This lesson works letter by letter through the Swedish alphabet, all 29 of them, giving learners a pronunciation baseline before tackling words and sentences. It is a natural starting point if reading Swedish aloud still feels unfamiliar.
Transcript
The full transcript of this free lesson. Swedish lines have their English translation underneath.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the very first episode, the very first lesson on learning the alphabet of Swedish. Now, the Swedish alphabet is very easy to learn, precisely because it's very, very similar to the English alphabet, and the pronunciations of the letters are also very similar to English. There are of course, as in most things, exceptions. So Swedish has 29 letters. And of these letters, only three letters are unfamiliar in English.
Now those are å, ä, and ö.
So if we look at the entirety of the alphabet, and we're going to go into these in details in just a brief moment. But before we do so, I'm just going to read through all of them quickly one time. A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W.
That's W. X Y Z. And finally the last three, Å Ä Ö So let's look at a few examples.
And here we're not going to focus so much on the meaning. But we're going to focus more on the pronunciation. So let's begin with the first one.
Arbeta. Arbeta. That means to work.
Bok. Bok. That means book. Cykel. Cykel.
Bicycle.
Din. Din.
Yours.
El. El.
This is electricity.
Film. Film. Obviously, a film.
Gå. Gå. Which is to go. Hej. Hej.
That means hi.
Inte. Inte.
That means not, as in negating. Jag kan inte, I can't.
Which brings us to the next word, jag. Jag.
This means I, as in I, a person. Kan. Kan. That means can.
Leta. Leta. Search or look for.
Mamma. Mamma.
Mom. Natt. Natt. Night. Ofta. Ofta.
Often. Pappa. Pappa. Dad.
Squash. Squash. Squash.
Ringa. Ringa. Is to call. And notice that you have the r. You have sort of like the Spanish r where it's rolling a little bit. Ringa.
Not ringa as you would say in, if you're pronouncing it with an English accent. Try to say ringa, so you're putting r, r. Sak. Sak.
Means a thing. Ringa means to call.
Tala. Tala. That's to speak. Undra. Undra. To wonder.
Vem. Vem. That's who.
Wienerbröd.
Wienerbröd. That means Danish, as in the pastry, Danish. Which interestingly enough, both in Denmark and Sweden is referred to as bread from Vienna. And in Vienna they call it bread from Denmark, so who knows where it's from. But the interesting thing about w is that you pronounce it like a v in Swedish. And it's usually not part of regular Swedish words.
Instead you'll find the w in old names. You'll find it in like surnames, Wikander or something like that. Wahlgren. In last names it's very common, but you won't see it in a lot of words.
Exakt. Exakt. And the x is of course a combination between k and s.
Yxa.
Yxa.
That means an axe. Yxa. Notice how you pronounce the vowel y, y.
Finally, zebra. Zebra.