Language and Culture in Sweden

The 'r'-sound is the most prominent marker between southern and central Swedish dialects. In the south 'r' is pronounced "in the French way" deep in the throat. In Finland, and on most of the Scandinavian peninsula, 'r' is pronounced as Italians do - with the tongue vibrating against the back side of the front teeth. In an intermediate zone both kinds of 'r'-sounds are in use, but in different positions in the words. In unstressed syllables the 'r'-sound is also often modified to kinds of the "British" 'r'-sound.

Finally the 'r'-sound uses to modify preceding vowels. The difference sad-said, man-men, bad-bed exists in Swedish, but in most dialects the former only when followed by 'r' while the latter is the pronunciation of the 'ä'-vowel in other cases. (The same goes for the 'ö'-vowel.) Hence some Swedes have problems with these basic English sounds.

Erland Sommarskog <sommar@algonet.se> replies:

To be fair, dialects of Swedish are not worse than say of Italian.
- Or for that matter, English.

You don't need to bother about the "sj" in "sjuk". While as noted above, this is a strange creature, it is also subject to huge variation, and if you get in conversation with some Swedes you might find that everyone is pronouncing the sound differently - even that the same person is chosing different realisations on different occassions. Phonemically you would write them all /S/, you can use the sound for "sh" in "shoe" without being particularly wrong. You will then have to learn to distinguish this alevoar fricative from the palatal fricative in "tjuv" - then again, there are Swedes who don't.

From my experience the retroflexes do not cause much problems either. Odd as they are, foreigners seem to pick them up quite easily. And, again, it is possible to avoid them. They arise when 'r' is followed by 's', 'n', 'd', 't' and 'l', but several dialects pronounce them separately. And while in Sweden this is dialects which have an uvular or velar 'r', I know people who speak with a front 'r' and yet do not use retroflexes without having any Finland-Swedish ancestry at all. How this has come about I don't know, but I'm suspecting these individuals to have abandoned their original dialect for an over-correct standard Swedish.

There are nevertheless some difficult sounds in Swedish. 'u' as in "kul" is a rounded semi-high front vowel which has few equals. To a foreigner it might seem close to 'y' which is a rounded high front vowel, but I can assure you to a Swede they are most definitely not.

Then again, I once spoke with a British gentleman who said "Sturegatan". His 'u' was perfect, but the first 'a' in "gatan" revealed him directly. To wit, the 'a' is the same as in "father" but with slightly different colour.

Anyway, Swedish pronouciation is probably difficult because it is so irregular. Not so bad as English, but bad enough. One thing we are particularly fond of are homographs, that is words with the same spelling but different pronounciation: "vän", "kort", "hov", "hänger" (friend/friendly, short/picture, court/hoof, hang/devote).

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7.2.6 Culture

Swedes take pride in making the society friendly to children and their parents including long government-paid paternal leaves, subsidized pre-schools and municipal investments for sport and leisure-time activities. Swedish women have one of the highest fertility rates in the industrialized world, giving birth to 1.97 child each, and the highest rate of breast feeding. It is however wide spread misconceptions that Sweden should suffer from high number of suicides or that Swedes should work less than others. Sweden is on the 15th position on the list of suicide rates in Europe, and only England and Portugal have longer working weeks than Sweden.

In the same intention to make the society friendly and to lighten the lives of its members, Sweden has also put certain effort into making public buildings, and also ordinary tenement houses, available for wheel chairs.

The nature, the big woods and the mountains, have a particular place in the hearts of the Swedes. The General Right to Public Access ("Allemansrätten") is unique for the Scandinavian countries, and the most important base for outdoor recreation, providing the possibility for each and everyone to visit non-cultivated land, to take a bath in seas, and to pick the wild flowers, berries and mushrooms.

The religious rites such as baptizing, confirmation, wedding and funeral are deeply rooted in the culture, although only a small minority participate in ordinary mass. Despite the fact that the Swedes have honored the old Germanic tradition that the people follow the religion of the king, and subsequently all Swedes were obliged to communion long into the 19:th century and to membership in the state church long into the 20:th century, it can also be noted that Swedes are one of the most secularized peoples in the world.

The church, and its services, are perceived more as a cultural heritage, than as a religious. As for instance at 1:st Sunday in Advent and at Christmas Eve - the two days of the year when the churches are filled.

The Church of Sweden ("Svenska Kyrkan") is Lutheran. Most of the Swedish people belong to this church. The bonds between State and Church will be somewhat loosened around year 2.000.

Besides the Church of Sweden there are several other Christian and non-Christian denominations. In most major towns you can find the Catholic Church, Islamic centers, the Baptist churches, Pentecoastal congregations and the Covenant Church of Sweden ("Svenska missionsförbundet") which is related to the Reformed Churches, and in some towns there is also a Jewish community.

Science and technology also play an important role in the contemporary Swedish society. Private companies fund substantial research and development, and also the government funds research at the universities. Examples are the JAS Gripen fighter project, and the information technology strategies put forth by the Bildt (1991-1994) government. (The following cabinets, led by Ingvar Carlsson and Göran Persson have been less enthusiastic about these projects.)

Leading cultural institutions (in Stockholm) are the Swedish Royal Opera; the Royal Dramatic Theater; the National Touring Theater; and the Swedish Academy, which awards the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Literature is important in Swedish culture. Authors like August Strindberg (1849-1912), Selma Lagerlöf (1858-1940) who wrote Gösta Berlings Saga (awarded with the Nobel Prize) and Astrid Lindgren (1907-) are among the best known. At the previous turn of the century public libraries were organized by different organizations in nearly every village with a church or a school. Most of them still remain, but now run by the municipalities. A curious detail is that most Swedes probably would not count authors as Edith Södergran (1892-1923) and Tove Jansson as Swedish authors, despite the fact that they have written in Swedish - their mother tongue.

There aren't many internationally known Swedish composers, but Swedes have an ancient fondness for ballads and troubadours (Carl Michael Bellman (1740-1795) is dearly loved by Swedes), and in the later days Swedish pop and rock groups have reached international fame (e.g ABBA, Army of Lovers, Roxette, Ace of Base, etc).

Many popular cultural personalities are of immigrant background, but few have let this become a part of their image. Maybe with exception of the poet Theodor Kallifatides and Finland-Swedish actors, as Stina Ekblad, Jörn Donner, Birgitta Ulfsson and Lasse Pöysti. The Finnish conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Finnish singer Arja Saijonmaa should belongs to the most famous Sweden-Finns. Promising is however how a lot of new Swedish rock bands come from suburbs with immigrant majorities, and how some of the most popular rock and pop artists are clearly visible proud immigrants, as for instance Dr. Alban.

Sweden also has a strong movie tradition, already from the days of the silent movies, people such as Victor Sjöström (1879-1960), known in the United States as Victor Seastrom, and Mauritz Stiller (1883-1928). The director Ingmar Bergman (1918-) is world-famous and actors like Ingrid Bergman (1915-1982) and Greta Garbo (1905-1990) have played in several of the classics of the movie history.

Various sports are popular in Sweden, especially team sports like soccer and ice hockey, but also for example tennis and table-tennis, outdoor activities like skiing and orienteering.

Food should of course be mentioned in a cultural chapter, but since the Swedes in the s.c.n. news group seem to be more interested in consuming than in producing this particular kind of culture we have no other alternative than to direct recipe interested readers to the splendid Family Santesson's collection of recipes for Swedish Cooking at <http://www.santesson.com/recept/swelist.htm>.

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