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Swedish phonology


Swedish has a large vowel inventory, with nine vowels distinguished in quality and to some degree quantity, making 17 vowel phonemes in most dialects. Swedish pronunciation of most consonants is similar to that of other Germanic languages. Another notable feature is the pitch accent, which is unusual for European languages.

There are 18 consonant phonemes of which /ɧ/ and /r/ show considerable variation depending on both social and dialectal context.

Contrary to the situation with Danish or Finnish, there is not a uniform nationwide spoken Standard Swedish. Instead there are several regional standard varieties (acrolects or prestige dialects), i.e. the most intelligible or prestigious forms of spoken Swedish, each within its area.

The differences in the phonology of the various forms of prestigious Central Swedish can be considerable, although as a rule less marked than between localized dialects, including differences in prosody, vowel quality and assimilation. The differences between the various regional dialects may be compared with those of General American, Australian English, and British Received Pronunciation.

In Sweden, the Central Swedish varieties often go under the name of rikssvenska ('National Swedish')


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