How lax can Swedish and Norse pronunciation be?

Question

I'm trying to get all the sounds right so I can be as understandable as possible and so I can also understand what is being said to me, but I would like to what extent I can be understood speaking bad Swedish or Norwegian (the former I am much better in but still not very good at).

For example, If I mispronounce (or stuff up the the tones) my 'e's and 'ä's when they should be long or short or whatever and just pronounce them as a standard 'e' sound, will I still be understood? I know there are many dialects of both languages so I guess they would be used to hearing differences, but how different can you be and still be understood? Examples would help. Ursäkta och tack så mycket :)

Answer 1

I wouldn't fret too much about it. I myself am not fluent in Swedish yet either, but I have found through speaking with my penpal via mic is to speak LOUDLY and CLEARLY. It's real important not to leave out parts of the words from speaking so quickly. For instance, I just said "Jag vill att ni ska veta" quickly and I caught myself barely saying the "tt" in "att". Things like those mistakes are the kind that will make you be misunderstood.

Also, I don't think tones matter that much. However, they do make the languages sound a lot better. I guess you could think of them as tinted windows on a car; they aren't necessary, but they are real nice. I'd focus on learning the tones for words where it matters, such as "ande"(duck OR spirit), and then learn tones for words as you go.

I also think it helps to pronounce the word fully, as in "det" and not "de" for "it" or "jag" and not "ja" for "I" (swedish). Another major one is "är" and not "e" for "is/are". Some Swedish sources say that the "r" is silent, and others say that most people just don't say it. I'm going with the latter.

Hearing natives speak is a great way to learn pronunciation. I'm a beginner at Spanish and I can already "hear" each word in a sentence, whereas in Swedish I still can only understand parts of the sentence. That is to say that pronunciation is one of, if not THE, biggest obstacle in this language for a native-English speaker.

Lycka till!

Answer 2

Hei and a good question. I wish more people would ask.

I have asked many native Norwegians what they find hard in understanding Norwegian as spoken by us foreigners. The answer is alway -- stress and length of vowels. That is, if you do not differentiate in Norwegian between <tak> -- a long /a/ and <takk> a short /a/ you might be misunderstood. Or if you stress the wrong syllable. For example videre in og så videre... if you say vidERE (stess on ER), rather than VIDere, it's likely you will be understood.

Confusing vowels (æ  vs e) is not likely to cause trouble. Even /a/ and /Ã¥/ are not so tough to be understood.

Remember that Norwegians are used to (1) listening to foreigners speak their language, and (2) lots of different dialects of Norwegian,

Norwegians never mention to me that using the wrong gender will confuse them, or wrong past tense forms.

Recently when I teach elementary Norwegian, I make a big point of length and syllable stress.

I myself, although almost at a native speaker level of Norwegian, so not use tones in my speech. While natives probably notice this, it doesn't bother them. They often say I sound like a Dane speaking Norwegian. (Danish, Finno-Swedish, Bergen, and some areas in North Norway) do not use the two tones that Oslo and most of the rest of Norway use. (Dialects have different MANIFESTIONS of how these tones sound, but all do have meaning-differentiating tonemes.

I hope this helps. Please contact me if you have more questions about learning / speaking Norwegian (btw, your heading using "Norse" is really odd). The language is called Norwegian, not Norse.)

Answer 3

Unfortunately, we can't give you a percentage answer. This is something you have to live through and experiment with to know. People all over the world since the dawn of time have been learning languages. You will sometimes be misunderstood, but most of time, you will get your point across. Don't fret over it and forget that it's supposed to be fun.

By the way, while I'm not sure what a "standard e" sounds like, I'm pretty sure your standard is not the Swedish standard. It's not about what's standard to you, it's about copying native speakers.