"Hundarna äter kött."

Translation: The dogs eat meat.

[chilvence]

That is most definitely not what it sounds like

[Zmrzlina]

It's not wrong though, although the voice has a slightly funny intonation.

[Goim]

I think they were referring to the phonetic similarities to sh*t

[ZeeSharp]

Glad i wasnt the only one who thought that

[Zmrzlina]

Now that you say so...

[NotHanji]

I think I heard what you heard... As did all the others.

[Immortalist]

Now try to say "köttbullar" (meatballs) and invite eveyone to dinner :)

[TobyBartels]

Swedish meatballs were one of my favorite dishes when I was growing up. (Probably not really Swedish, of course.)

[GlitterNinja101]

Is it normal to hear "kott" as "shirt"? Is that how you actually pronounce it, or is the audio off?

[Hashmush]

This is correctly pronounced, though the intonation is a bit weird at the end.

k is pronounced as an Voiceless alveolo-palatal sibilant (click for sound)

[ZeeSharp]

Minus the r is what I hear. Though I think its more shot but the o sounding like you would say goat?

[Winter222]

I know it means trouble when I started to type "The hunds..."

[gfljgljglkfs]

Is kott pronounced "shot" because I am confused

[Hashmush]

See my comment above. http://forvo.com/word/kött/#sv

[JohnHoward92]

I might have missed something here but where does the "a" come from in "Hundarna"?

[devalanteriel]

There are two, which one do you mean? :)

The first is part of a standard pluralisation rule - hund sg -> hundar pl.

The second one is part of a standard definiteness suffix - hundar indef -> hundarna def.

[JohnHoward92]

Thanks, for the insight, as I have continued to learn Swedish the definite and plurals have become much clearer.

[Osebrand]

It sounds like "Hunden äter kött". Only once I knew the answer and listened very closely, was I able to discern a very slight, almost nonexistent 'r' in the fast version. The slow version sounds like "Hundena äter kött", without any discernible 'r' even when listening closely. How would a Swedish native speaker pronounce this?

[devalanteriel]

Sounds great to me. The Swedish rn sound does not sound like in most languages - rather, it's a retroflex nasal. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retroflex_nasal)

[Jan486659]

Totally agree, even after knowing that it should be hundarna it is hard to hear...

[soundfeel]

Can someone explain when I have to put an article? I'm really confused about that...

[devalanteriel]

Swedish generally uses the same rules as English. In this case, kött - like "meat" - is a mass noun, so you don't use the article.

There are some idiomatic differences, but the only major exception is that Swedish doesn't use articles for being things like professions.