# Swedish: tones in tyda.se and lexin



## jinmin1988

I just start learn Swedish, and I always look up two online dictionaries – tyda.se and lexin. But I found that the tones of words in these two dictionaries are quite different, especially for long words(ie honom and ingenting). If you are a native speaker, which tone do you speak in your daily life?

Thank you very much.


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## Södertjej

Please explain what you mean by "tone" because I don't understand what you refer to. 

As it was mentioned in the previous thread, Tyda can be inaccurate sometimes and Lexin is very limited. On the resources thread you have a link to Norsteds free online dictionary, which is much better.


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## hanne

I'd guess that the question is about akut/grav accent.
Swedish doesn't have tones the same way Chinese does.


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## jinmin1988

> Please explain what you mean by "tone" because I don't understand what you refer to.


 It's hard to explain "tone", it's like the way you say a word, you put different accent in a word. for example, in English, you put accent in the second "e"


> On the resources thread you have a link to Norsteds free online dictionary, which is much better.


I looked up some words in Norsteds, but a lot of words don't have pronunciations.


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## Södertjej

We'd need exact examples to understand what you mean because honom is just honom and I don't know what you heard and what differences you found.

If you mean accent, in the word English there's only one e so I don't know what you mean you put the accent on the second e. 

In Swedish you don't change the stress in a word depending on the speaker.

I listened to _honom _at tyda. It sounds like a robot, not a person and the initial h is kind of cut out. So it's not a good example.

_Ingenting _sounds ok, very clear, a person's voice, not a robot's.

I didn't find any audio links on Lexin, so I don't know what difference in pronunciation you refer to.


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## mnl

Just FYI, there is also the crowdsourced forvo.com:

http://www.forvo.com/languages/sv/


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## jinmin1988

> I didn't find any audio links on Lexin, so I don't know what difference in pronunciation you refer to.


http://lexin.nada.kth.se/sve-sve.html


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## Södertjej

Oh thanks, I don't know why I didn't get that audio link.

Well, yes there's some difference in ingenting but it's more to do with the fact that words are pronounced by different people, one with more emphasis, the other more neutral, one is a man, the other a woman and in both cases not as part of a sentence. Besides the woman speaks as people do in language courses, very clearly and slowlier than in real life.

As for honom, I told you the tyda file sounds like a robot and incomplete. Lexin's pronunciation of honom is so slow and clear you won't normally hear it in real life, but the pronunciation is perfect.

Lexin is in any case a more reputed resource than Lexin, so in doubt, go for Lexin's entries.


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## jinmin1988

thank you so much, Södertjej


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## cocuyo

You might need other resources for pronunciation. Just like English, Swedish does not have any firm pronunciation rules, and there's no help, like in the Romance languages, by diacritics. In fact, there are even words that change their meaning by pronunciation, by the syllable stress. It is a bit more complicated than learning the acute and grave accents, it really takes a lot of listening to get the hang of it - and even then ... 

So if you can get your hands on some good books and their sound book counterparts, it can be a great help. One of my favourite readers for learning Swedish is Astrid Lindgren. Many of her books are available both as a paper book and as cassettes/cdrom. There are of course also other books; look for "ljudböcker". Many of those are read by their authors, other books are read by actors. Following the text at the same time as listening is a great way to capture the accents.


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## jinmin1988

Thank you, Cocuyo.

Your advice is very helpful.


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## Wilma_Sweden

If your internet access speed is not too slow, you can watch the news (_Rapport_, _Aktuellt_) and other programmes from the Swedish television site. Some of them are subtitled in Swedish for the deaf, which should be helpful.  

I must, say, though, that reading/hearing Astrid Lindgren's books is much more fun. Even if they're children's books, they are ever so enjoyable also for adults.


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## jinmin1988

> If your internet access speed is not too slow, you can watch the news (_Rapport_, _Aktuellt_) and other programmes from the Swedish television site. Some of them are subtitled in Swedish for the deaf, which should be helpful.


thank you Wilma, I can see that, even i cannot understand it now. But i will.


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## cocuyo

It is often helpful just to listen, over and over, without looking at the text, particularly for people that speak some other language that is written with Latin characters. This is because it is very difficult to leave your old conception behind of how characters should sound and adopt a new concept. It can even help the process of _listening_ to hear it without bothering about understanding, just to catch the melody and get used to it.


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## jinmin1988

Thank you, cocuyo.


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## Södertjej

cocuyo said:


> It is often helpful just to listen, over and over, without looking at the text...
> 
> ... It can even help the process of _listening_ to hear it without bothering about understanding, just to catch the melody and get used to it.


Jinmin says she can't understand anything yet. At this stage doing what you sugggest is only frustrating. Been there myself!


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## MetalMarianne

Ten thumbs up for Jinmin!

I started the same way some 5 years ago... 

If you want easy-to-read news you can go to "8 sidor", where you can both read and listen Swedish. If you feel a voice sounds robotic, discard it and move on to the next one. 

Astrid Lindgren´s movies are wonderful. I guess everyone has been in contact with - at least - one of her books during childhood... so it´s just to bring back those memories. 

Try also to listen to Swedish music - you´ll soon catch some refrains, some words that appear over and over again and you´ll learn without noticing.

Good luck with the language!


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