Schwedisches Alphabet und Aussprache

The Swedish alphabet has 29 letters: the 26 you know, plus å, ä, ö. They are full letters, not decorated a's and o's, and they come at the very end of the alphabet, after z. Look up öl (beer) at the back of the dictionary, not under o.

Vowels: nine of them, short or long

Swedish has nine vowel letters: a, e, i, o, u, y, å, ä, ö. Each can be short or long, and length changes meaning. A handy guide: a vowel before a double consonant is short, a vowel before a single consonant at the end of a word is usually long.

The two traps for English speakers: Swedish o often sounds like English "oo" (bo, to live, rhymes with "too"), and the "o" sound of "boat" is spelled å.

Sounds English doesn't have

• The sj-sound [ɧ], a breathy whoosh made at the back and the lips at once. Spelled sj, skj, stj, sk before e, i, y, ä, ö, and -tion: sjö (lake), skjorta (shirt), stjärna (star), sked (spoon), station.
• The tj-sound [ɕ], close to English "sh" but softer. Spelled tj, kj, and k before e, i, y, ä, ö: tjugo (twenty), kyrka (church), köpa (buy). So kött (meat) does not start with an English k.
• g before front vowels becomes a y-sound: göra (do), ge (give), Göteborg.
• r + s, t, d, n, l merge in central Swedish into one sound made with the tongue tip curled back: varsågod, kors, bord. In Skåne, where the r is made in the throat, they stay separate.

Pitch accent: the Swedish melody

Swedish words of two or more syllables carry one of two tones. Accent 1 has a single fall, accent 2 a "double" melody that makes Swedish sound sing-song to outsiders. A few word pairs differ by tone alone: anden with accent 1 is "the duck", with accent 2 "the spirit"; tomten with accent 1 is "the plot of land", with accent 2 the Christmas gnome. Norwegian has the same system. In practice context tells the words apart, so get the vowels and the sj-sound right first and let the melody come from listening.