Understanding the Swedish Pitch Accent
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- čas přidán 8. 12. 2014
- This video lecture presents the Swedish pitch accent-what it is, what it sounds like, and where it occurs!
The pitch accent is one of the most overlooked features of Swedish pronunciation. Here you get all the information you need to start getting it right!
SEQUEL
The Swedish Pitch Accent Revisited: Dialectal Variation
• Swedish Pitch Accent R...
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As a Swedish speaking Finn, I had no idea the Swedes could tell the difference between ducks and spirits without context.
Uh whats the difference?
@@jedaki1832 Standard Swedish uses both an acute (accent 1) and a grave pitch accent (accent 2). Finland Swedish only uses the acute accent. Native Swedes will therefore pronounce “anden” in two ways, depending on what we mean. Swedish-speaking Finns read both words the same way. They can’t distinguish between the two without context.
I also had no idea until I watched this, never thought much about it , I thought all languages had these
hi im a finn too
aaaaaaanden = duck. andenn = spirit
Whoa, i'm a native swede but i've never realized that i use these pitches :0 You've blown my mind haha
The pitch accent is one of those things that Swedes just know instinctively and never really think about :)
ja vafan
@Tobbe Häggberg förlåt
@Tobbe Häggberg haha de lugnt
techno dove varför förlãt
Mind blown. Very interesting, even for a Swedish native speaker.
Ja man tänker ju inte direkt så mycket på hur stor impakt betoningen på just en bokstav kan ändra hela innebörden i en hel mening,och hur orden flyter ihop större delen av meningarna. Coolt å se faktiskt.
@@Droglakahn Sorge jag talar inte svenska. Du vänttär en korvpirog. Vi har den i finskaland här alot
@@juhokulmala9358 Va? Är jag en korvpirog? Jo man tackar i wish jag vore en korvpirog men fysikens lagar tillåter mig inte....
@@Droglakahn Nej du misunderstood. Jag ver sågäing dät här är a lot of korvpirog i finskaländ. Jag inte sögä du är korvpirog. Komma här och har en korvpirog med mig
@@juhokulmala9358 Sorry dont understand a word ,exept korvpirog, but i love you non the less, korvpirog for life! Keep it real my mumintroll =)
This is honestly one of the few truly serious Swedish-related videos I have seen in a while.
Most other "learn about Swedish" videos are made by hyperactive teens who try to be funny or something and either teach completely incorrect things or just throw around random useless phrases without explaining them or anything, but this video actually gives a professional impression.
Thank you very much!
+Laurelindo my thoughts exactly
HOW CAN I UPVOTE THIS MORE.
Laurelindo that was really true, even though it's fun to see them try to pronounce the words.
I’m Finland swedish and have lived in Sweden since 1981. I never really understood what the acute and grave accents were about. Now I do. A big thank you. 👍
Comments like this make me really happy! I'm glad to have been of help! :)
Taaaack så jättemycket! I've honestly been looking for this video for a while now: no swede could explain this to me haha! And as a French speaker, I needed to understand what the helvete was going on with those pitches! Nu förstår jag!
The problem is when you learn a language as a child, you just get theese things naturally. I can't even remember if we were taught this in school 😂
Ye swedes dont think about This at all. It just feels natural
@@janette7330 We were not taught about this in school! I do not believe this is even really mentioned, unless the teacher find this very interesting!
Jeanette Eriksson We just learned it by speaking to each other
Takotak förstår*
“Ey gurl. Are you Accent 1? Because I think you’re acute”
Yeah u did!
Aaah! That’s hilarious! 😂
Her response was definitely grave 😐🙃
Mr. Al are you sarcastic lol?
@@Simon-xl1yz nope. Höhö might not be in the dictionary, but its definetly a way to chuckle
I'm Russian and I learn Swedish in my free time because I like Sweden and Scandinavien culture. You, Swedes, have so nice, beautiful and curious language. That's a great tutorial! Very understandable, but sometimes it's really hard to feel difference between accent 1 and accent 2.:) Tack!
