# Norwegian vs Swedish: tone/ton/tonem 2



## skandinavien

Hi!

I found that learning the tones in Swedish was very easy, because they are very prominent-sounding. I am having a harder time in Norwegian. In a low-tone dialect like the one around Oslo, how exactly is tone 2 pronounced? I am having trouble finding good resources (Google is not too great), so I welcome PMs with advice!

For example:

In central Swedish, I would say *alla* (tone 2) is split into two parts, with both parts stressed/held for roughly the same amount of time. That is, *a *starts low and rises high, then *lla* falls back low again. So I would break up the word as *a-lla* same with *ba-da (and* *pra-ta, le-va, ve-ta etc).
*
In Eastern Norwegian, *alle* does not sound as staccato to me as Swedish does -- it sounds very smooth, with the low tone being held a bit before moving high again. In addition, the distinction between the tones is not as stark as Swedish. It starts high at *a , *then the sound *ll *is stressed as the tone goes lower, then the tone goes back up with *e*. So I would actually break it down into three parts: *a-lll-e.* Same with *b-aaa-de.*

That brings me to the famous pairs:

bønder - bønner
vannet - vanne
*
Bønner *sounds like *b-øøø-nner*, going *high-low-high *in a very smooth way.
*
Vanne*, sounds like *v-aaaaaa-nne* going *high-low-high* in a very smooth way.

Do my descriptions make sense? Please PM me with resources, tips, advice, etc, as well! Thanks!


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## More od Solzi

There are at least 4 different phonetic realizations of tonemes 1 and 2 in Norwegian and Swedish, all depending on a region.
No exact phonetic realization is more correct than others. That's why grammars of Swedish and Norwegian (and dictionaries) only note their  phonological values, and not their phonetic values.

According to phoneticians:

Type 0:  no phonological contrast between tone1 and tone 1: both are realized HL  (regions where this system is used: Nordhordland and Midhordland except for Bergen, most of Finnmark, Northeastern Nordbotten,  Finland)
-
Type1A:  tone 1: HL, tone 2: LHL (regions where this system is used: most of Western Norway, parts of Northern Norway (coastal Troms) and in Sweden: Scania and adjoining regions (Blekinge, Southern Småland etc).
Type 1B:  tone 1:HL, tone 2: LHL (similar to type 1B but with later timing: regions used:  Dalarna and Gotland)
-
Type 2A: tone 1: LHL, tone 2: HLHL (used in Stockholm and much of Central Sweden (except for Dalarna and Gotland), used in Northern Sweden too,  used in Southern Norway and some cities of Western Norway (like Stavanger)
Type 2B: tone 1: LH,  tone 2: LHL (used in Göta region of Sweden and in Southeastern Norway).

*1heden*(the heath) vs *2heden*  (_heden tid_)

In Bergen and Malmö: * 1heden *= hèden;  *2heden *= hédèn
In Oslo and Gothenburg ;* 1heden*= hedén; *2heden* = hèdén
In Stockholm: *1heden*= hédèn; *2heden=* hêdên

(` = falling; ´  = rising; ^ = first rise then fall; _ = low)


source: http://www.google.no/url?sa=t&rct=j...Wsm_ao8vYTBsxcrU5gqITTQ&bvm=bv.65058239,d.bGQ


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## myšlenka

Hi,
 it's hard to read your transcriptions of how the tones are distributed across the word, but generally accent 2 is characterized by high-low-high (HLH) in the Oslo accent where the first H is linked to the first syllable while the L is associated with the right edge of the first syllable and with all following non-final syllables. The final H is aligned with the right edge of the word. Norwegian tone however, is not taught explicitly taught to foreigners (not to Norwegians either) so you won't find many resources on it. Morever, tone is more than distinguishing between words that would otherwise be homophonous. Tone spans across something which is referred to as accent phrases which could be defined as the area between two stressed syllables. The distribution of accent 1 and accent 2 is predictable to a large extent if you have access to the linguistic history, but it is opaque in modern Norwegian. To mess it up a little more, the tones change in prefixed words and in compounds.

