Swedish Language Blog

“Long or short vowel sound, does it really matter? I bet it doesn’t” I’m sure you’re thinking. But oh how wrong that would be. Because Swedish is full of tricky words that become completely different words if you mispronounce them.

In this post I’ll just take up what you will be saying if you mispronounce it words, and putting them into sentences so you can recognize spelling with context.

Lets start off with “lada”, which means barn in English. You pronounce it with a long a-sound like in the English word dart. If you were to however say “ladda” you would be saying “to charge”. This a-sound is the same as the English word another. The pronunciation is the same for all the following words. If there are two consonants after the vowel then it is generally pronounced as a short vowel.

“Ska vi gå till ladan?” (“Should we go to the barn?”)

“Ok, men jag måste ladda min mobil först” (“Ok, but I have to charge my mobile first”)

The next example is “tak” which means roof. “Tack” as most of you know means thank you.”

“En katt sitter på taket” (“There is a cat on the roof”)

“Tack för hjälpen” (“Thank you for the help”)

“Baka” means to bake, and “backa” is to backspace/reverse.

“Ska vi baka tillsammans på fredag?” (Should we bake together on friday?”)

“Se upp för bilen som backar” (“Watch out for the car thats backing up”)

“Gran” is fir tree and “granne” is neighbor.

“Skogen är full av granar och tallar” (“The woods are full of firs and pine trees”)

“Har du träffat den nya grannen” (“Have you met the new neighbor?”)

“Tal” is speech as well as number and “tall” is pine tree in Swedish.

“Vilket tal står det på tavlan?” (“What number is written on the black board?”)

“Han ska hålla tal om några minuter” (“He is going to give a speech in a couple of minutes”)

“Hon talar väl om dig” (“She speaks well of you”)

A

baka – backa

tak – tack

lada -ladda

tal – tall

granen – grannen

A tiny three letter word is causing debates and mixed emotions in Sweden at the moment. The word is “hen” and it’s the new suggested gender neutral pronoun – born from what many people feel is a need for a pronoun free of preconceived notions about gender.
(I should point out that the word itself is not new, but it has mainly been used in bi/homo/transgender circles up until now)

Personal pronoun:
Hon = she
Han = he
Hen = neutral
Den/Det = it

Indefinite pronoun:
Man = one
But “Man” is homonym with the word for man (male person) and can therefore be seen as non-gender neutral.

In today’s Swedish, “han” is used when the gender of a character is unknown and old Swedish writing rules dictate that “he” should be used when the sex is not known or is deemed irrelevant, like in information texts and legal documents for example. Lots of children’s books with animal characters are often assumed to be male and the hen-spokesmen and women are simply questioning this norm of using “han”. This is what Karin Milles, lecturer in Swedish, Södertörn University College, Karin Salmson and Marie Tomicic from OLIKA Publishing Ltd said about the subject in an article in the paper Svenska Dagbladet, translation by The Local:

“‘He’ becomes the norm and anyone who is supposed to be a “she” has to stand out by expressing her feminine attributes. A child who erroneously calls someone “he” is quickly corrected and learns that it is important to make a distinction between “he” and “she”. We argue that this should be of secondary importance and that the active separation of the sexes has negative consequences for both individuals and society.A more relaxed attitude with a less prominent gender indoctrination would lead to a better future. To bring the Swedish word “hen” into common usage is part of that work.”

One part of bringing hen into the Swedish language is by publishing a gender neutral book for children. It’s called “Kivi och monsterhund” (Kivi and monster dog) and is written by Jesper Lundqvist. It’s filled with hens, mappor (Mother = mamma, Father = pappa) morbroster (Uncle = morbror, Aunt = moster)  and bröstrar (Brothers = bröder, Sisters = systrar). The book isn’t even published yet but has received a great deal of attention and press – not only from Sweden – and hen has become a burning issue. Some people greet it with open arms, some think it’s ludicrous and some simply just welcome the debate.

What is your take on hen? Do we need a gender neutral pronoun? Do you have one in your language?

Read more about the book here!

This is one question that boggles the minds of many learners of the Swedish language (as well as the other Nordic languages). Why doesn’t ‘hand’ just become ‘hander’ or ‘handar’ in plural?

The answer to this lies in a major change that occurred throughout Germanic Europe in the Early Middle Ages (which in Scandinavia was the middle of the Iron Age, 450~500 AD). The process is known today as the i-omljud in Swedish (in English the Germanic umlaut, i-umlaut, or i-mutation). What happened during this change was that an unemphasized i (prounced like ‘ee’ in modern English) in a word brought emphasized back vowels (vowels produced in the back of the mouth: a, o, u) forward, closer to i. For example, what you’re here to find out:

- The plural of hand in Old Norse was handiar. But since it is natural for human beings to simplify things, people began to say hændar (/´hændər/), combining the a with the i, creating a new sound, æ (pronounced similarly to the a in hat). From there, the æ as well as the ar at the end became more and more weakly pronounced, leading to its modern pronunciation, /´hɛndər/, orthographized as händer. The singular form, hand, however, remained the same because it lacked an i to change it.

The i-omljud also affected the other back vowels, o and u. Before this process, Old Norse only had five vowels: a, e, i, o, and u, like the rest of the Indo-European languages of that time. After the i-omljud, though, three more vowels had developed, namely y (what you get when you combine i and u), æ (i and a combined, as shown above), and ø (from i and o). The letters æ and ø were used when the Latin alphabet was first adopted but were replaced by the Low German ä and ö toward the end of the Middle Ages (in Sweden, 1050~1520 AD). Previously, Swedish was written completely in runes.

What about å then? When did that appear? Check back in one week and you’ll be able to find out!