There are 18 consonant phonemes of which and show considerable variation depending on both social and dialectal context. The voiceless palatal-velar fricative realization of found in many dialects, including forms of the standard language, has so far not been found in any other language.
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 more prestigious Central Swedish varieties often go under the name of rikssvenska ('National Swedish') – formerly applied to the former standard Nyköping dialect – a term that in Finland instead indicates all varieties spoken in Sweden as opposed to Finland. Similarly, high-prestige Finland Swedish, a variety not covered in depth here, may go under the name of högsvenska ('High Swedish'), which however has become a controversial and emotionally loaded term, that has also changed in meaning in the course of the 20th century.
The Swedish fricatives and are often considered to be the most difficult aspects of Swedish pronunciation for foreign students. The combination of two such similar and fairly unique sounds as well as the large variety of partly overlapping allophones often presents difficulties for non-natives in telling the two apart. The existence of a third sibilant in the form of tends to confuse matters even more, and in some cases realizations that are labiodental can also be confused with . is pronounced dorsally and can be pronounced , especially by younger speakers in the west; it may also be velarized and labio-dental or apico-alveolar.(IPA) ! align="left" | Example |- | || mod, , 'courage' |- | || nod, , 'node' |- | || lång, , 'long' |- | || rov, , "prey; loot" |- | || lov, , 'tack (sailing maneuver)' |}
has distinct variations in Standard Swedish. The realization as an alveolar trill occurs among most speakers only in contexts where emphatic stress is used. In the southern variants the sound is rendered with . In Central Swedish the "r"s can vary greatly depending on social and phonotactic context. Word-initially, often becomes a fricative , in consonant clusters often as and especially in Central Standard Swedish as the approximant . Uses of taps like are also common. One of the most distinct features of the southern varieties, which they share with Danish, are the use of uvular trills or voiced fricatives, , for the -phoneme. {| class="IPA wikitable" align=right |+Examples of retroflexion |- ! ! input ! output ! !gloss |- !rowspan=2|Inflection |/før–t/ |[fœ̞ːʈ] |fört | 'brought' |- |/før–s/ | [fœ̞ːʂ] |förs |'is brought' |- !rowspan=2|Derivation |/før–tal/ |[fœ̞ˈʈɑːl] |förtal |'slander' |- |/før–sɔrj/ |[fœ̞ˈʂɔrj] |försorg |'taking care' |- !rowspan=2|Compounds |/før–tʉr/ |[ˈfœ̞ːʈʉ̟ːr] |förtur |'priority' |- |/før–sal/ |[ˈfœ̞ːˌʂɑːl] |försal |'entrance hall' |- !rowspan=2|Across words |/før tɵnː/ |[fœ̞ˈʈɵnː] |för tunn |'too thin' |- |/før sen/ |[fœ̹ˈʂeːn] |för sen |'too late' |} may be an apico-alveolar dental tap, though it often has a fricative pronunciation, especially in word-final position. In most varieties of Swedish that use an alveolar (in particular, the central and northern forms), the combination of with dental consonants () produces retroflex consonant realizations, a recursive sandhi process called "retroflexion." Thus, ("map") is realized as , ("north") as , ('Vänern') as , and ('fresh') as . The combination of and does not uniformly cause retroflexion and sårl ('murmur') may be pronounced , , or .
As the table to the right shows, this process is not limited by word boundaries, though there is still some sensitivity to the type of boundary between the and the dental in that retroflexion is less likely with boundaries higher up in the prosodic hierarchy. In the southern varieties, which use a uvular , retroflex realizations don't occur. For example, ('map') is realized as , etc. A double sequence usually won't trigger retroflexion so that spärrnät ('anti-sub net') is pronounced . The process of retroflexion is not limited to just one dental, and e.g. först is pronounced .
Variations of are not as common, though some phonetic variation exists, such as a retroflex flap that exists as an allophone in proximity to a labial or velar consonant (e.g. glad, 'glad') or after most long vowels.