 So, in order to fully master this, it's not enough to know how to pronounce certain word pairs, but you'd have to memorize a whole lot of other stuff. I am not saying this to discourage you, but it is rather messy.


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## More od Solzi

I forgot to mention:  for tonal analysis not only words with short vowels should be used, but words with long vowels too.
Foreigners seem to acquire/learn South Swedish and West Norwegian tonal accents (''high tone dialects'', ''one peaked  toneme dialects'') easier
than variants with complex two peaked tonal accents (either of Stockholm or Oslo/Gothenburg types).

Tone is tricky to ''guess'' from Bokmål texts:
Nynorsk and Swedish: *2*ropar,  * 1*heter (_-er_  present form of verbs take accent*1*)
Bokmål:  *2*roper,  * 1*heter (no way to tell)


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## Ífaradà

I personally haven't met a foreigner that was able to pronounce the tones correctly. It's very, very easy to hear. 

That said, I wouldn't use a lot of time on this. It's better to pick it up on the go.


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## Tjahzi

Ífaradà said:


> I personally haven't met a foreigner that was able to pronounce the tones correctly. It's very, very easy to hear.
> 
> That said, I wouldn't use a lot of time on this. It's better to pick it up on the go.


Agreed. I usually advice people not to bother with "tones" since 1) they are hardly ever phonemic and 2) you'll never get them right anyway.

(That said, the above information provided by More od Solzi is very interesting.)


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## myšlenka

More od Solzi said:


> Tone is tricky to ''guess'' from Bokmål texts:
> Nynorsk and Swedish: *2*ropar,  * 1*heter (_-er_  present form of verbs take accent*1*)
> Bokmål:  *2*roper,  * 1*heter (no way to tell)


 Are you sure about this? When I pronounce _heter_ with accent 1 it sounds so wrong.


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## More od Solzi

myšlenka said:


> Are you sure about this? When I pronounce _heter_ with accent 1 it sounds so wrong.



What about _spiser, eter, løper, kommer_?
Normally Swedish and Nynorsk -_ar _present forms (which always take accent 2) correspond
to 2-er forms in Bokmål , while -_er _present forms in Swedish and Nynorsk (which take accent 1) correspond to 1-er forms in Bokmål [present verbal forms].

Please read here (on the page 100) of  THE LEXICAL SPECIFICATION OF NORWEGIAN TONAL WORD ACCENTS
by Allison Wetterlin



> The present tense does not seem to be as homogenous as the infinitive and imperative
> forms. At first impression, the present tense suffix seems to be {-er} and is found in both
> Accent-1 and Accent-2 polysyllabic forms.  However, as we already mentioned when
> discussing Withgott & Halvorsen (1984) and Kristoffersen (2000), diachronically we are
> dealing with different classes of verb stems. One class of ON verbs had a monosyllabic present
> tense, and one had a disyllabic present tense, which coincides with present tense forms in
> Modern Norwegian that have Accent 1 and Accent 2, respectively.



https://kops.ub.uni-konstanz.de/xml...us-73846/Diss_Wetterlin_Feb_09.pdf?sequence=1


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## sjiraff

Is this like the difference between "ånden" as in, the spirit and "ånden" as in breath from someone's mouth, or "hender" as in hands, and "hender" as in the verb "å hende"?

I still don't know the differences in how each of them are pronounced but apparently there is a difference. I know in English we have similar things with "content" (as in being content with something) or "content" as in, innhold. Or even "a convict" and "to convict" are said differently.

Not sure if this counts as tone though!


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## myšlenka

sjiraff said:


> Is this like the difference between "ånden" as in, the spirit and "ånden" as in breath from someone's mouth, or "hender" as in hands, and "hender" as in the verb "å hende"?
> 
> I still don't know the differences in how each of them are pronounced but apparently there is a difference. I know in English we have similar things with "content" (as in being content with something) or "content" as in, innhold. Or even "a convict" and "to convict" are said differently.
> 
> Not sure if this counts as tone though!


