# Swedish: Avoidance of [i:] in the second syllable of disyllabic words



## Tjahzi

During the last few (1-3) years, I have come to notice a very peculiar phonologic practice among Swedish speakers of the Stockholm dialect, namely, as could be conducted from the topic title, the habit of unstressing an otherwise stressed /i/ that occurs in a closed (or CVC to be exact) syllable that is the last of a disyllabic word. 
Hence, speakers that exhibit this peculiarity pronounce _Madrid_ and _precis_ as [mad'rɪdː] and [prɛ'sɪsː] respectively (instead of [mad'riːd] and [prɛ'siːs]).

Although I've labeled this as a trait of people from Stockholm, that is just an assumption based upon the fact that I've encountered this while watching TV (which we all know is, to a great extent, based in Stockholm). As such, this could be a unique trait found among only a dozen of people, but I find that rather unlikely. 

In order to verify this, I'm mainly turning to speakers of this dialect (or maybe I should say, speakers from the Stockholm region). Do you use these forms? Do they sound acceptable to you?
And to all of you, have you heard them? How do they sound to you?

Unfortunately, my examples are currently limited to the ones above, but if you find any yourself, please add them. Remember the criteria, in the standard language, the vowel shall be: /i/, stressed, in a word with more than one syllable/vowel and it should be the last of these.

(Since this is a linguistic, rather than exclusively Swedish, issue, I have presented it in English in order to let others follow it as well. However, replies in Swedish are of course very much welcome as well! )


EDIT: Oh please forgive and correct me, Almighty Admin, for I have forgotten to add the language in question to the topic title.


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## JohanIII

Är detta ett s k Lidingö-i?


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## Tjahzi

Nej, det är ett helt vanligt /i/, fast kort. Det speciella med uttalet är att man istället för att betona i:et (dvs uttala det långt), så betonar man den efterföljande konsonanten och gör den lång.


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## Lars H

I know very little about Spanish, but I wonder if Madrid perhaps is pronounced with a shorter "i" in Spanish than in Swedish. So a shorter "i" could be an attempt to sound more "Spanish".
About "precis", I can't remember that I have heard that word with a shorter "i".


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## Ben Jamin

Tjahzi said:


> Hence, speakers that exhibit this peculiarity pronounce _Madrid_ and _precis_ as [mad'rɪdː] and [prɛ'sɪsː] respectively (instead of [mad'riːd] and [prɛ'siːs]).


 You placed the stress mark in the same place in both examples, but you write about unstressing of the 'i:'. What do you mean then by unstressing?
 As a curiosity I can mention that the words pronounced in the West Oslo dialect with stress on the last syllable and long i:, in the popular dialect in Oslo (Oslo East) are pronounced with the stress on the first syllable. Example 'maskin' (ma'ski:n / 'maskin).


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## Tjahzi

The stress mark is normally used to mark which syllable in a word that is stressed. For most languages, that's all the information you'll ever need since only vowels can be stressed. However, since ANY phoneme in a stressed syllable can be stressed/lengthened in Swedish, one could argue that the stress mark is kind of superfluous (all that matter's is the lengthening mark) and hence I should probably have left it out in order to avoid confusion. 
The Norwegian example is very interesting. I must ask, though, do the really pronounce ['maskin] with a short [a]?

Also, add _Berlin_ [bærli:n]/[bærlɪn:] to that list.

I'll see if I can find some clips with this pronunciation.


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## Ben Jamin

Tjahzi said:


> The Norwegian example is very interesting. I must ask, though, do the really pronounce ['maskin] with a short [a]?


 I must admit that I am uncertain. It was long time ago I heard this pronunciation, and the most spectacular features were the shift of the stress an the short i. Maybe the 'a' was long.


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## Tjahzi

That would appear most logical to me, however, I can imagine a pronunciation with a prolonged /s/ as well (['mas:kɪn]).


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## Magb

I think the pronunciation Ben Jamin is referring to (which by the way can be heard in more places than just eastern Oslo, e.g. as far north as Trøndelag) would be [ˈmɑʃːiːn] or [ˈmɑʃːɪn]. I don't think any Norwegians have /sk/ in _maskin_.


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## Tjahzi

Interesting. I believe the standard Swedish pronunciation to be [ma'ɧi:n] (though [ma'ʃi:n] occurs as well). 

