45 Comments
Huh. From the sound it sounds different, but then again most languages do. I enjoy this.
I love this opportunity!! They say the 3rd language is the easiest... But I'm not sure yet... Swedish is seeming pretty difficult!
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Hang in there, you will get the hang of it. If you want to hear it spoken in everyday talk you could check out sr(dot)se which is the swedish national radio online and svt(dot)se which is the swedish national tv-station online. Good luck!
And rent Swedish films which have the added benefits of subtitles and reverse/backup/repeat!
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Kveen-nah, but with very short vowels and very long 'n'. Equal stress on both syllables.
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You're not alone... :-) Some people live in Sweden for 50 years without learning or understanding it, whereas some grasp it within a couple of days.
Most of the "big western languages" like English, German, Spanish and French mainly stress 1 syllable in each word. Well - I'll try to explain it with that as a base of knowledge.
Let's use the English word "window" as an example. Normally it's pronounced with stress on the first syllable (WINdow). Try moving it to the last syllable (winDOW). What happens? Well - not much, but it feels odd and the "win" part of the word seems to be too short. Try making the "win" part slightly longer while keeping the stress on "dow" (wiinDOW). Wierd, and doesn't really work (but you need to try it to understand).
Now try thinking of "window" as the two words "win" and "doe". Imagine someone standing at an 19th century fair crying out "Win a doe", and think of what it would sound like from afar... "Win Doe". Try it a couple of times, and say it slightly faster each time. This is the word "window" with equal stress (i.e. not an English word anymore, but fairly close to the Norwegian "vindue" meaning the same thing).
Now try the same thing with the two words "kveenn" and "nah". Try making the 'ee' sound on the first word quick and the 'n' sound long. After a while you will end up saying the Swedish word "kvinna" with equal stress, just the way it's supposed to be.
Do you pronounce a rolling "r" as in Russian/Spanish or is it glottal as in French?
Can anyone tell me what is the appropriate way to pronounce "hon" ? Is the "h" silent or pronounced?
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No, that would be "Hon är en kvinnor", which doesn't make sense (not in Swedish, and not in English). How could someone possibly be one and many at the same time?
It's quite common for non-natives to think that "woman" is spelt "women", so that's probably just it. :)
Kvinna(How this spell?-like Sinna!)
I had "she is a woman" and it counts it as wrong.. :( because of the capitalized S
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Really? It shouldn't count capitalization as an error of any kind in our course.
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I'm not sure. They're only on mobile, right? I usually use the site on a computer so I tend to miss out some of what's going on on other platforms.
I'm for the most part on mobile, I can't recall if they are on desktop. But since it's only one italicized word it's a dead giveaway which one to start with. I haven't tried picking a first word in lowercase.
Are the capitalization rules similar to English ones? I hadn't really thought about it since I am just starting, but I haven't seen any nouns starting with caps so I knew they weren't like German.
Watch out though...a couple of times I have had select-a-word where the correct first word was not the capitalized one.
@Kristina That's really weird. In what circumstance is the beginning of a sentence not capitalized?
@PamelaH7 Almost. I can't say I have full confidence what differs between the two, but I know we have different rules for months, weekdays and I think languages as well. What those rules are exactly I can't tell, but I know that English is more pro-capitalization than Swedish.
Hon dölja som en barn, men hon är alltid en kvinna til mig~ (Probably wrong, but whatever.)
What did you mean to write? Because that's "She hide like a (wrong pronoun; should be "ett") child, but she is always a woman to (misspelled; "till") me."
It's a Billy Joel lyric. :)
She hides like a child but she's always a woman to me
A correct translation would be e.g.
Hon gömmer sig som ett barn, men hon är alltid en kvinna för mig
That must be a bug of some kind, Duolingo shouldn't care about punctuation (at least not in this sentence).
Are Swedish a umlauts the same or different from German umlauts (Do they make an AY or AH sound?)
They're similar but not the exact same vowels. Please see e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzYArZVTD4s for a more detailed description.