Thank you for saying so! I'm glad it helped you :)
In fact, some of the words he mentioned are basically the same, like for instance "tomten" as in "the Santa clause" and "tomten" as in "the garden", as I can't hear a difference between them even though I'm from Sweden
I'm also Russian I have no idea why my fellow countryman is struggling with the pitch, the stress and the accent because we probably have it all in Russian as well, may be, except for "Accent 2", we pronounce all the words with "Accent 1" and sometimes also exclude any accent until the end of a sentence
Cause its not the accent, its the glottal stop in the second type that makes it particular. The dude has missed this crucial detail. Take the Russian "mama" , one word, you start blowing air at the beginning and never stop till you're finished. Swedes will say "MAM-[stop air in the throat for a tiny moment]-ma"
@@bramblebop1904 that's kind of clear when you hear a Swedish-speaking person, and it's really easy to repeat. I have more troubles understanding and reading the vowel sounds in Swedish, that's what I personally struggle with. And, I believe, the above commentator rather struggles with determining where to use each accent, not pronouncing them. It is rather so, because I personally have some troubles with it also
The Umbrella Academy cast Who spoke Swedish in season 2 should’ve watched this
God yes, it was so painful to watch 🥴
Omg yes, that was so annoying and weird. Was it really that hard for them to find three Swedish actors?! Fick hjärnblödning av deras uttal... 😂
Yes, I almost didn't understand them and it took me a while to get that they were (trying to) speak swedish.
Vi Ro HAHAHAHA eller hurrrrr, jag fattade inte ens först att dom snackade svenska
Five really nailed it. Although he only had to say a few words. I think the Handler managed to reverse the accent on every damn word. Props that they actually had them do it though, as it was kinda skitroligt.
"unless we get it right we'll sound like foreigners"
more like
"unless we get it right we'll sound like Finns"
Nothing wrong in that ;) In fact, preferable.
Totally agree. I'm Lithuanian myself. I speak Swedish as a professional language. All my customers ask me if I come from Finland. The fun thing is that I hear finlandssvenska quite often and I don't think I sound anything like it :)
@@blueeyedbaer finlandssvenska is spoken by people that have Swedish as their native language in Finland. I guess that your pronunciation is much closer to people native to Finnish that speaks Swedish.
The Finish accent is a lot more than not using the Pitch accent.
So not getting the Pitch accent correctly won't make one sound like one is from Finland, but rather just a non native speaker.
Unless one gets everything else in the Finish accent correct, but this isn't a trivial feat. Since it's practically using Finish pronunciation and rhythm but Swedish grammar and words. (And Finish is a rather unique language that is mainly related to Estonian, Sami and Hungarian.)
Unknownety a little bit too easy, since there are so many dialects of Finland Swedish ... many of them very far from Finnish pronunciation. It’s basically only the “big city” ie Helsinki and Turku dialects that sound “like Finnish”, in the Vaasa area they’d be quite close to Västerbotten dialects. And many of the Turku archipelago dialects sound a bit like Gutemål on Gotland. And in Västra Nyland many of the dialects actually do have the pitch accent ...
I guess this is why we Swedes sometimes have a really hard time understanding what non-Swedish people say even though other non-Swedish people understand it perfectly.
SWEmanque are you from sweden?
Ranialooli
yupp
Ja e finsk😂
are you talking about Swedish speaking non-Swedish people?
i always assumed i'm bad with accents
Same with other languages. I fluently speak Spanish and can understand what other Spanish speakers are trying to say when they speak English when other English speakers cannot understand.
I’m a Swedish speeking Finn and I say that the duck is the spirit
The father, the son and the holy duck, ftw.
Ruotsi voimakkaalla aksentilla kuullostaa kyllä todella kauheelta
@@oahc1052 that's exactly what I mean, and isnt it the truth
@@sttonep242 joo
Yes
Fascinating. As a bilingual Finn I didn't realize this was a thing in "Sweden Swedish." My English-speaking fiancé will be happy to know that this is something he will not have to learn in his Swedish studies as we're planning on living in Finland :'D
Who knew that speaking Chinese would eventually help me with Swedish! Accent one is very similar to a second tone followed by a neutral tone, and accent two is just like having consecutive fourth tones in Mandarin.
This is so interesting! I'm Swedish and I also speak Chinese. I think I say accent one more like first tone, neutral tone.
If it's second tone, neutral tone it would sound more like a Dala accent haha! (Which is also totally legit)
Why the fuck am I watching this?? I am from Sweden xD
+TheSmartman14 its cool man, i am from america and i watch english learning videos all the time just to see what else i can learn.
TheSmartman14 jag gjorde de för att somna😂😂😂😂
wtf the duck in swedish is ankan
anden kan användas som synonym med ankan :)
I found a Swedish-Finn vlogger once (Cat Peterson) and when she posted her first video in Swedish she had a lot of Swedish people telling her that her Swedish sucked. From the little Swedish I knew I could understand her just fine and she told me that Finnish-Swedish (the kind she speaks) only has a few word differences from Sweden-Swedish. Now I understand why people thought her Swedish sucked...Finnish Swedish doesn't use the accents!
Ignorance is a thing - also in Sweden. So many Swedes don't even know that 'finlandssvenska' is a dialect. They don't know what a 'finlandssvensk' is, and the history behind it. From ignorance comes the hating. However, since the hating has no bearing on reality, it's mostly a burden for the haters to carry around. Double burdens: Ignorance and hate. Such poverty. Poor people...
