Short and long vowels in Swedish

Okay, let's now discuss short and long vowels, what we in Swedish call korta och långa vokaler. Short and long vowels. So a vowel can be either short or long, kort eller lång. A long vowel is read for a longer time period. What this means is that you extend the sound of a long vowel, and this will become very obvious when you see a few examples.

So all of these, I'll read them from the top and down. flyta, flyta dör, dör vila, vila lada, lada tak, tak Okay, so now let's see an example of its equivalent with a short vowel.

Now let's look at words where you have the exact same spelling almost, except that you now have added a second consonant. So by doing that, what happens is you get a short vowel. So in the beginning, in the top, we had flyta, which means to float. But if you add another T, it becomes a short vowel and you say it with much more intensity and very brief.

So instead of saying flyta, what you say with a short vowel is flytta, flytta, which means to move. So compare those two again, flyta, flyta, and flytta, flytta.

So you have dör becomes dörr, dörr. vila, which is to rest, becomes villa if you add another L and you get a short vowel, villa, which is the same as villa, villa in English.

lada and ladda, ladda. So what would you think the last one is? If tak is the long vowel, that means roof, how would you pronounce the short vowel?

tack, tack. And the reason you don't have two Ks after each other is because in Swedish this does not exist simply. What happens is if you want to write two Ks, it ends up becoming a CK instead. But it has the same function as if it had been two Ks next to each other. So tack, which means thanks.

So now I'm gonna ask you, which do you think are long vowels and which do you think are short vowels? Try to figure these out and if you want, of course, you can pause the video.

At this point, I assume you've tried to sort of categorize these and pause the video. So here are the answers. Long vowels are the following: gul, peka, ge, göra. And of course the short vowels are then hette, nyckel, råtta.

Once again, try to get that rolling R. Rrr, rrr. It's not råtta, råtta. It's råtta. Råtta. So the R needs to roll.

Råtta.

Okay, let's pronounce these words and see if you can figure this out. What I'll do is we'll take one row at a time, and you can pause the video right about now.

So the answer here is: dator, kan, nudda, mat, kalla.

Let's do another row.

Kalle, Kalle, han, henne, tyst, titta.

Let's do the final and third row.

Tycka, testa, detta, leta, lätta. Notice the difference between leta and the final one, lätta.

Lätta.