36 Comments
887
Usually not, but if we speak very slowly it's sometimes heard. Or if there's a strong emphasis on that word.
Is it okej to pronounce the "g" in "jag" if I choose to? Or would that cause any problems when I speak with native Swedes?
Please not "yo" but "ya." My Spanish speaking colleague says "yo" instead of "Jag" all the time and it doesn't sound correct.
I think I have always heard people say so. Why is it pronounced as /ja:/ in the example above? :/
- 887
Non-native speakers often think the long a in jag sounds like an o, but native Swedes don't agree. There may be some variation in pronunciation, but mainly this is because we have more vowel sounds than most other European languages, so learners need to train their ears to hear the sounds correctly.
Sorry for my late reply, thank you for the explanation! :) I will keep an ear on the issue :)
Thank you for that info. But still, I do not think it is like the English "a:" or short "a" sound. Doesn't this recording sound a bit off to you? In the previous example https://www.duolingo.com/comment/5522714 it is completely different. Are you able to show me some source with model pronunciation, if you know one? Thanks! :)
- 887
The new voice sounds OK. The one on top here sounds OK too: http://sv.forvo.com/search-sv/jag/
but there is variation in how people say the word and there are some cases where it's more understandable that people hear it as an o.
PS I listened to the sentence in your link and I agree it sounds different, but I think both are good. I think of both as a sounds but my idea of that is a Swedish a, it's difficult to transcribe our sounds into English.
This is actually one of the first things that came to my mind when I learned it..
I'd say that it sounds more like the Spanish "ya." I hear no long "o (as in "so") " in the Swedisn word "Jag."
- 39
This sentence appears to be four sylibles long. Why does the audio example pronounce this phrase as only three sylibles?
I hear four syllables, but ”jag är” often just sounds like ”ja e” and quickly it might be hard to distinguish them as separate words.
As a native English speaker learning Dutch, Swedish, and French, it's cool to see the similarities and differences between all the languages (in particular, Dutch, English, and Swedish).
Like the Irish a in "art" :) Or a bit like the "ai-" in "air". The word "är" featured here is pronounced similarly to "air".
But I can't really find a totally similar sound in English and I'm not adequately skilled with written phonetics.
The "a" in "ham" is probably the best option here. :)
But Swedish has four pronounciations for ä, and not all correspond directly to English.
Does anyone know how I could possibly type some of these accent marks such as the double dots over the a?
In some languages (Finnish, Swedish, German ...) , the keyboard may have a double dot " ¨ " on the upper right end (same row as qwerty).
You could also try to change the keyboard / windows language setting to "Swedish", which you can do in windows on the taskbar, with the language toolbar. With my UK laptop I switch daily between the different language toolbars. You would have a shortcut for that on the taskbar, no trouble there.
Once the language is switched, you will find öäå / ÖÄÅ on the right end of the rows qwerty / asdf. Then it takes some training to get it right, but it is doable :-)
Good luck!
