The charts below show the way in which the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) represents Swedish and Norwegian pronunciations in Wikipedia articles.
See Swedish phonology and Norwegian phonology for a more thorough look at the sounds of these languages. Examples in the table are Swedish unless otherwise noted.
syll [ˈaasʏaal] "sleeper" (railroad) in Swedish; fylle "fill" in Norwegian
No English equivalent; German short ü
unstressed
ə
begå [bəaaˈaagoː] "commit"
about
Stress and tone
IPA
Examples
Swedish
ˈaaa
[ˈaaandɛaan]
"the duck"
Tone 1 / acute accent:
• Single stress with single falling tone in Stockholm: [ˈaâandɛan]
• Low tone [ˈaà] in Oslo and falling tone [ˈaâ] in western Norway
ˈaaa.ˈaaa
[ˈaaanˈaadɛaan]
"the spirit"
Tone 2 / grave accent:
• Double stress with double falling tone in Stockholm: [ˈaaâaanˈaadɛaâaan]
• Falling tone [ˈaâ] in Oslo and rising-falling tone in western Norway
Notes
↑ aaaiEuIn many of the dialects that have an apical rhotic consonant, a recursive Sandhi process of retroflexion occurs wherein clusters of /r/ and dental consonants /rd/, /rl/, /rn/, /rs/, /rt/ produce retroflex consonant realizations: [ɖ], [ɭ], [ɳ], [ʂ], [ʈ]. In dialects with a guttural R, such as Southern Swedish and many Southern and Western Norwegian dialects these are [ʀaad], [ʀaal], [ʀaan], [ʀaas], [ʀaat].
↑Swedish /ɧ/ is a regionally variable sound, sometimes [xʷ], [ɸaaˠ], or [ʂ]
↑/r/ is regionally variable, being alveolar in some dialects and uvular in others.
↑ aaaiBefore /r/, the quality of non-high front vowels is changed in Swedish. /ɛaaː/ and /ɛ/ lower to [æ]; /øaaː/, and /œ/ are lowered to [œaa̞], though the diacritic is not included in the chart above for simplicity.
↑ aaaiEuooVowels spelled u, o are compressed vowels. Those spelled ö/ø, y, å, on the other hand, are protruded vowels.
↑[ʉaaː] is a central vowel in Oslo, but a front vowel in Stockholm.
Bibliography
Duden 6: Das Aussprachewöarterbuch (3d edition, 1990, ISBN 3-411-20916-X).