@RoMMeL1337ak47 she has a british husband and they communicate in english so it might just be that she uses so much english that she momentarily forgot some of the swedish words. Happens to me all the time with my finnish, sometimes i only remember the english words for things
I have had a lot of people in Stockholm making fun of me (on the verge of bullying) for pronouncing some words differently. I'm from Stockholm but I have a grandmother from the North so I say mormor quite normally but I pronounce farmor in dialect and the same with using han instead of honom, lyste - lös etc. I think people in general are very judgmental in bigger cities mostly because they rarely come in contact with other dialects?
@@beorlingo It's kinda stupid that people aren't aware of that dialect, because we have celebrities like Mark Levengood and Marko "Markolioo" Lehtosalo, who are both originally from Finland. Although the latter can speak both types of Swedish just fine. I really like the way Mark Levengood speaks though. He sounds so kind and soothing. (I just realised both have "Mark" in their names lol)
Although there are many people who know "finlandssvenska" simply as "tala som Mumin" (speaking like Moomin). Apparently people just don't bother to look up stuff that aren't relevant to them personally. I find that really boring.
@@ankaplanka Mark Levengood is finlandssvensk. Lehtosalo is not.
I've always struggled with my accent. Swedes always tell me that I sound "too french" when I speak. This is a game changer. Seriously. You've earned a new subscriber.
It is almost like swedish has alot to do with "melody" almost. Like singing. Or spesking poetry. Very interesting. How you pronounce and speak the words changes the whole meaning and it also makes you more present with / in the words you speak kind of if you are aware of all of these subtle nuances. :)
For someone actually learning Swedish, this was a very enlightening and useful video. Thank you!
TIL gifter means either 'marries' or 'poisons' depending on the accent. Magic language!
Married and poison are pretty much synonyms anyways
This is litteraly my boyfriend's favourite Swedish word because he finds it hillarious lol
Hey! I resemble that remark!
So funny😂 In german we have a similar thing. "Umfahren" can either mean to drive around something or to run over something when pronounced diffrently.
just an FYI: gifter in this case is the plural form of poison, not the action of poisoning someone.
but yeah, gift = married, but also poison.
For me as a foreigner non-Swedish speaker (I'm Polish) this type 2 accent *makes* the distinctive sound of the language. But when I talked about it with my Swedish friends (they're Poles, but live in Sweden almost all their lives) I didn't exactly refer to it as an accent or a pitch, but for me it was always something like choking in the middle of the word; because there is always very explicit stop between two syllables.
This was always Swedish for me: half of the words are said smoothly, the other half - chokingly. I don't want to offend the language (especially speaking language which sounds like autumn leaves being squashed myself), I like it. I also like how many consonant clusters at the begining of the word make simple 'sh' sound.
I like to think of accent 2 as "staccato".
Hahaha the Wi-Fi password language has a second name now: squashed autumn leaves language 😂
But yeah, the second accent is really what makes the Swedish sound. And while Mazurek folk type of song is to imitate the Polish language, i think your hambo folk songs imitate the pulsating sound of your Swedish language.
I'm an American, with a finnoswede fiancee in Sweden, and I'm moving there as soon as the EU lets me. (Covid) I've been learning Swedish since November 2019 but this has been an eye opener for sure. Thanks for the info!!
Hoppas ni kan flytta snart😀
This is a very very very important thing to learn actually. And most people miss thongs likr these. It makes the language more rich and makes you be ablr to deliver the words with more presence in the words you could say..
Inga problem 👍xD
Welcome to Sweden later on!
Lucky bastard
I was telling a Swede that I stayed in Solna (suburb northwest of Stockholm) and I pronounced it with accent 1 and she did not quickly recognize the name. A few seconds later, she realized what I was trying to say and pronounced Solna with accent 2.
Yeah, this may seem ridiculous. But it actually happens that you just don't understand, cuz to a Swede it actually sounds very different in some words if the accent is wrong. In this case I bet she initially was thinking if Sollna might be somewhere around Sollentuna.
@@beorlingo Except "Sollna" would also be different from both "Solna" in accent 1 and "Solna" in accent 2, the latter of which would presumably sound like "Sol" followed by "natt" but without the t:s.
@@Sjilaj "Sollna" seemed to me the best way to spell out the sound of accent 1. Not 100% accurate for sure.
@@Sjilaj Sólna for accent 1, and Sólnà for accent 2 might be closer to reality.
I signed into CZcams specifically so I could leave a comment about how helpful and well-done this was. It is more difficult than one might expect to find this information on the internet; this was both full of useful information and presented in a helpful way. Thank you.
