superscript ¹/² are also what is typically used in scientific literature, unlike IPA tonal diacritics. I also want to correct my proposal above: I wrote that Phonology of Swedish uses ⟨ˈ⟩ for accent 1 and ⟨²⟩ for accent 2, which isn’t true, it uses ⟨¹⟩ for accent 1 in combination with the stress mark. I have seen systems where ¹/² replace the stress mark altogether as well, e.g. /be¹loːna/, or similar. --Lundgren8 (t · c) 14:55, 5 September 2022 (UTC)