However, as this word does not have the syllable structure CVCCVC (but rather CVCVC), I cannot see it being pronounced [ma'ɧɪn:].


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## cocuyo

I can relate to these Swedish examples. As my second language is Spanish, I always pronounce Madrid more like the Spanish pronunciation even when speaking Swedish, but the most common pronunciation is with a long i sound and without the softened d:s. 

However "precis" can be pronounced in both ways, depending on whether it is stressed as a whole or unstressed. When it is not stressed, it's the unstressed i. The stressed i can often take the form of a "Lidingö-i" (I live in Lidingö). The peculiar i of Lidingö is no longer prevalent here, but in Orust and Tjörn there are still speakers that use that fricative sound for i.


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## brztm

Funny. I always assumed the pronunciation [prɛ'sɪsː] was concentrated to western Sweden. I myself am from Stockholm and have only ever heard [prɛ'siːs] from the 'locals'.


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## Tjahzi

Hm, just to be clear, what exactly (preferably in terms of IPA) is this _Lidingö-i_? I haven't heard it enough to make a decent analysis.

It's very interesting to hear that you find this to be a trait originating from Western Sweden. I myself can't say I've heard anything like it, despite having spent some ten or so summers on Orust (though with a very limited amount of interaction with the locals). 

Just to be clear, as far as I know, this is not a _Lidingö-i_. It's a normal short /i/,* the issue resolves around the fact that the /i/ is short and the following /s/ long (and not the other way around).*

Also, I'll do my best to come up with some decent examples of this.

Cocuyo, with "softened d:s", do you mean dental fricatives?


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## brztm

My conjecture that the pronunciation [prɛ'sɪsː] is more common in western Sweden is based on two observations: 1. The only two people I know who pronounce the word this way are from Rättvik and Trollhättan, respectively. 2. The word 'tisdag' is commonly pronounced 'tissdag' in and around Göteborg. I'm not sure whether this is in any way related to the pronunciation 'preciss'.

As far as I'm concerned, the so-called Lidingö-i has nothing to do with  this discussion. For those speakers who use that sound, it is an  allophone (or merely a different realization) of /i:/, pronounced  something like [ɨ:].


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## cocuyo

Tjahzi said:


> Hm, just to be clear, what exactly (preferably in terms of IPA) is this _Lidingö-i_? I haven't heard it enough to make a decent analysis.



It's a palatal fricative sound, not really like a vowel. Somewhat like the voiced "th" in English "the", but with the tip of the tongue against inferior incisives instead of superior. 



> Cocuyo, with "softened d:s", do you mean dental fricatives?



Yes, dental fricatives.


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## Tjahzi

brztm said:


> My conjecture that the pronunciation [prɛ'sɪsː] is more common in western Sweden is based on two observations: 1. The only two people I know who pronounce the word this way are from Rättvik and Trollhättan, respectively. 2. The word 'tisdag' is commonly pronounced 'tissdag' in and around Göteborg. I'm not sure whether this is in any way related to the pronunciation 'preciss'.
> 
> As far as I'm concerned, the so-called Lidingö-i has nothing to do with  this discussion. For those speakers who use that sound, it is an  allophone (or merely a different realization) of /i:/, pronounced  something like [ɨ:].



Wow, interesting! As a Gothenburg native, I can admit that I pronounce _tisdag_ as ['tɪs:ta]. Although the change (long /i/+short /s/ -> short /i/+long /s/) occurs in the first syllable there, it's technically identical.



cocuyo said:


> It's a palatal fricative sound, not really like a vowel. Somewhat like the voiced "th" in English "the", but with the tip of the tongue against inferior incisives instead of superior.



Uhh, really? I found the explanation given above by brztm's to be very accurate.


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## Renaissance man

I see Cocuyo's point. I think there is an element of friction involved, although only if exaggerated a bit. 
Try saying "precis" using an extreme Lidingö-i, and you'll notice how the tongue will reach towards the palate.


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## brztm

Secondary "friction" is, after all, rather typical of (Swedish) Swedish long vowels. I.e. /o:/ /u:/ /å:/ display various degrees of labial friction, and /e:/ /i:/ /y:/ (and for some speakers also /ö:/) are pronunced with palatal friction.


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## berndf

Tjahzi said:


> The stress mark is normally used to mark which syllable in a word that is stressed. For most languages, *that's all the information you'll ever need since only vowels can be stressed*. However, since ANY phoneme in a stressed syllable can be stressed/lengthened in Swedish, one could argue that the stress mark is kind of superfluous (all that matter's is the lengthening mark) and hence I should probably have left it out in order to avoid confusion.