Thank you! I'm very happy to hear that.
A very fascinating lanfguage, I always wanted to learn a foreign language. Now I'm sure. It's Swedish. It's perfect,
Yeah! We only conjugate the verbs after time, never after pronouns.
There is an app called Duolingo which offers a course in Swedish (for free). I'm using Duolingo to learn Italian right now and I think it's pretty good :)
As far as I'm concerned (as a Swede, mind you), Norwegian is superior for foreigners who want to learn a Scandinavian language. It's basically spoken Swedish and written Danish all at once. You more or less get three languages at the price of one :)
Rodolf Nordmadr
Yeah, except Norwegian is bad and Swedish is good. Not biased.
I first thought that Swedish would not be so beautiful, but then I found a female singer Veronica Maggio a couple of weeks ago, try this and you'll probably will love Swedish as well: "Ayahuaska", "Svart sommar", "Den första är alltid gratis".
I almost never heard a singing Swedish except for one of my favorit bands "Katatonia", they made a song in Swedish. But recently I even started to think of singing in Swedish myself after listening for Veronica :D (even though I can't even speak it)
There is no surprise that they have so many musicians in Sweden
I'm Swedish myself and I never noticed this. The difference in Tomten (The Plot) and Tomten (The Gnome, or The Santa) was mind blowing.
Same here, I knew we had two accents and could not tell which was which. But this did not matter to learn the language as child
@@paulingvar Bruh I didn't even know we had two accents. I didn't even know what a pitch dialect was until I tried learning japanese and learned it was so easy to pronounce the words because swedish and japanese have pitch dialects. Learned this like 3 weeks ago. Fucking cool.
What a plot twist! 😉
I think this is what my Swedish teacher was referring to, when she said "there is one thing I won't teach you, because if I teach it, you'll never get it right"
What a depressing, uninspiring and limiting approach from your teacher. Follow this video and surprise them.
damn what a lousy fucking teacher
Guys, some things you have to learn by hearing it, because trying to get it by following rules is pointless.
@@EterPuralis the video makes pretty clear that listening and practising is an essential part of what you need to do to crack this. Just listening, without any idea of what you are listening out for, is unlikely to assist people whose native language has not exposed them to the sort of pitch accents that Swedish has. This video provides a really clear and useful framework in which to do the listening.
@@davidloveday8473 Your reply is cringy as fuck. For me, I wish they'd never taught me German grammar in school, I could speak German fluently before we got there. This is the same kind of reason.
This was so incredibly helpful. I'm a little over a month into learning Swedish on Duolingo. I'm a musician, so these accent differences stood out to me immediately. But since I'm a new learner, I didn't realize there was reason for it....I thought there might have been inconsistencies in the Duolingo word recordings because none of this was explained. Thanks for helping my pronunciation!
As a fennoswedish speaker, this is very interesting, as I’ve always wondered what it is that makes somebody sound “rikssvensk” compared to “finlandssvensk”, and this is a large part of it now that I think about it. It’s also the first change I implement to how I speak if a Swede has trouble following my fennoswedish accent.
Where in Finland?
Toss in the Scanian region. Some of these words he said to me just sounds wrong. But thats mixing in very very very regional and unique dialects.
@@beorlingo doesn’t matter, I can’t think of a single dialect that uses that accent.
@@sstorholm oh my gosh, no needto reply with such a hurry!
@@sstorholm no, in parts of Raseborg in Västnyland they actually do use the pitch accent …
Better and more thoroughly explained than when I studied at Nordiska Språk at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. I was very confused at the time since the illustrations did not fit at all with how I pronounce with my West Swedish accent. Then I took a Norwegian class at the same department, and then they showed the Norwegian versions of the same thing. Turns out my West Swedish accent looked like Norwegian, not the Stockholm version in this video. We go up at the end while the Stockholm people go down. This video touches on the fact that the pitch looks different in other accents, something I wasn't really told when I was in college. Great job!
There is an unfortunate tendency in Sweden to overlook other dialects than the one spoken in eastern Mälardalen, as you describe in your comment. You may be interested in the sequel to this video, where I talk about the regional variation of the pitch accent! czcams.com/video/6_60Oec-8pg/video.html
This variation in accent is also one of the reasons why Swedish is one of the most beautiful languages on the face of the earth.
These accents give the language when spoken softly a singing almost elven-like quality which is completely soothing to the soul.
Bear in mind that this praise is coming from a Dane whose own language is so closely related to Swedish that they are mutually intelligble and I therefore should be more inclined to think thusly of my own language but, alas, it doesn´t work that way.
Swedish is simply more softly intonated and softer modulated which gives it this otherworldly character.
Beautiful, beautiful language.
