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I've been looking at Swedish, and I'm lost as to how exactly you pronounce <hej> and <vi>/<ni>. Those vowels are odd to me.
Anyone got an IPA?

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/hɛj/, /vi:/, /ni:/ (although I'm pretty sure the latter two are often contracted to /vɪ/ and /nɪ/). What's odd about those?

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It's definitely not that.

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First, I learned English.
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What I hear is [hɛ̯e:], [vi̯ɪ] and [nɨi̯]. I may be wrong, though.

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Are you perhaps referring to the off-glide on the /iː/-vowel? You might want to take a look at this.


<hej> is most definitely not [hɛ̯e:]. I'd simply transcribe it as [hɛj], or maybe [hɛʝ]. I do believe /eː/ is realized somewhat like [eə̯] or something like that, though. I've seen the off-glide on /iː/ transcribed in a lot of different ways, [ij] being one of them.

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Ón gráti sem jett barn kvéner jag syggji jett lag um deiðan...
[oʊ̯n ˈgɾaːtɪ sɛmː jɛtː baɾn ˈkʰʋɛːnɛɾ jaː ˈsʏd͡ʑːɪ jɛtː laː ʊmː ˈdɛɪ̯an]

What's not what? Phonemically, that's how those words are analyzed. Phonetically, as has been mentioned, it's true that /i:/ for many speakers of Swedish isn't exactly [i:]; it should also perhaps be noted that English /i(:)/ often isn't [i:] either - nor is it identical to the Swedish phoneme - so it might not be a good reference point (depending on which dialect or even idiolect of either language we're talking about, though).

However, if you just want to speak understandable Swedish, this is all unnecessary hair-splitting. You can safely use [i:]; quite a lot of native speakers use something reasonably close to that as well. Not that there's anything wrong with wanting to study the phonetics in more depth, though, I guess - in which case the link Ceresz provided looks like it could be a good starting point. And if you want more, you can apparently find quite a lot of similar stuff by googling something like "phonetic analysis of Swedish vowels".


Yeah, that's what I would've thought, too - but listening to that sound sample on Wiktionary, I can't really say that's an unreasonable analysis. I might say the offglide reaches as high as [ɪ], but there's certainly no audible [j] in that particular sample.

The sample for ni is also kinda weird: if I didn't know better, I'd transcribe that as [nïi̯ç]. There's also a weird buzzing quality in the sample for vi, but phonetically, it seems to be quite simply [vi], maybe with a very slight lowering offglide.

My conclusion would be that those samples on Wiktionary are probably not the best way to get an idea of how Swedish speakers actually usually pronounce those words in normal speech. The rather poor sound quality (and in my case, the fact that I'm listening to these in the middle of the night with low volume on laptop speakers since I left my headphones in Tartu ) doesn't help, either.

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Many Swedes have their vowels diphthongize towards even more closed - even the close ones, so you basically end up with an approximant-like thing at the end.

The lecturer of linguistics at Åbo Akademi back when I took linguistics classes said "the approximants of Finland-Swedish have less friction than the end of the close vowels in Swedish Swedish", so there's that. Some Swedes do not have it, though.

Stop listening to people from Lidingö.

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Āā Ēē Īī Ōō Ūū ↗ Ṭṭ C̣c̣ Łł Ḍḍ Ṣṣ Ẓẓ Ṇṇ Ŋŋ e˞ o˞ ʷ ʲ ʰ ə

The Wikt recording must be wrong then.

This one is [hɛj] for sure.

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ɛ*

[hej] with [e] would sound ridiculous...

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Āā Ēē Īī Ōō Ūū ↗ Ṭṭ C̣c̣ Łł Ḍḍ Ṣṣ Ẓẓ Ṇṇ Ŋŋ e˞ o˞ ʷ ʲ ʰ ə

Right.

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NO U

More seriously, the latter of the two recordings on that page sounds like [hɛj] to my ears, but the former seems to have a somewhat closer vowel. Not quite [e], perhaps, but somewhere between the two.

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Maybe [e̞]?

Yeah, I agree (and the first one does sound weird to me).

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‹› · Ḿḿ Ńń Ĺĺ Śś Źź Ąą Ǫǫ Ųų Æ̨æ̨ Ǽǽ Œ̨œ̨ Œ́œ́ Ɣɣ Y̋y̋ Įį Şş Z̧z̧ θ
Āā Ēē Īī Ōō Ūū ↗ Ṭṭ C̣c̣ Łł Ḍḍ Ṣṣ Ẓẓ Ṇṇ Ŋŋ e˞ o˞ ʷ ʲ ʰ ə

I'd say /hɛj/, /vi:/, /ni:/. At least that is how I think I say it. Maybe some one else would point out differences here.

I am swedish speaking from southwestern Sweden so my dialect could perhaps be different from rikssvenska (standard swedish).

My Egyptian acquaintance found weird offglides when he was trying to learn Swedish too, and he linked me to the clips he was using (I don't have the links) and there was indeed some really weird stuff going on. We definitely don't do that here in Västergötland, but it did sound... native? I guess. Sounded like an old, boring person from the Stockholm area, but I'm not sure younger people up there do this as much. I shall have to silently analyse my friend in Stockholm to whom I'm riding on the train right now.

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‹› · Ḿḿ Ńń Ĺĺ Śś Źź Ąą Ǫǫ Ųų Æ̨æ̨ Ǽǽ Œ̨œ̨ Œ́œ́ Ɣɣ Y̋y̋ Įį Şş Z̧z̧ θ
Āā Ēē Īī Ōō Ūū ↗ Ṭṭ C̣c̣ Łł Ḍḍ Ṣṣ Ẓẓ Ṇṇ Ŋŋ e˞ o˞ ʷ ʲ ʰ ə

I've recently started stressing two subsequent syllables with primary stress. This is apparently a trait commonly associated with parts of western Nyland - Ekenäs, Hangö, Karis, that area. Now, my girlfriend is indeed from this area, but she lacks this feature except when she does it intentionally to imitate something from there, or for specific words with special meanings in the vernacular of old people in the area, or place names and such.

It's weird when I catch myself doing it. Downright scary. Can be stuff like %få%gälskock, %ar%bejta, etc.

... I forgot about my analysis entirely. :(

It took me a few moments to parse '%få%gälskock'. I was thinking of 'few elks' or something.

If I'm parsing this all correctly, have you got an intonation like that of Dalarna (I have no idea where the places you mentioned are)?

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‹› · Ḿḿ Ńń Ĺĺ Śś Źź Ąą Ǫǫ Ųų Æ̨æ̨ Ǽǽ Œ̨œ̨ Œ́œ́ Ɣɣ Y̋y̋ Įį Şş Z̧z̧ θ
Āā Ēē Īī Ōō Ūū ↗ Ṭṭ C̣c̣ Łł Ḍḍ Ṣṣ Ẓẓ Ṇṇ Ŋŋ e˞ o˞ ʷ ʲ ʰ ə