Stress and length are different concepts and while length applies to individual phonemes, stress applies to the syllable as a whole. You cannot substitue one for the other though in many languages stress and length (or weight) are more less interrelated. In stress-times languages like Swedish more. Therefore, stress marks might be seen as supplying (mostly) redundant information.


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## Tjahzi

berndf said:


> Stress and length are different concepts and while length applies to individual phonemes, stress applies to the syllable as a whole. You cannot substitue one for the other though in many languages stress and length (or weight) are more less interrelated. In stress-times languages like Swedish more. Therefore, stress marks might be seen as supplying (mostly) redundant information.


Hm, what in my post was it that you didn't understand?

Swedish has unpredictable stress (although "usually" on the first syllable). A stressed syllable does always contain a long phoneme.  Both consonants and vowels can be long or short. Long phonemes can not occur in unstressed syllables. As such, I concluded that I probably should have left out the stress mark in order to avoid confusion, given the fact that I had marked the long phoneme.


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## berndf

Tjahzi said:


> Hm, what in my post was it that you didn't understand?
> 
> Swedish has unpredictable stress (although "usually" on the first syllable). A stressed syllable does always contain a long phoneme. Both consonants and vowels can be long or short. Long phonemes can not occur in unstressed syllables. As such, I concluded that I probably should have left out the stress mark in order to avoid confusion, given the fact that I had marked the long phoneme.


If you re-read your post I commented on you wrote:


> For most languages, that's all the information you'll ever need since *only vowels can be stressed*


and


> *phoneme* in a stressed syllable can be *stressed/lengthened* in Swedish


I tried to point out that you mixed concepts here:
- volwels can be lengthened but not stressed,
- consonants can be lengthened but not stressed,
- only syllables can be stressed.

(
- Some languages have emphatic consonants, but that is not the same as stress.
- In some languages, consonants are allophonically modified in stressed syllables (e.g. "t" is aspirated only in stressed syllables in American English) but again, it is not the consonant that is stressed, it is the syllable.
)


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## Tjahzi

Ahh, I see your point. However, I dispute it.

Individual phonemes _can _be stressed (as can syllables and words). However, that is obviously not the case for languages that don't exhibit the unusual traits of having long and short vowels and consonants and is stress-timed. As such, Swedish does not so much "stress a syllable" which stands out among the others in a word. Instead, an individual phoneme is _lengthened_. However, since there are other ways to "mark" a phoneme other than _lengthening _it (such as in the case of plosives) and as such _lengthening_ is not an ideal term which has resulted in this often being referred to as _stress_ (again given the fact that the stressed syllable and the stressed/lengthened phoneme always coincide). 
That said, it's important to stress (huh) the fact that syllables are never referred to as _lengthened _and that's why I tend to use the terms together ("stressed/lengthened") when referring to these "marked" phonemes of a word/syllable.
However, I do agree about it being a bit sloppy to say that "only vowels can be stressed in most languages". What I should have said is that in most languages "the stressed syllable (always) contains a long vowel (or a diphthong) (and never a long consonant)". Then again, considering how the terms are used when describing Swedish, as well as the fact that this thread is dedicated solely to (a) Swedish (issue), I must have felt that it was not overly unappropriate (which I'm still inclined to believe considering none has asked or remarked during the month it has been up).

For the record, these "marked/lengthened/stressed" consonants are not the same thing as "empathic" consonants.


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## berndf

Tjahzi said:


> Individual phonemes _can _be stressed (as can syllables and words). However, that is obviously not the case for languages that don't exhibit the unusual traits of having long and short vowels and consonants and is stress-timed.


I think, you are still mixing up the concept. In stress-timed languages, stressed syllables are longer than unstressed syllable but length not necessarily what expresses stress. In German or English, e.g., stress is expressed by force, i.e. stressed syllables are pronounced louder and more forcefully; they are usually (but not necessarily) also pronounced longer but that is a secondary characteristic. If I, e.g., pronounce all three syllables in German "ent-*schei*-den" the same length, the second syllable is still perceived as stressed, if and only if it is pronounced louder than the others. Italian e.g. uses force and pitch (stressed syllables are marked by falling pitch) to express stress. Lengthening of stressed syllables does usually occur but is phonemically optional (Italian, by the way, is special in this respect: It has phonemic consonant length but vowel length is non-phonemic, e.g. ['ano] and ['anːo] are different words, meaning _asshole_ and _year_, respectively, but ['ano] and ['aːno] not).