Ulf Danielsen: A quote from your comment: "...coming from a Dane whose own language is so closely related to Swedish that they are mutually intelligible..." Here's an interesting (I think) question: If two languages are mutually intelligible, are they different languages? I'm a Swedish speaker and have spoken to many Danes and Norwegians in Swedish. These conversations have gone quite well. Are we then using three distinct languages? I'd say linguistically no but culturally and politically, probably yes. (Contrast: Many English speakers would have plenty of trouble with these two guys ostensibly speaking the same language: czcams.com/video/f5pCPRYvyis/video.html)
@@exessex3522 Swedish, Norwegian and Danish exist on a dialect continuum. They are different languages, there are big differences in vocabulary and spelling. The differences in vocabulary between English accents are mostly slang or local words. There are exceptions, for sure.
And now I feel kinda bad that swedes often say that speaking danish is like speaking swedish, only that you're drunk and have a hot potatoe in your mouth. EööllullAeUuh lalLLallaaah etc.
@@EvilTeabags Don´t feel bad, it´s true. Greetings from Finland.
Kamelåså
Ah very interesting! A Finn here who has been studying Swedish for years now, but I don't remember any teacher ever teaching this explicitly. I used to presume the accent 2 is just how Swedish dialects are as opposed to Swedish speaking Finns :D. I had no idea you shouldn't just randomly wiggle all words like that (also I agree with the tilde being more clear indicator here).
I've actually encountered this hypercorrection numerous time from proficient L2 speakers, with accent 2 being interpreted as a "Swedish accent", and then overapplied :)
Yeah, but you were taught "högsvenska" in Finland, the prestige dialect of Finland-Swedish.
I guess people already struggle enough with the vocabulary, so focusing on accents would be kind of useless - it's a bit of an advanced concept for people who feel like they are forced to learn a language that they don't even want to learn (and sadly, this seems to be a lot of people's attitude towards Swedish)... Also, I think people were most often taught the "Finnish" pronunciation of the words any way. For example when it comes to numbers, I remember that we learned to pronounce "sju" more like "schu", probably because we don't have the "sj" sound in Finnish language. Also, the Swedish vowels are pronounced a bit differently than in Finnish.
So, there are many nuances about the pronunciation of Swedish, and people simply don't have time to dive that deep into the "correct pronunciation". And since the Finnish way of pronouncing the words is also valid, and it's the pronunciation that you will most likely hear in Finland, it just makes more sense to learn that, and spend the time that would have otherwise been spent on learning the more native pronunciation of the words on more "useful" stuff. This is only stuff that you need to worry about if you want to "perfect" your Swedish. But most people in school are far from that level, so to most people, it would simply be a waste of time.
Lol I was researching about Japanese and found out about pitch accent. I got interested in the concept because I though it was weird, but then I find out about this video, realizing that my native language was a pitch accent language all along.
I work as a language teacher in Sweden, and I approve of this video.
why does the word kyckling use the second pitch? what rule does it fit in?
in finland perkele can mean many things when different tones
perkele: when your rent is raised
perkele: when you win in a lottery
perkele: when your car breaks down
perkele: when you stub your toe real bad
Or :when you die in fortnite
Haha best comment! 😂😂😂
No Niin!
perkele... scaring the crap out of a wandering bear 🐻 ... also used to exorcise demons and duck-spirits 😆
Herre joumela. Finlands svensk familje but i was born in Sweden and live in the US so no idea how that's spelled
Thank you sir, I've been in Sweden for two years and no-one could explain this as plainly as you just did
Definitely the BEST tone class I have ever seen all around!!! Tack så mycket!!!
2nd accent made me learn Swedish- it's just soooo beautiful
yrjistä
@Spacecowboy Eson
Maybe it's ugly, but at least it's unique and not just another boring variation of some average old north Germanic language.
@Spacecowboy Eson i Love Finnish as a swede sounds so nice
I guess a girly girl might think it's beautiful 🙄
@Spacecowboy Eson I used to wonder if Finnish also sounds gay to foreigners, but as it turns out - no, Swedish is just universally gay.
Learning Swedish on duolingo and knew I was missing some info about pronunciation, including the pitch of words. I also feel vindicated bc I knew the person speaking was leaving off letters when saying sentences (the prosody thing mentioned) but the app doesn’t really address that stuff. Thank you!
I watched this after about 20 days of learning Swedish and I was very confused by the concept. I am now 100 days into learning Swedish and find myself using the pitch accent correctly even in words I haven’t read/heard before which is very interesting! It’s something that you begin to pick up very quickly when you know how standard suffixes modify the pitch in most cases 😁
I've been told by my Swedish niece that I do the accent 2 quite well, but I add it to words where it doesn't belong. The rules (mostly) don't make a lot of sense, so I'm trying to just learn which do and don't have them. However, you answered at the end the thing she couldn't explain...why so many words sound different on their own vs. in a sentence. Just the word "jag" messes me up. Thinking of the accents in a sentence as a whole has blown my mind! We probably do the same of running words together in English, but you often don't think about it in your native language. Thank you!!
