Understanding the Swedish Pitch Accent 

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

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.

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

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 =)

Comments like this make me really happy! I'm glad to have been of help! :)

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

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.

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 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*

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.

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 ...

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

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)

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. :)

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.

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.

+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 :)

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.

Thank you! I'm very happy to hear that.

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.

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! ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-6_60Oec-8pg.html

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 …

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! 😉

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'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.

why does the word kyckling use the second pitch? what rule does it fit in?

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

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.

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

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

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: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-f5pCPRYvyis.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

You're welcome! I'm glad that it's helping you!

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.

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.

Thank you for noticing this. It's not slang though, but the normal casual pronunciation :)

Eva-Luna Tholance You're very welcome! I'm glad it's helping you out!

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.)

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.

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 🤔

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'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 :)

Thank you for your kind comment. I'm happy to have helped!

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.

Singing gay songs

@@damiengates7581 yay gay!

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: ru-vid.com/group/PL5uGqWoFgvd1SBExRyHuuVxiLiU8u8-PN

why

Alla Svenskar kan Svenska !

Thank you!

He is from Sweden. Of course he does.

***** 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?

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.

Thank you for your kind words :)

The pitches come naturally. It's like "den" and "det." No rules telling you why it is so. As a native speaker, you just know it, and it feels very wrong if you try to switch them around.

Same, I had no idea. and I was in tokyo studying japanese and they have pitch-accent as well, and they go real hard in trying to teach it, and I have super issues with the concept... and apparantly our language has this??? but we just, learn the words... I... *brain shortcircuit*

Vokaler?

im from estonia but live in sweden and i kind of knew about this. mostly becaus i have allways had problems with spelling so som times i get stuck on words and try to figure out how to spell them and then you kind of hear these diffarances in how you pronounce certain letters diffrent.

Normen? Norrmän!

+TheBaronessIsAwesome As a native swede I strongly disagree with his translation. To poison someone is "förgifta" and not "gifta" as he says.

It is not supposed to be a verb, but the plural form of the noun _gift_ 'poison, venom': ett gift - två gifter. If it were a verb it would have accent 1!

+Academia Cervena Good to know that the plural of gift is gifter. You would think that the plural is just gift. Usually such ett-words stay the same in plural (ett hus, två hus; ett torn, två torn etc.)

Gift (both swedish and english versions) are actually germanic loanwords. There's actually a history of poison as a marriage gift (as in poisoned wine for example) to rivals or people you hate among nobility in ancient germany. The original meaning means to give. But since it was so associated with poison it now means poison in german. So it got implemented in Swedish to mean poison aswell. But the old swedish word for "to give" is "gifva", and marriage was seen to "give someone (the bride) away", add to that the old meaning "to give" and the word for marriage too became gift. Hence the double meaning in Swedish. The english retained the original meaning somewhat by having the word meaning a present.

@@patrickoudejans you can say gift in plural instead of gifter tho, both work