I often read your posts, trying to understand something...

I can understand latin languages, but i cant understand yours

Well anyway, that's no my point...

I've just been wondering... what's the difference between a/ä/ and the other a with the ° above (sorry cant do that one)?? is that grammatical or phonetics ??

In french we only have a and à, no sound difference, just grammatical.


Silly question i know

Swedish is a Germanic language, so unless you speak German (or Danish and Norwegian which are even closer related) it's no wonder you can't understand.

The difference between a / å / ä and o / ö is phonetic. Although they look similar the letters are pronounced quite differently. The difference in pronounciation is greater than for example i / ï or u / ü. In short, we have a couple of more letters in our alphabet.

If you listen closely to a conversation in Swedish, and if you speak English, German, French or Italian - you will no doubt pick up on a word here and there that you recognize. Our language has been heavily influenced by several former super powers. The Germans during the Hansa trade days (14th-16th century, many nautical terms and things to do with trade), the French in the 18th century (words to do with culture, the arts and food), the Italians mainly through Latin and the church.

In English the influence goes both ways. The English language is littered by words which they inherited by the Vikings, and as the current super power in media and economics - American English is continuing to influence us and supply us with new words today.

Not a silly question at all.

Thanks for answering Blue !

In fact i can't imagine how to pronounce it... I mean in spanish, when there is an accent, you speak a little louder and it's always the same " ' "
but i cant imagine how to pronunce a "A" in three different ways
I wish I could understand, and since my grandmother's family came from Germany, I find it sad, not knowing these languages
I only know latin french english and spanish and they are very close, even if english is part german part latin.

Long A as in car. Short A as in fun.
Long Å as in door. Short Å as in doll.
Long Ä as in stare. Short Ä as in bell (but perhaps with a more open mouth).

Do you want to know how to pronounce the other vowels too? E, I, O, U, Y, Ö for a total of nine unique vowels.

Thanks a lot, I understand now

It's funny when swedish pronounce 'Ä' as we do 'E'.
We then pronounce Ä like in 'cat'.

I'm having huge problems with my swedish pronounciation because of that

Well, "cat" is probably a better approximation of short Ä than "bell" with open mouth, so you're not too far from Swedish pronounciation. Also it depends on which dialect you speak. People from (certain parts of) Stockholm tend to use long and short E instead of Ä all the time. People from Västerås (like me) tend to use a more open Ö, almost U, than other people.

On a kind of related subject, my little neice has just learned the word "moi". I'm so proud! She's almost bi-lingual already.

Hehe, my kids use the word "voilà" all the time... sounds very funny, since they don't speak a bit of French..

Blue you have French family ??

Bi-lingual french swedish wow ! In France it's either french/english/spanish or French/German/Spanish ( spanish is always offered as a third language, never second)

I took English/Spanish since i can't learn German ( bad chilhood memories ) but if I had the opportunity to learn another language, something not common, i would be glad !

Oh! No, she was saying "moi", which means "hi" in Finnish.
Her mother's side of the family is Fin-Swedish.

I wish I would have gotten a bonus language growing up. Grew up in a town where a lot of people spoke 2 or more languages at home. That made me so envyous.

My parents spoke Dutch and English fluently and then some French and German... they could have easily given me a head start there... but alas. Had to learn everything from scratch.

You can't learn German, Mara?

As long as you don't write a book how horrible your parents were..

Btw, I suppose "moi" in Finnish is pronounced "moy" rather than "moae"?