This video is very helpful for me! I am from Holland and I'm trying to learn the Swedish language. The pitch accent is very difficult , but In this video you make it a lot easier to understand. Thank you!
You're welcome! I'm glad that it's helping you!
Detta är fantastiskt! Tack! Native here, this is incredible, especially the part about stressing key words
I actually clicked on the video since I wanted to find out why there is Estonian flag in the picture of this video.
Instead of finding that out I learned something pretty interesting. I've been learning Swedish here in Finland like everyone else so I haven't really needed this info but surprisingly it was pretty easy to connect these things to the little I've heard Swedes speak.
I'm happy to hear that! And it's certainly useful to understand such a feature of the language, even if it's not used in the dialect that you're personally learning!
(Btw, for an explanation of the Estonian flag, see the video called _Introduction to the Swedish Language_ :) )
Academia Cervena Thank you for answering, I actually realised later on that watching the video would get me the answer and learned something new again! Should have realised it had a history-related background :D
This is mind blowing. I am learning Finn-Swe but the book is from Sweden. Every time I am asked about the difference about Finn-Swe and Swe-Swe, I always say that Swe-Swe (riksvenska) is more difficult because its is spoken with melody. Now I got it, it's pitch accent.
Thank you so much. This is one perfect example of something seeming really complicated until somebody just takes the time to explain it to you. For example, the difference between anden and anden (ALWAYS quoted in books as an example) seems confusing until somebody just points out the words are 'and+en' and 'ande+n' and suddenly it's not so scary.
I just started learning swedish and your videos are really helping me out, thanks !
Eva-Luna Tholance You're very welcome! I'm glad it's helping you out!
Tack, jag prövar att lära mig svenska och den här videon var väldigt hjälpsam!
I have learned Swedish for 3 years and am fluent now. I feel like I learned these pitch differences when I learned the words. Thus I just naturally use them without even thinking about it
Please come back and make more videos. This is incredibly high quality content!
Thank you, this is a very clear presentation which largely demystifies the subject.
Another pair of examples of pitch changing the meaning:
Tomten = The Lawn/Yard
Tomten = Santa Claus
Banan = Banana
Banan = The Track/Level
PS the "Á" he shows in many ocations in the video is just to show where the tone differences will occur. It should not be confused with "Å" wich is an actual letter we use.
Still its super interesting for me as a swede, to hear the pitch system in depth since its something we dont learn in school but just take for granted in the contexts.
The main difference between "banan" isn't the pitch accent though. In banan (banana) the first A is a short A, while the second A is a long A. In banan (the track/level) it's reversed, the first A is a long A and the second A is a short A.
Omg my colleagues always make fun of me with the "tomte tomte" thing XD
@@adrianahlz1895 That usually happens here too. If you're lucky you're likely to hear bad pun poems like "Tomten gick på Tomten."
(Santa walked on the lawn)
You don't learn it in grammar lessons?
@@FutureChaosTV No, its just a norm you pick up after seeing patterns in different contexts.
Maybe we should have a particular letter for a pitch shifted A.
To sum up, let's put aside all those rules that have accent 1, and we'll have to remember those with accent 2:
1/ 2 syllable words with swedish endings.
2/ Compound words. Easy to understand since each monosyllable word has 1 accent.
3/ Beware of -el, -en, -er nouns, since they can have 1 or 2 accents.
4/ -el, -en, -er adjectives: Only -en ones have 2 accents. The other ones have just 1.
5/ Present tense -ar.
6/ Plurals without a vowel change (no dieresis/umlaut).
Ok, that's easier to remember. ;)
This is so interesting, as a native Swede, I haven’t though about the fact that all words have pitch accent. The classic examples such as tomten or tomten, sure, but I’ve never considered that it applies to every word. I came into contact with a version of this a few weeks ago when I met a guy from Canada. I pronounced Canada with essentially pitch accent 1, and he pronounced it with 2. I was surprised and asked him about it and he could not hear the difference in the way we pronounced it, even when I said them one after another.
I've never really thought more about it, but i encounter this alot in peoples name. I've never been able to put my finger on it, but there's a distinct difference in how names can be pronounced, and most people have their "own" way to say their names. Like Johan, Jacob, Martin, Anna, and even if you dont realize WHY it sounds wrong sometimes when people say your name, it's probably that they use either accent 1 or 2 :)
Watching this as a Swede because I have no idea what pitch accent is! Haha.
