The Swedish alphabet has three more letters than the English alphabet, and all of them are vowels.
What people outside of Scandinavia usually take to be accent marks over the vowels A and O, are in Swedish (and the other Scandinavian languages) actually part of entirely different letters: in the Swedish alphabet, Å, Ä, and Ö come after Z.
This makes nine letters of the Swedish alphabet that are vowels (a, e, i, o, u, y, å, ä, ö), but when speaking, there are eighteen. This is because each of the nine vowels has 'long' and 'short' versions which are pronounced differently – and which often make the difference between one word and another.
For speakers of languages like English, where variations in vowel pronunciation are usually differences of accent, not of word meaning, this aspect of spoken Swedish can be particularly challenging. We not only have to learn how to hear and pronounce the eighteen vowels of spoken Swedish, but we also have to train our brains to start paying close attention to fine vowel distinctions in the first place – because in Swedish, they can distinguish between an everyday word and a very rude one.
As newcomers to Sweden, we may barely be able to hear the difference, but Swedes sure can. Here are a few of the trickiest ones to watch out for.
1. Sorry, a mountain what?
The word räv means fox and, given its place in ubiquitous Swedish outerwear/trekking brand Fjällräven (literally, "the mountain fox"), it shows up in speech more than you might expect. Unfortunately for Swedish language-learners, it is also off by one sound from röv, which means "ass" (as in buttocks, not donkey).
Here's the key pronunciation difference:
Räv (fox) – has an open 'a' sound made near the front of the mouth, not far from the vowel sound in the standard American (or Canadian!) English pronunciation of the word "cat."
Röv (ass) – the most helpful advice I've received about how to pronounce the Swedish letter ö was to think of it as the sound "euh" (as in, "euhhh...I'm not sure how to say that").
Key takeaway: "ahh" = fox, "euh" = ass.
2. I didn't mean that sort of sucking
Dammsugare, which is the Swedish word for "vacuum cleaner", is one of the language's many wonderfully literal compounds: the first part of the word, damm, means "dust", and the second part, sugare, means "sucker" (as in, a thing which sucks). And dust-sucking is of course exactly what a vacuum cleaner does.
Alas for the long-suffering newcomer to Sweden, damm ("dust") differs from dam ("lady") by one "m". The additional "m" in damm (and dammsugare) means that the preceding vowel (a) is pronounced "short"; dam, with one "m", has a long "a" sound.
To non-Swedish ears, it can be a barely discernible distinction, but to Swedish speakers the difference is marked. So if you notice a Swede trying kindly to suppress a smirk when you ask a question about vacuum cleaners, it's probably because you accidentally asked about "lady-suckers".
Here's the key pronunciation difference:
Dammsugare (vacuum cleaner) has a short "a" that's similar to the first "a" in the Spanish word "casa". If that doesn't help you much, you can try thinking of the sound like a very short version of how a comic book character might "scream" in a speech bubble ("Aaaaaaa! Swedish vowels are driving me crazy!")
Damsugare (not a 'real' word in Swedish, but is heard as "lady-sucker") – has a long "a" and sounds basically like you're making the noise "aww" (as in, "aww, there are so many cute compound words in Swedish").
Key takeaway: "aaa" = vacuum, "aww" = sucking ladies
3. Not many people in Sweden are *kort*
If you are, like me, vertically challenged, living in Scandinavia is likely to make you acutely aware of your condition. While there are certainly kort ("short") people here, there are more than the usual amount of tall people.
Complicating the issue is if you try to talk about your shortness in Sweden: the word meaning "short", kort, is, for the non-native speaker of Swedish, dangerously close in pronunciation to the word kåt, which is a slang term meaning "horny".
Here's the key pronunciation difference:
Kort ("short") – you can think of the pronunciation of this word as sort of halfway in-between the English words "caught" and "cook." It's a bit like the name "Kurt," but with a more rounded vowel.
Kåt ("horny") – the long version of the Swedish å isn't really comparable to any vowel in English, but you can aim at the right pronunciation of kåt by trying to make the sound "oh-awt".
Key takeaway: "urt" = short, "oh-awt" = ready for action
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