In the case of _ånden_ (spirit) versus _ånden_ (breath), there is a tonal difference but also a segmental one; the d is pronounced in the latter. As for _hender_ (hands) versus _hender_ (happen) the only difference is a tonal one.

The English examples are cases where the difference is based on which syllable is stressed, i.e. it is not tone.


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## sjiraff

myšlenka said:


> In the case of _ånden_ (spirit) versus _ånden_ (breath), there is a tonal difference but also a segmental one; the d is pronounced in the latter. As for _hender_ (hands) versus _hender_ (happen) the only difference is a tonal one.


Oh, so with ånden as in "breath" I say the D hard? I was never sure if the D was hard in ånd to be honest, or if it was just being said quickly or something.





myšlenka said:


> The English examples are cases where the difference is based on which syllable is stressed, i.e. it is not tone.


Ah I see, the best way I can think of typing the differences is with "convict" as a verb it almost becomes "c-nvict" where the O becomes hard to hear, but with "a convict" it's like the O is a long syllable.


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## myšlenka

More od Solzi said:


> What about _spiser, eter, løper, kommer_?
> Normally Swedish and Nynorsk -_ar _present forms (which always take accent 2) correspond
> to 2-er forms in Bokmål , while -_er _present forms in Swedish and Nynorsk (which take accent 1) correspond to 1-er forms in Bokmål [present verbal forms].


I don't know much about Swedish but for Nynorsk, the present tense -_ar_ is used in two cases: the _a_-class and for a limited set of disyllabic verbs where the two syllables are equally weighted. They take accent 2 in any case and the _ar_-ending corresponds, as you say, to Bokmål _-er._ As for Nynorsk present tense _-er_ (corresponds to Bokmål _-er_), it is used for the _e_-class and as far as I know, they all take accent 2 unless the infintival ending is _-ere_, which would induce accent 1.

So what about Bokmål _spiser, eter, løper, kommer_? These verbs come from a class of verbs that used to have monosyllabic present tense, i.e. they were strong verbs and they generally take accent 1. Thus, the general picture that arises is this:



InfinitivePresent tenseBokmål weak verb, _elske_elske2elsker2Bokmål verb with -ere, _analysere_analysere1analyserer1Bokmål strong verb, _komme_komme2kommer1Nynorsk weak a-verb, _elske_elske2elskar2Nynorsk weak e-verb, _lære_lære2lærer2Nynorsk verb with -ere, _analysere_analysere1analyserer1Nynorsk strong verb, _komme_komme2kjem1


So all in all, you can't predict anything on the basis of the present tense ending -_er_, be it in Bokmål or in Nynorsk, and I suspect the same is true for Swedish.


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## Ben Jamin

myšlenka said:


> I don't know much about Swedish but for Nynorsk, the present tense -_ar_ is used in two cases: the _a_-class and for a limited set of disyllabic verbs where the two syllables are equally weighted. They take accent 2 in any case and the _ar_-ending corresponds, as you say, to Bokmål _-er._ As for Nynorsk present tense _-er_ (corresponds to Bokmål _-er_), it is used for the _e_-class and as far as I know, they all take accent 2 unless the infintival ending is _-ere_, which would induce accent 1.
> 
> So what about Bokmål _spiser, eter, løper, kommer_? These verbs come from a class of verbs that used to have monosyllabic present tense, i.e. they were strong verbs and they generally take accent 1. Thus, the general picture that arises is this:
> 
> 
> 
> InfinitivePresent tenseBokmål weak verb, _elske_elske2elsker2Bokmål verb with -ere, _analysere_analysere1analyserer1Bokmål strong verb, _komme_komme2kommer1Nynorsk weak a-verb, _elske_elske2elskar2Nynorsk weak e-verb, _lære_lære2lærer2Nynorsk verb with -ere, _analysere_analysere1analyserer1Nynorsk strong verb, _komme_komme2kjem1
> 
> 
> So all in all, you can't predict anything on the basis of the present tense ending -_er_, be it in Bokmål or in Nynorsk, and I suspect the same is true for Swedish.