Oh my God, this is so interesting!
Lol
Hahaha jag med
Does He make any sence ?
@@holoholopainen1627 He does! It's really a thing, and I've mentioned this to other Swedes but *no one* knows that we're doing this!
I’m Swedish, why did I watch the entire thing...
Same
ja med
y
Haha gjorde exakt samma sak XD
Skulle bli betydlig mer begripligt om han använde pronunciation, för accent eller dialekt har inte mycket med det här att göra.
THANK you so much for explaining this. I had heard this pitch accent and I wasn't really sure what it was and when to use it. This helps a lot!
That gave me one of those "Uh-Ha!" moments. It's actually really helpful. Especially towards the end where he explains how it's not always used and how that applies to sentences and stress. I want to like it more
Being a native speaker is so strange because you really don’t know anything about the language despite speaking it every day, I finally started learning and understanding Swedish grammar when I started studying Japanese at university and I can finally explain Swedish (and English my second mother tongue) to non native speakers 😋
Have had something similar too. It's amazing what learning more languages reveals to you. Sort of like finding landmarks on a map that is European languages, the more you have, the more you understand about all of them.
Hi, yeah I totally understand from Japan, I'm Japanese native speaker. I start learning English from junior high, and I got interested in several languages like Swedish now.
Yeah I realise how Japanese language is isolated, but yeah Japanese also has the accents too.
For example, hashi means both 箸（chopstick）and 橋（bridge） words, 箸 has first stress, and 橋 has second stress.
This is the difference between "procedural" knowledge and "declarative" knowledge. The Dutch _still_ lack a definite rule that explains or prescribes explicitly when the perfect tense is used as opposed to them imperfect tense. Even though there "is no rule" every Dutch speaker "applies" the rules many times each day.
(The terms perfect and imperfect are by analogy on Latin; but obviously, if the rules that govern perfectum and imperfectum in Latin applied in Dutch, there would not be a conundrum. It would be better to call them the complex (auxiliary-using) and simple past tenses.)
i am really glad that he also points out without mentioning that we pronounce things differently than how they are written, like kvinnor-kvinner and rolig-roli. i always do that, its just slang.
Thank you for noticing this. It's not slang though, but the normal casual pronunciation :)
Det var nog den bästa förklaringen jag sett hittills. Vad bra. Tack! 🌼
Most useful advice I've come across about Swedish
Thanks, Adam. This is really useful and demystifies what's happening in between my Swedish lesson and struggling to hear "real" Swedish effectively. Tack så mycket!
Thank you for your kind comment. I'm happy to have helped!
I’m so glad I found this video right when I just starts to learn Swedish! Super helpful!
This is the easiest , and the first one to understand Swedish accent for me.
Tack så mycket, så mycket......
Thank you, this video was great! I found it because I wanted to explain these differences for a friend who's interested in swedish but who has had a lot of issues with understanding this (and I wasn't very good at explaining it) and it was very clear and helpful :)
TACK !! Now I finally get the difference between anden and anden which my friends have made fun of me about ! I'm a Swiss living in Sweden, I speak fluent swedish and have a general good ear thanks to music, but this one was still impossible for me, because I was focussing on the first syllable instead of the second one. And it's not like I didn't know about the "second bubble" in some words, which I've practiced for years already, but just that example was still having me puzzled. Now I see I should practice my pronounciation a bit again, to mark a bit of a clearer difference between the two types of accent.
This is actually SO HELPFUL
Really good video! I'm a native myself and I haven't even thought of these little subtle things that we do when we pronounce words to make them into completely different things.
Thank you very much. I could definitely hear it, but never really focused on what it was and why it happened. Going to watch the rest of your videos as well.
Also, I have a degree in linguistics and had no idea that so many modern languages had a pitch accent. Seriously questioning my education right now :)
This is some great information for people learning Swedish, and as is apparent from the comments, few native speakers know about this on a conscious level.
I tried to check the difference in pitch using my piano. Accent 1 (e.g. ánden in your notation) pronounced naturally drops about a fifth in pitch - so from C down to about F, whereas accent 2 (ãnden) goes up about a second, so roughly from C up to E. If I imagine the word pronounced with a pitch relation somewhere in between those, it is not quite clear which one is right, but the closer you get to the intervals, the more it sounds like the closest one. Also, the tone exactly between the two (pitch C down to B), is the most confusing one.
But the best way is probably just to be aware and listen to the prosody and imitate a native speaker, without asking them to explain the theory. :-)
Thank you so much! I think I understand pitch accent way better - I additionally love that you mention sentence accent / prosody, too!
Wonderfully clear explanation. Tack så mycket!