In casual speech, the nasals tend to assimilate to the place of articulation of a following obstruent so that, for example, han kom ('he came') is pronounced .
formel — 'formula' formell — 'formal'
Stressed syllables differentiate two tones, often described as pitch accents, or tonal word accents by Scandinavian linguists. They are called acute and grave accent, tone/accent 1 and tone/accent 2, or Single Tone and Double Tone. The actual realizations of these two tones varies from dialect to dialect. In Standard Central Swedish, for example, the acute accent has a low tone while the grave accent has a high one. Generally, the grave accent is characterized by a later timing of the intonational pitch rise as compared with the acute accent; the so-called two-peaked dialects (such as Central and Western Swedish) also have another, earlier pitch peak in the grave accent, hence the term "two-peaked". In some dialects of Swedish, such as those spoken in Finland, this distinction is absent or minimally salient.
The phonemicity of this tonal system is demonstrated in the nearly 300 pairs of two-syllable words differentiated only by their use of either grave or acute accent. Outside of these pairs, the main tendency for tone is that the acute accent appears in monosyllables (since the grave accent cannot appear in monosyllabic words) while the grave accent appears in polysyllabic words. Polysyllabic forms resulting from declension or derivation also tend to have a grave accent except when it is the definite article that is added. This tonal distinction has been present in Scandinavian dialects at least since Old Norse though a greater number of polysyllables now have an acute accent. These are mostly words that were monosyllabic in Old Norse, but have subsequently become disyllabic, as have many loanwords. For example, Old Norse kemr ('comes') has become kommer in Swedish (with an acute accent).
Acute accent: anden or — 'the duck' (from and 'duck') In Central Swedish, this is a high, slightly falling tone followed by a low tone; that is, a single drop from high to low pitch spread over two syllables. Grave accent: anden or — 'the spirit' (from ande 'spirit') In Central Swedish, a mid falling tone followed by a high falling tone; that is, a double falling tone.
The exact realization of the tones also depends on the syllable's position in an utterance. For instance, at the beginning of an utterance, the acute accent may have a rising rather than slightly falling pitch on the first syllable. Also, these are word tones that are spread across the syllables of the word. In the grave accent, trisyllabic words the second fall in pitch is distributed across the second and third syllables, with the result that the pitches are mid–low falling, high–mid falling, and low:
Grave-accent trisyllable: flickorna or — 'the girls'
The position of the tone is dependent upon stress: The first stressed syllable has a high or falling tone, as does the following syllable(s) in grave-accented words.
Prosody in Swedish often varies substantially between different dialects including the spoken varieties of Standard Swedish. As in most languages, stress can be applied to emphasize certain words in a sentence. To some degree prosody may indicate questions, although less so than in English.
:(C)(C)(C)V(C)(C)(C)
This means that a Swedish one-syllable morpheme can have up to three consonants preceding the vowel that forms the nucleus of the syllable, and three consonants following it. Examples: skrämts (verb 'scare' past participle, passive voice) or sprängts (verb "explode" past participle, passive voice). All but one of the consonant phonemes, , can occur at the beginning of a morpheme, though there are only 6 possible three-consonant combinations, all of which begin with , and a total of 31 initial two-consonant combinations. All consonants except for and can occur finally, and the total amount of final two-consonant clusters is 62. In some cases this can result in near-unpronounceable combinations, such as in västkustskt , consisting of västkust ('west coast') with the adjective suffix -sk and the neuter suffix -t.
Central Standard Swedish (and presumably many other dialects) features a rare "complementary quantity" feature wherein a phonologically short consonant follows a long vowel and a long consonant follows a short vowel; this is true only for stressed syllables and all segments are short in unstressed syllables. This arose from the historical shift away from a system with a four-way contrast (that is, V:C:, VC, V:C, and VC: were all possible) inherited from Proto-Germanic to a three-way one (VC, V:C, and VC:), and finally the present two-way one; not all Swedish dialects have undergone these shifts and dialects that don't exhibit complementary quantity exhibit one of the other two phonotactic systems. In literature on Swedish phonology, there are a number of ways to transcribe complementary relationship, including: A length mark for either the vowel (), the consonant (), or both. Gemination of the consonant ( vs. ) Diphthongization of the vowel ( vs. ) The position of the stress marker ( vs. )
With the conventional assumption that medial long consonants are ambisyllabic (that is, penna, 'pen', is syllabified as ), all stressed syllables are thus "heavy." In unstressed syllables, the distinction is lost between and or between . With each successive post-stress syllable, the number of contrasting vowels decreases gradually with distance from the point of stress; at three syllables from stress, only and occur.
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