54 Comments
When in doubt...Forvo is very helpful with figuring out the proper pronunciation. I've been using it a lot for Swedish.
I literally want to cry I have to use it for every word.
But it does not even matter if you get the pronunciation down for one word, because when you put it into a sentence, THE PRONUNCIATION CHANGES LOL!
This is true for English too though, you just don't notice it. The way you pronounce words, and how they sound when you combine them (especially as a fluent sentence instead of Individually. Pronounced. And. Enunciated. Words.) - that's basically what an accent is. Your ear will pick it up eventually!
Apologies for the typos. Adding Swedish characters to my phone keypad messes up my muscle memory of typing. :-)
I found the word "måla" on memrise and it said it means "paint".
So, Färg=color and måla=paint (and färg can be also used with the meaning of "paint", depending on context) or is there another difference?
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Måla is a verb meaning 'to paint'. The noun 'paint' is målarfärg or just färg in Swedish.
Måla is the name of A series of products for children in IKEA! To paint, of course. I wonder if all the other names are also swedish real names. :)
Well, here's two links to help you practice.
Färg: http://sv.forvo.com/search/f%C3%A4rg/
Varg: http://sv.forvo.com/word/varg/#sv
The vowels are of different quality, and the initial consonant is voiced in varg.
http://sv.forvo.com/word/f%C3%A4rg/#sv The pronunciation by Grunewald sounds like it starts with an 's' instead of an 'f'. It does indeed seem similar to the English word "sigh". The pronunciation by pernys32 starts with an 'f' sound, but it sounds like it ends in the English word "you". Perhaps you could record one for us here, or find someone who can and then have other Duolingo mods upvote it, so we can easily tell which one is correct?
Here is a list of recorded individual sounds for Swedish if it helps anyone:
http://www2.hhs.se/isa/swedish/chap9.htm#pronunciation
The IPA is correct here but for some unknown reason the pronunciation ends with the English 'j' sound instead of the English 'y' sound that would be what we would expect for the IPA /j/. However the declension is helpful: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/f%C3%A4rg
This video on Swedish consonant pronunciation is great for the ending sound, but it seems as if he skipped the f sound, because he decided not to cover sounds which are exactly the same as in English. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYj7SDuAAv0
Wait, is this one okay? http://lexin.nada.kth.se/sound/v2/159734_1.mp3 I got it from here by clicking on the word LYSSNA: http://lexin.nada.kth.se/lexin/#searchinfo=both,swe_swe,f%C3%A4rg; I don't think it is as good as the video for the ending, but maybe there is natural variation? It sounds in between the video sound and the "you" sound.
I know some people think that the /j/ or English 'y' sound is completely missing in Duolingo's recording here, but the recording for this Duolingo sentence sounds like there is an 'h' sound to me instead of a 'y' sound.
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There's a sound error in Grunewald's recording.
pernys32 has a bit of a dialect/special way of speaking, I can tell I've heard him a lot on forvo, not a neutral pronunciation.
In Wiktionary: in real life, sometimes a [j] sound can get a bit fricative like this, especially when people want to stress it. So she's trying to speak clearly, and this happens. (also has to do with speaker closing their mouth at the end of an utterance so the sound gets 'tighter')
The Lexin recording sounds great, maybe the realization of /ä/ isn't the most common one but there's a lot of variation in how this vowel can sound.
The Duo recording sounds excellent to me here.
No. Like [j]
Färg = /fɛrj/
Point is, it sounds entirely correct to my native ears.
I'm not native, so it doesn't sound correct to me... to me it sounds like farEE...
j is similar to y in yellow, just take /yell/ and remove /ell/ and you get /y/ and that's the sound you put at the end of fär to get färj
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I bet part of the confusion here is that for English speakers who don't know the ipa, "j" represents, well, j - the initial sound in "just". (There's a way to write it in ipa but I don't know how to do it on this keyboard.) In ipa /j/ means what English speakers represent with "y" - the "y" in "yellow", as night_raven26 points out.
But it isn't. :P
The voice says the /j/ maybe a tiny ounce too long, making it sound like it's /fɛri:/ to untrained ears.
Regardless, you now know how it's supposed to be.
Yes, to native English speakers it does indeed sound like farEE or farYe. Zmrzlina forgets that the letter 'j' does not sound like 'y' or 'ee' in English as it does in Swedish and German.
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I've heard native speakers pronounce "Berg" like "berry" (with a slightly longer e). Can there be a regional tendency to say "g" at the end as "ij" or similar. I find it hard to pronounce a j after an r without any vowel in between.
Well, in the standard Swedish we teach here, short E and Ä are the same sound in all but a few rare cases. Both /fɛrj/ and /færj/ are given as IPA explanations online, and either one works fine.
It gives 2 definitions for färg. Both paint and color. Does this mean it referes to the color of the paint and not paint or color individually?
What's up with "g" in swedish in different words, sometimes it sounds silent or like a "h" in english, and other times it sounds like an english "g". Is there a pattern to this, or is it just that it has more than one sound?
G is "soft" before the vowels E, I, Y, Ä and Ö, meaning it's pronounced as /j/ (English "y"). It's also soft most often after an L or an R. A handful of exceptions apply.
I wrote: "We have a blue color." I think you need the indefinite article "a" in there but otherwise it should be fine, at least I don't think "got" expresses anything in this context that "have" can't.
Blå is for common singular, blåa for plural (and blåt for neuter singular)
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*blått.
You can use blå and blåa interchangeably in some cases, see a table of it here: https://www.duolingo.com/comment/6609356$comment_id=15597433
for anyone who does linguistics/knows basic phonology: http://www.glottopedia.org/index.php/Swedish_Phonology
I read in another post that in Swedish, when you put an adjective before a noun, the noun gets its declination, the adjective also and an article is needed.
I did not save a bookmark where i read an explanation but here's an exercise where Duolingo uses that same rule with :"Den lila klänningen ärmin" https://www.duolingo.com/comment/5612961
Why doesn't that happen in this case? "Vi har den blå färgen"
Thanks a lot in advance! I love you Duolingo guys :)
The adjective "blå" can be declined in two different and correct ways. Either you add the -a, or you just keep it as "blå". Both work and sound fine.
This "g" in the end of words like "färg" or "ovary", does it sounds like the English "e"? Is it always like this? I fail to hear the English "g" in it
G after R and L is usually soft, meaning it is pronounced like the Y in "yellow", or /j/ in phonetic writing.
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ah ha!! we have blue paint makes sense, but I put in we have blue colour which makes no sense even though it is correct!!!!
