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Swedish has a large vowel inventory, with nine vowels distinguished in quality and to some degree in quantity, making 18 vowel phonemes in most dialects. Another notable feature is the pitch accent, a development which it shares with Norwegian. Swedish pronunciation of most consonants is similar to that of other Germanic languages.
The closest sound found in English, as well as many other languages, is the voiceless postalveolar fricative [ʃ] (Swedish words with the sound often correspond to English words with "sh", such as "shield", "shoot"), although usually the closest audible approximation is the voiceless labialized velar approximant [ʍ] found in some English dialects.
Swedish lacks many common English phonemes. These are sometimes replaced by similar-sounding Swedish phonemes, or other English phonemes that are easier to pronounce. For example, when using the nearest Swedish vowels for the English words beer and bear, a native Swedish speaker might pronounce both as . In general, Swenglish will sound very ...
Swedish uses än, ännu for "yet", "still" while ände or ända means "the end" (much like slut does). The primary difference in preposition usage in the Danish and Norwegian languages is the use of i / på , (in English in / on).
The Swedish sound can also be spelled several different ways, including dj , g , gj , hj , j , or lj , similarly to the tj-sound which can be spelled with ch (in some loanwords), k , kj , or tj . Traditional spelling therefore often results in a large difference between written and spoken language (deep orthography).
A pitch-accent language is a type of language that, when spoken, has certain syllables in words or morphemes that are prominent, as indicated by a distinct contrasting pitch (linguistic tone) rather than by loudness or length, as in some other languages like English.
As Swedish is a Germanic language, the syntax shows similarities to both English and German. Like English, Swedish has a subject–verb–object basic word order, but like German it utilizes verb-second word order in main clauses, for instance after adverbs and adverbial phrases, and dependent clauses. (Adverbial phrases denoting time are ...
All three languages have a subject–verb–object basic word order, but Swedish sides with English in keeping this order also in Dependent clauses (where German puts the verb last). Like German, Swedish utilizes verb-second word order in main clauses, for instance after adverbs, adverbial phrases, and dependent clauses. Adjectives generally ...