Aboutkarinafp Expertise I`m a teacher from and in Sweden. I teach Swedish as well as English, French, Spanish and music. I`m also rather good at finding information on the Internet.
Experience I've been an expert at askme.com, and was rated # 1 in the "Language" category. Must have been doing something right, then...
Question Hi! I'm learning a song in Swedish, but I just can't seem to get the sj- sort of sound down. The particular word in the song is stjärnetak. On the CD, the first part sounds sort of like a cross between a p, f, and w in English, but I'm not sure. I've looked online and downloaded a sound file of someone saying the word for seven (sju), but I'm still confused. I speak some Norwegian, but they just say that sound like "sh," so it's not that difficult.
Tack!
Answer Hello Alex! Sorry you had to wait for my answer, but I just returned home from a month in Greece.
You are asking about the hardest sound of them all, the "voiceless dorso-palatal/velar fricative" (Google for it and you'll get some really scientifical articles... ;-), i.e. the notorious sj-sound.
It is really difficult to produce. And even more difficult to try and explain in writing. It's really just a puff of air... I'll give you some links to different sites where people are trying to explain it.
I should have known: The voiceless palatal-velar fricative, voiceless dorso-palatal velar fricative, voiceless postalveolar and velar fricative, voiceless coarticulated velar and palatoalveolar fricative are unique to the Swedish language.
In other words, no other recorded language uses this weird sound - spelled with an sk, sj or sometimes even skj - which to my best reckoning is like trying to say an English sh and w at the same time. It is, undoubtedly, the most difficult thing to approximate when you start learning to speak Swedish. And plenty of people never master it, I suppose, opting for a plain old sh, which is more or less how upper class ladies (at least they would describe themselves as ladies) from Stockholm's upper class neighborhood pronounce it.
I've long gotten over the voiceless palatal-velar fricative, though. Strangely, it's the vowels that still get me sometimes - being consistent with my long and short vowels (or is that vowels before long and short consonants?).
The Swedish phrase for the day is sjuttiosju sjösjuka sjömän sköttes av sju sköna sjuksköterskor, which means 77 seasick sailors were nursed by seven fair nurses.
say that "Swedish is set apart by its (intonation and rhythm), and is also noteworthy for the voiceless dorso-palatal velar fricative. This features a distinct labialization (making sounds with the lips while the rest of the mouth produces another sound). This sound is not present in any other spoken language on the planet."
So don't dispair if you won't be able to learn it properly! Take a look also at the sites:
And to make it even more difficult, the sound varies over the country. In the northern dialects it doesn't even exist, but they say 'sh' instead.
Now it's time to move from theory to practice. Try to just open your mouth a bit and blow out a puff of air. Do this over and over again, each time moving your lips a little bit forward, towards the y-sound in the word 'you' (but not going all the way to the y-form of the lips) and I think you will find it somewhere along the way. You may have to rise your tongue a bit up from the bottom of your mouth to get a really good sj-puff. ;-)
Good luck, and don't hesitate to come back with further questions!
