I’ve been staying in Sweden for a short time; too short to learn much Swedish.
One thing I’ve noticed when listening to Swedish, is that there is a somewhat muffled but resonant sound that some swedes frequently make. It sounds (and just to cause maximum offense…) a bit like when some hearing-impaired people speak and they pronounce the voiced sounds in a muted way.
I don’t know what words it appears in, how to write this sound, or how to do this sound myself. So it’s virtually impossible to describe to people what I’m talking about.
But I’ve noticed that some swedes, when speaking english, pronounce ee words (“bee”, “sea”, “TV” etc) using this same sound.
I do not speak Swedish, but does this help? Clicking on the symbols will show an example in English, if the sound exists.
WAG: The [œ] / [ø] “(Close) Mid front rounded vowel” sound is one of those weird ones in English, and sounds “deaf” to my ears. It’s the sound of the ö in Swedish and German, or the ø in Norwegian and Danish. Although I can’t imagine if I’ve heard that when speaking English.
From your description, it seems like you are talking about the alternative pronunciation of the swedish letter “i” known as Lidingö-i or Viby-i. In some Swedish dialects, “i” is pronounced further back in the mouth with the tounge slighly raised.
This pronunciation is found in dialects all over Sweden. In some places it is the standard pronunciation, but in Stockholm it has a slightly “posh” sound and is associated with the affluent suburb of Lidingö.
In Gothenburg, you may hear an even wierder pronunciation where they make a “z” sound at the same time.
There are a few vowel sounds that Swedish has and English doesn’t, but this one really stuck out for me, because I can’t even begin to make the sound myself. At the risk of provoking rude responses, I couldn’t work out where my tongue was supposed to go