My knowledge of Swedish phonology is very limited, so tell me if I am wrong: Swedish has almost no force-accent but expresses stress mainly through length with pitch as a secondary characteristic, hence knowing syllable structure and phoneme lengths is sufficient to understand the stress pattern of a word. Therefore, as I wrote, stress markers can be seen as supplying redundant information but from an abstract point of view, phoneme length and syllable stress are still separate concepts.




Tjahzi said:


> For the record, these "marked/lengthened/stressed" consonants are not the same thing as "empathic" consonants.


Of course not.


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## cocuyo

I'm not sure about the terminology here; I guess that if one decides that only "long" vowels can be stressed, and that stress is different from emphasis, prefixes as "in-" or "an-" might be considered emphatic rather than stressed, as the vowels in them are indeed short. To me, stress is the same as emphasis, and Swedish has a panoply of different accents that are quite unpredictable to anyone that has not grown up with it. To complicate it even more, the various accents may differ according to dialect. Hence in the archipelago east of Stockholm, there is a very peculiar accent that few can imitate, and in Finland, the accents are different from all accents in mainland Swedish. 

Trying to describe the accents in Swedish seems to inevitably get us out on thin ice.


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## Tjahzi

Well, I believe we more or less agree. The issue being that I used the terminology in a way which would not been suitable had I been talking about a language other than Swedish (or, let's say Italian/German/English to be safe).

Indeed the "stress" of German/English differs from Swedish in the way you describe. The main difference being the fact that in German/English a stressed syllable is stressed through the entire syllable being pronounced with increased force, whereas a Swedish stressed syllable is stressed through containing a lengthened phoneme. As such, this can be viewed as the stress being connected to a single phoneme, something which obviously isn't the case with English/German. Then again, it's of course important to be aware of this and not to mix up the terminology. Also, it is true as you say that on top of that there is pitch accent which works as a secondary characteristic (although it, in comparison with phoneme length, is a very marginalized occurrence). 

(Also, interesting examples from Italian!)

Given that, it really could be said that marking the stress is unnecessary if one marks the long phoneme (which one should if one wishes to go beyond a "broad transcription"). However, I occasionally use it for another purpose, namely to distinguish the boundaries between syllables. For instance, the word _komplett_ (_complete_) could be pronounced as either [kɔm'plɛt:] or [kɔmp'lɛt:]. As such, I could have excluded the stress mark and it would still have been obvious that the second syllable was the stressed one, but it had not been whether the /p/ belonged to the first or second syllable. (This of course has nothing to do with the main issue here, but was rather an example of that, sometimes, stress could be worth marking even when vowel length is marked as well.)

It might be interesting to know that in Old Swedish (roughly 1000-1525, depending on author) both long and short vowels as well as consonants could be combined for a total of four combinations (VC, VC:, V:C and V:C: ) and on top of that, the stress was always fixed on the first syllable! From there, this system has developed into the integrated length/stress system of today.

But yes, I do agree upon phoneme length and syllable stress being separate concepts. They just happen to more or less coincide in Swedish.


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## berndf

Thank you for the clarification. I think we speak the same language now.

I agree, you sometimes tend to take terminological shortcuts when talking about the the phonology of only one language which then confuse poor people like me.

Do ambiguities like [kɔm'plɛt:] vs. [kɔmp'lɛt:] then confuse the stress pattern as they can potentially change relative syllable lengths? Is the stress pattern of a word phonemic, i.e. is it possible to have minimal pairs like English _a*rith*metic_ vs. _arith*met*ic_ which are only distinguished by stress pattern? If not, then stress indication would actually be quite insignificant in Swedish.


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## Tjahzi

Well, a pair such as English _a*rith*metic_ vs. _arith*met*ic _could never occur since the length of the phonemes had differed (otherwise the stress had not). 
For instance, there are heteronymic pairs such as /banan/, [ba'nɑ:n] (_banana_) and /banan/ ['bɑ:nan] (_the track_) that differ in stress, but that is just a result of the difference in phoneme length (we are approaching an "_egg or chicken_"-discussion here though). 
(Additionally, there are also pairs that are phonemically identical but differs in pitch accent.)

