Dialects and Standard Swedish

bamba, huvva, rullebör, hövve, krösamos, görbra och rabbis? Understand that? Was that even Swedish? Yes, actually. They are Swedish words but none of them are spoken in the whole of the country, only in smaller areas.

Language variation like this that is spoken only within one area is called dialect or mål Sometimes dialects involve words only used in one part of Sweden and hard to understand in other parts. Other times there are only small differences between different dialects, like when the same words are pronounced differently. For example the word for sausage. korv, körv, korv, kå:v. The Swedish dialects can be separated into five different groups.

Sydsvenska mål, Götamål, Gotländska mål, Sveamål, Norrländska mål, Shall we have a listen to them? We'll start in Southern Sweden. What is typical for the dialect here? Well, here they use a guttural r U is pronounced as O A is pronounced as aå T in the end of words becomes D. skottkärra rullebör hunden honden tak taåk mat mad Typical for the dialect in Götaland: The consonants disappear in some words.

Some L's are pronounced with as wide tongue as possible -- this is called a retroflex flax. In some words I becomes E and E becomes Ö. skulle sulle Flicka flicka fisk fesk kyrka körka Of course there are some things typical in Svealand. The T often disappears in the end of words. Words ending with an R are merged together with the next word. Ä may become an e Ö sounds like u huset huse har dom ha´rom säkert sekert dörren durren In Norrland some typical dialect traits are that pronunciation is put on the first vowel and the last vowel might disappear.

ER is often lost in the end of verbs. Umeå Uume han springer han spring Typical on Gotland is that E is pronounced as A E within words often becomes EI A in the end of words becomes E nej naj skrev skreiv tala tale Why are the differences between the dialects this wide? Well, it's because of what the countryside looked like. Mountains, lakes, rivers and forests were in the way, hindering people from meeting across area borders. The less contact people in one area had with others from another area the more differences in the dialects.

Now we've been talking about spoken, not written language. Are there any dialects in the written language as well? No. Pretty early on Sweden got a common written language for the whole country. But not until the seventeenth century was there an official pronunciation.

This pronunciation is called standard Swedish or: rikssvenska. This language at first consisted of how the written language was pronounced in Mälardalen and the Stockholm area. But why here? This is where the parliament and the royal castle were situated, and where an educated class of society lived. A class that could read and pronounce what was written in the books.

The dialects spoken in Mälardalen affected Standard Swedish greatly, but so did words and inflexions from other dialects too, since the nobility had moved to the capital from all over the country. Standard Swedish and dialects are in constant change. Old words disappear and new words come into use. The differences between the dialects have become less since most people in Sweden today are in much more contact with people from other areas of the country. Previously most people stayed in their home area all through their lives.

Today many move to live in new places. Another reason the differences decrease is that most people read the same things and watch the same series or films on tv. So now when you have watched this film you might start using words like... tjöta, stölli, i jåns Va mike jär klucku? Sluta tjöta nu.

Du är stölli!