The best explanation ever. Thanks a lot!
Thank you!
He actually nails it. Bravo!
He is from Sweden. Of course he does.
Thank you for this. I now feel I understand it so much better. I only really knew the rules concerning verbs before! Tack så mycket.
I am just starting to study Svenska ...this Is really helpful, confusing but helpful. Tack!
That explains why I've been told I speak with a finnish accent... even though I'm not finnish
"= impressed Swedes"...I found that funny for some reason....
why
Alla Svenskar kan Svenska !
OMG you have no idea how much this just helped me!!!!!!
The best explanation for akut och grav accent thus far. Cheers!
One of the most well-explained and cleverly tutored lessons on Swedish language. I am a linguist who is trying to speak proper Swedish, and your video has opened the door to a lot I was trying to decode! Any more material by you?
Thank you very much! Always fun to hear that my videos are helping people :)
I have a bunch of other videos on Swedish, available here: czcams.com/play/PL5uGqWoFgvd1SBExRyHuuVxiLiU8u8-PN.html
Love your video.
I guess that is why Swedish is so difficult to learn.
I thought of the sentence: "Mina ögon faller igen."
Translated: My eyes are closing.
Depending on how you say it, it will either mean "My eyes are closing", OR "My eyes are falling out again". 🤣 I am embarrassed to say I laughed out loud on that myself.
That's a good example of how using the wrong pitch might make sentences sound really weird. I figure though that in the case with "gifter" it would hardly ever make a big difference since the one version is a noun, and the other a verb.
P.s. reckon now I will have to think realy hard coming up with a sentence where the two pitches both make a meaningful phrase 🤔
This is actually very good because it makes you focus more on "how" you deliver something when you speak if u are consious about how you speak it
Wow, that's very precise, thank you very much! Tack så mycket!
Interesting, I noticed we in Skåne have a very different accent 2, and in many cases use accent 1 for most words.
This is absolutely true. In the sequel video I talk more about such variation!
You also combine word endings, like cykelen, nyckelen, etc.
@@hhhhh98764 Don't forget "nyckLen". That's just wierd. It's easier to pronounce, but it sounds like a 3yr old kid.
I'm not sure how I stumbled here as a Swede, but this was super interesting to watch. I've never really understood what foreigners (well, mostly people from the US) mean when they say speaking Swedish is like singing. I can see what they mean now! Will send this to all my friends hehe
Singing gay songs
@@damiengates7581 yay gay!
This is very helpful, and I'm sure if I break it down into pieces during later viewings, it'll be even more helpful. Tack så mycket! 👍🇺🇸🇸🇪
Very useful and pedagogical! Thank you!
As a swede, my mind was blown when you pronounced the word pairs.
I have never realized why it is so easy for us to differentiate between the words even though the spelling is the same, but now I do.
Context is a big part too. I mean, you don’t misunderstand when you are reading right?
And as he mentions, Finnish doesn’t have it and they manage just fine.
@@somefuckstolemynick I’m a finlandssvensk, and I do approve. I don’t think I ever got any word confused because of the lack of pitch accent … the words do work just fine also with it. The sad thing perhaps being that it will make it harder for people from Sweden to understand us when the accent is not there.
I think I am OK with sounding like a foreigner.
***** Cool. Accents are a funny thing about languages. Also, Australian accent is awesome.
are u a swedish who sounds like a foreigner or you're learning swedish as a second language?
Me in regards to every language every
Just be aware that pitch patterns matter, and use the shadowing technique for a while before speaking in public.
Yes, it's OK with sounding like a foreigner, but keep in mind that if you get this down you will sound absolutely amazing. There are foreigners who've been living in Sweden for 10+ years and they don't know pitch accent, so if you manage do get pitch accent down Swedish people will be absolutely amazed and you will basically be accepted as a swede even by the racists.
@Melanie Boots Right... cause context wouldn't be enough to know the difference between married and poison?
Despite learning Swedish and living in Sweden for 5 years, I never really understood pitch accents before. At last a coherent explanation! Tack så mycket!
This explanation is amazing! Thanks!
i'm Swedish and i didn't even think about this before.
This is AWESOME.
Thank you this really helped - never knew about the pitch accent before! :)
Adam, this is fantastic! Thank you!
please upload some more videos, you guys are so professional. ha det sa° bra!
Thank you for your kind words :)
Haha this is so true. Never thought about it
I started learning Norwegian and Swedish recently, using Duolingo, and nobody told me about this until I watched this video. Especially the part about how a lot of "unimportant" words are not prononuced with a distinct pitch accent but just skimmed over. I always wondered why, when I listened to spoken Swedish, I felt like a few words were being skipped. Very interesting.
very informative and useful! thanks for making!
Omg its you