So basically, the answer to your question ("does this matter for the stress pattern?") is, _no_. If we, by _stress pattern_, exclude pitch accent, we can just conclude that stress and phoneme length is connected (and hence by definition can't differ). So yes, stress by itself is not worth marking. What I meant above was that I occasionally use it to mark where syllables end and start (which is a matter of it's own) and of course this "method" only completely covers disyllabic words in which the second syllable is stressed  (and as such could be said to be rather flawed. However, I know no other way to mark it...(or,a dot maybe?)(So, why do I mark it? Well, I like to be narrow...).

(Also, it's very hard to tell whether _komplett _is actually [kɔm'plɛt:] or [kɔmp'lɛt:], it's just me that has a desire to understand and investigate every little aspect.)

(I'm off for the weekend, but I'll be back replying on Sunday!)


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## berndf

Tjahzi said:


> (Also, it's very hard to tell whether _komplett _is actually [kɔm'plɛt:] or [kɔmp'lɛt:], it's just me that has a desire to understand and investigate every little aspect.)


Maybe, I expressed myself wrongly, what I meant to ask was:
1) In [kɔm.plɛt:] the stress is clearly on the second syllable but in [kɔmp.lɛt:] the two syllables are of equal length, so it is unclear whether [kɔmp.lɛt:] is actuallly ['kɔmp.lɛt:] or [kɔmp'lɛt:].
2) If [kɔmp.lɛt:] is ambiguous, does the ambiguity matter? I.e., is stress pattern phonemic?


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## Tjahzi

Well, firstly, I'm not sure that one, as you do, can assume that stress is determined through _total syllable length_ (rather than _syllable containing the longest phoneme_) nor if two short phonemes always equal one long.

However, since the above issue cannot be resolved other than through a thorough investigation including exact measurements (which I neither can do nor have done), I'll try to answer the question as good as I can, assuming those assumptions are indeed true. 

The problem here is that I'm under the impression that pitch accent is coming into play, or at least I can't rule it out. As such, I'm under the impression that the stress is indeed always on the last syllable. If this is due to the stress pattern being the same or pitch accent covering for stress, I can't tell. (It could be that others can. Speakers of my dialect show lower ability at both creating and distinguishing between the pitch accents and that in combination with the fact that I have very limited musical experience (a bad "musical ear", that is) makes me an awful person to consult on pitch accent related matters).

Additionally, it should also be worth noting that /t/ is a plosive. As such, it cannot really be "lengthened" just as a fricative, sonorant or vowel can be dragged out. As such, I believe the difference between /t/ and /t:/ is not exactly length, but rather that /t:/ is modified in a way that distinguishes it. My theory (this is my theory, I've not had it confirmed by grammars, but neither have I had it disproved) is that the "long /t/" is either glottalized/pharyngealized or preceded by a glottal stop (the former seems more likely). 
This is a radical theory, but given the fact that /t:/ is in no way a affricative, repeated (that is, two consecutive plosives) or dragged out in some other way, I believe the quality to be the only possible aspect left to differ. Given that, this is what I _hear_ (considering I don't speak any language that officially contains glottalized or pharyngealized consonants, my observation is based solely on my knowledge of IPA and phonology in general).

To sum up, I concluded that the stress is always on the last syllable, but that I'm unsure whether this is due to pitch accent, /l/+/t:/ always being perceived as being longer than /k/+/mp/, the latter syllable containing /t:/ and as such perceived as longer or /t:/ being an in somewhat altered phone which is distinguishable and equal to a long sonorant or fricative in that it marks the stressed syllable.

In short, I don't have an answer to your question, but a number of interesting theories. And one thing is for sure, Swedish phonology is complicated way beyond stress pattern. 



cocuyo said:


> I'm not sure about the terminology here; I guess that if one decides that only "long" vowels can be stressed, and that stress is different from emphasis, prefixes as "in-" or "an-" might be considered emphatic rather than stressed, as the vowels in them are indeed short. To me, stress is the same as emphasis, and Swedish has a panoply of different accents that are quite unpredictable to anyone that has not grown up with it.



Ehm, I would absolutely say that consonants as well as vowels can be both long (or in the case of plosives, somehow distinguishable) and stressed. As such, prefixes such as _in- _or _an-_ contain a long consonant, namely [n:].

Indeed, stress and emphasis is very much the same thing in Swedish.


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