Pronunciation

You know to pronounce the letters, A-Z perfectly, as in English; you can push your ‘P’s and roll your ‘R’s and sound like native speakers of English, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you can read and pronounce everything written in Swedish with your English knowledge. Remember, you are in Sweden and the Queen of Sweden speaks Swedish.

Knowing few letters and the way they are pronounced, will be very helpful in spelling names of places and people. The most pleasing sound to hear, is someone calling you by your name, exactly the way you pronounce your name. Swedish language has few extra vowels with one or two tittles over ‘a’ and ‘o’ them, lets not try to understand them now.

Lets see how the name of the place ‘Karlberg’ is pronounced. Its simply ‘Karlby’, as in English. So remember anywhere you see ‘Berg’ replace it ‘By’. It applies to a lot of Swedish last names, like Dahlberg, Edberg, and Nyberg etc. Now pronouncing Nyberg is tricky again, ‘y’ is a vowel in Swedish and it is used like ‘i’ in English, So its ‘Niby’ or ‘Knee + by’. This applies to name of the places as well, ‘Vallingby’ is ‘Valling + B’. Confusing?!!! ;)

Don’t think ‘Peater’ is your new teammate, because it might still refer to your old friend ‘Peter’. If same letters appear twice consequently, You will find people stressing both of them, like ‘Henning’ is ‘Hen + ning’, similarly ‘An + na’, ‘Em + ma’ etc. Don’t consciously make a effort to pause to prounce the letters, it will sound stupid. J

Another important candidate is the letter ‘K’. It sounds like ‘S’ when followed by the vowels ‘i’, ‘y’. ‘a’ with dots on it (I don’t have that letter in my laptop keypad). The tube station ‘Kista’ is ‘Shista’ and ‘Skarholmen’ is ‘Sharholmen’. Church in Swedish is ‘Kyrka’, which is pronounced as ‘Shirka’ as in English.

When I have to ask for directions, I say ‘How do I go to Karlberg (pause for a moment and quickly) Karlby!’ because sometimes people do not expect a foreigner to pronounce it correctly.

Having said this, I still wonder what the lady voice in the underground train announces, when I arrive at ‘Medborgarplatsen’. I am pretty sure that its not ‘Med + Bor + Gar + Platsen’. Hope I get to pronounce it correctly very soon J…….

Pronunciation