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How would one pronounce the words "Jag" and "är" together? What I am hearing on the audio is "Jaw" without any attempt to pronounce the second word at all.
The automated audio is kinda bad at this one. Google Translate is doing a little better job: https://translate.google.com/#sv/en/jag%20%C3%A4r%20en%20flicka In normal speech, it's pronounced /'jɑː eː/ and that might throw you off, since it's two vowels after each other and thus forming a diphthong.
Yea, I checked the comments just to ask what is going on with the audio. I didn't know it was automated... I do not think it should be there then, if it pronounces the words badly. I thought I can trust the audio on Duolingo :( I did with other languages, which pronun. of words here I could not verify, while with Swedish I grasped some of it while being in Scandinavia.
Both mean "a" or "an", but "en" corresponds to the Common gender while "ett" corresponds to the Neuter gender.
Let's compare to German:
Der/Ein Mann - Masculine
Die/Eine Frau - Feminine
Das/Ein Kind - Neuter
(En) Mann(en) - Common
(En) Kvinna(n) - Common
(Ett) Barn(et) - Neuter
Each word has a gender associated with it. For example apple is an et-word, while orange is an en-word. So it would be: "ett äpple" (an apple) and "en apelsin" (an orange).
On my keyboard, I can hold left-alt and press 0228
ä = 0228
å = 0229
ö = 0246
Fortunately my native language is Portuguese and we have the ¨ accent in our keyboard. :)
No, how do you type it? I think of the pronunciation of the letter as like the Canadian "eh".
That's just for this word, though. The pronunciation of the letter itself is not the same. You should have a look at the alphabet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-JDHEIvxgQ
On an an english keyboard you get ä by alt+0228. The easier way would be to set up an alternate keyboard layout for swedish so you can easily switch between a swedish keyboard layout and an english keyboard layout. That way while you are studying you can use the swedish layout the leave it on the english layout for everything else. I have it set up this way on Windows 8, but it should be possible on macs as well.
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är means 'make' in sentences like Två och två är fyra 'Two and two make four'. But in most cases är just means 'am, are, is'.
So, is the "g" in Jag pronounced or is it silent, or does is depend? I hear it while listening to the whole sentence but not when I listen to the word alone.
Do i have to pronounce it "Yo (without g sound) ar(with certain rrr sound like french) flickya"???
All Swedish nouns have a gender - en or ett. It's just like Spanish has un and una, for instance - but with the difference that Swedish genders are strictly grammatical and have nothing to do with biological gender.
- är = is / are
- år = year
å ä ö in Swedish aren't just a a o with funny diacritics. They're letters in their own right - å and ä are just as different as d and b.