Are you suggesting that there exists a spoken Bokmål standard?


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## myšlenka

Ben Jamin said:


> Are you suggesting that there exists a spoken Bokmål standard?


No. This is for dialects where lexical tone is present and the present tense ending -_er_ doesn't provide any tonal information.


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## Ben Jamin

myšlenka said:


> No. This is for dialects where lexical tone is present and the present tense ending -_er_ doesn't provide any tonal information.



Sorry, but I still do not understand how you can define Nynorsk and Bokmål pronunciation.

I was always told that Nynorsk and Bokmål are written standards, and must not be confused with dialects, and that a person can speak (or rather read aloud) Bokmål or Nynorsk and use any Norwegian pronunciation that is natural for the speaker.


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## Ífaradà

Ben Jamin said:


> Sorry, but I still do not understand how you can define Nynorsk and Bokmål pronunciation.
> 
> I was always told that Nynorsk and Bokmål are written standards, and must not be confused with dialects, and that a person can speak (or rather read aloud) Bokmål or Nynorsk and use any Norwegian pronunciation that is natural for the speaker.


Well,

To use Yoruba as an example. Just because I might write "I am going to the market" this way for the sake of being clear: "mo nlọ sí ọjà", while in normal speech I'd say "mo nlọ s'ọ́jà" ("i" gone and ọ with a high tone), but I'd still probably read it aloud as "mo nlọ sí ọjà" with high tone on the "i" and mid tone on the "ọ", following the the pronounciation of how it's written. I'm not sure if this is a good example, but written languages can also be read the way they are written.


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## Ben Jamin

Ífaradà said:


> Well,
> 
> To use Yoruba as an example. Just because I might write "I am going to the market" this way for the sake of being clear: "mo nlọ sí ọjà", while in normal speech I'd say "mo nlọ s'ọ́jà" ("i" gone and ọ with a high tone), but I'd still probably read it aloud as "mo nlọ sí ọjà" with high tone on the "i" and mid tone on the "ọ", following the the pronounciation of how it's written. I'm not sure if this is a good example, but written languages can also be read the way it is written.


The word "analysere" is written exactly the same way both in Nynorsk and Bokmål. I think that the speaker will use the tonems according to his own dialect, and not the "variety" of Norwegian he is reading.
I have heard speakers of Oslo West dialect (strongly connected with Bokmål) who read Nynorsk texts. Their pronunciation and intonation bore no traces of any dialect that traditionally uses Nynorsk in writing.


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## Ífaradà

Ben Jamin said:


> The word "analysere" is written exactly the same way both in Nynorsk and Bokmål. I think that the speaker will use the tonems according to his own dialect, and not the "variety" of Norwegian he is reading.
> I have heard speakers of Oslo West dialect (strongly connected with Bokmål) who read Nynorsk texts. Their pronunciation and intonation bore no traces of any dialect that traditionally uses Nynorsk in writing.


You are assuming here that Bokmål and Nynorsk can't be spoken (at least without traces of your own dialect) - which they most certainly can (same as with standard Yoruba which is used in radio/TV broadcasts even though it was originally a written language. Intonation in Yoruba dialects varies, so they switch over to the standardized version to make themselves clear, and the intonation changes to reflect the way standard Yoruba is supposed to be spoken). Similarly,  when I read Nynorsk, I read Nynorsk, literally. There are no real traces of my own dialect or any other for that matter. There is definitely a standard for pronounciation in Bokmål/Nynorsk, though it's probably not very clear to non-native speakers.


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## myšlenka

Ben Jamin said:


> Sorry, but I still do not understand how you can define Nynorsk and Bokmål pronunciation.
> 
> I was always told that Nynorsk and Bokmål are written standards, and must not be confused with dialects, and that a person can speak (or rather read aloud) Bokmål or Nynorsk and use any Norwegian pronunciation that is natural for the speaker.


The issue was wether tone was reflected in spelling or not. More od Solzi's claim was that Nynorsk present tense -_er_ takes accent 1 in tonal varieties of Norwegian.


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