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The sound of 'Swedish on multilingual ground' Bodén, Petra Published in: Proceedings Fonetik 2005. The XVIIIth Swedish Phonetics conference. May 25-27 2005. 2005 Link to publication Citation for published version (APA): Bodén, P. (2005). The sound of 'Swedish on multilingual ground'. In Proceedings Fonetik 2005. The XVIIIth Swedish Phonetics conference. May 25-27 2005. (pp. 37-40). Department of Linguistics, Gothenburg University. http://www.ling.gu.se/konferenser/fonetik2005/ Total number of authors: 1 General rights Unless other specific re-use rights are stated the following general rights apply: Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal Read more about Creative commons licenses: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. LUND UNIVERSITY PO Box 117 221 00 Lund +46 46-222 00 00 Proceedings, FONETIK 2005, Department of Linguistics, Göteborg University The sound of ‘Swedish on Multilingual Ground’ Petra Bodén1, 2 1Department of Linguistics and Phonetics, Lund University, Lund 2Department of Scandinavian Languages, Lund University, Lund Abstract Greenland (Jacobsen 2000) and in the so-called multi-ethnolect of adolescents in Copenhagen In the present paper, recordings of ‘Swedish on (Quist 2000). In some other language varieties multilingual ground’ from three different cities that have developed through language contact, in Sweden are compared and discussed. e.g. Nigarian English (Udofot 2003), Maori English (Holmes & Ainsworth 1996) and Sin- Introduction gapore English (Low & Grabe 1995), the In Sweden, an increasing number of adoles- speech rhythm has been described as approach- cents speak Swedish in new, foreign-sounding ing syllable-timing. However, in the present ways. These new ways of speaking Swedish are paper, we will restrict ourselves to investigating primarily found in the cities. The overarching the similarities (and differences) between three purpose of the research project Language and varieties of SMG. language use among young people in multilin- gual urban settings is to describe and analyze Method these new Swedish varieties (hereafter referred The material comes from the speech database to as ‘Swedish on multilingual ground’, SMG) collected by the research project Language and in Malmö, Gothenburg and Stockholm. language use among young people in multilin- Most SMG varieties are known by names gual urban settings. that reveal where they are spoken: “Rinkeby During the academic year 2002-2003, the Swedish” in Rinkeby, Stockholm, “Gårdsten- project collected a large amount of comparable ska” in Gårdstena, Gothenburg and “Rosengård data in schools in Malmö, Gothenburg and Swedish” in Rosengård, Malmö. However, if Stockholm. The speakers are young people you discuss Rinkeby Swedish with young peo- (mainly 17-year-olds) who attended the second ple in Malmö, they will instantly associate with year of the upper secondary school’s educa- Rosengård Swedish (i.e. with the corresponding tional program in social science during 2002- Malmö SMG variety), if you play examples of 2003. Rosengård Swedish to teenagers in Lund, they The recordings are comprised of both will associate with the Lund SMG variety scripted and spontaneous speech. The re- “Fladden” (named after Norra Fäladen), and so cordings include: (01) interviews between a on. In other words, obvious similarities are per- project member and the participating pupils, ceived between different varieties of SMG. (02) oral presentations given by the participat- ing pupils, (03) class-room recordings, (04) pu- Purpose pil group discussions, and (05) recordings made In the present paper, a first comparison between by the pupils themselves (at home, during the SMG materials recorded in Malmö, Gothen- lunch break, at cafés, etc.). burg and Stockholm is undertaken with the ob- The recordings were made with portable ject of searching for differences and similarities minidisk recorders (SHARP MD-MT190) and in the varieties’ phonology and phonetics. electret condenser microphones (SONY ECM- 717), and subsequently digitized. Previous research The naturalness of the speech material has Descriptions in the literature of so-called ethic been obtained on the expense of good sound accents or (multi) ethnolects of different lan- quality. Acoustic analyses using the speech guages reveal some similarities. One example analysis programs WaveSurfer and Praat have of such a similarity is a staccato-like rhythm or been undertaken when possible, other parts of syllable-timing. A staccato-like rhythm has the material have primarily been examined us- been observed in e.g. Rinkeby Swedish (Kotsi- ing auditory analyses. nas 1990), in the so-called Nuuk Danish spoken by monolingual Danish-speaking adolescents in Proceedings, FONETIK 2005, Department of Linguistics, Göteborg University quently. Finally, trilled r sounds can be heard in Results the Gothenburg SMG material, although here it is not evident that they are more numerous than In the following, we will restrict ourselves to in the Gothenburg dialect in general. describing a small set of SMG features that demonstrate interesting differences and simi- Prosody larities between the cities. Segmentals Word accents It is a well known fact that L2 learners of and Swedish find it difficult to perceive and pro- t duce the word accent distinction. Given the When we ran a perception experiment in close relation between foreign accent and Malmö with the object of investigating whom SMG, one possible common feature of the of our informants spoke Rosengård Swedish SMG varieties is a lack of word accent distinc- (Hansson & Svensson 2004), we noted that one tion. of the stimuli contained something typical for Phonetically, the difference between accent SMG at the very beginning of the recording. I and II is one of F0 peak timing. The F0 peak Instead of listening to the entire 30 second long of accent I has an earlier alignment with the stimulus, the listeners (adolescents from stressed syllable than accent II. In the Malmö Malmö) marked their answer after having heard dialect, the F0 peak is found at the beginning of only the first two prosodic phrases (approxi- the stressed syllable in accent I words, and at mately 6.5 seconds). The two phrases in ques- the end in accent II words. The same pattern tion are given in (1). can be seen in examples of Rosengård Swedish, see Figure 1. (1) ja(g) ska gå å plugga lite nu asså hon checkar språket å sånt 400 Apart from the phrase å sånt ‘and stuff’ which 300 adolescents in Malmö perceive as particularly common in Rosengård Swedish, the pronuncia- 200 tion of the word checkar ‘checks’ stands out as being non-representative of the Malmö dialect. 100 The first sound in checkar, //, is pronounced 'bra ti(ll) 'hèm,sidor men with the affricate [t]. Although not a non- 0 1 existent sound in Swedish dialects, it is per- Time (s) ceived as foreign in the Malmö dialect, and, by Figure 1. F0 contour of speaker C41’s production of the listeners in the perception experiment, as a the accent I word bra ‘good’ and the accent II word typical feature of SMG. The same sound can be hemsidor ‘home pages’. heard in the materials recorded in Gothenburg In Stockholm Swedish, the F0 peak is found at and Stockholm, e.g. in words like chillar the end of the stressed syllable in focussed ac- [tlar] ‘chill’ and other borrowings. cent I words. In focussed accent II words, two F0 peaks are found: one at the beginning of the R sounds stressed vowel and another one later (midways If you ask a Scanian to imitate Rosengård between the preceding peak and the next accent Swedish, he or she will most likely use front r or boundary tone or, in compounds, in associa- sounds. Indeed, among the SMG speakers in tion with the secondary stress). A first look at Malmö, the pronunciation of the r sound varies the Stockholm SMG data reveals that a word greatly. Out of the ten stimuli perceived as accent distinction is used, but it also reveals Rosengård Swedish, front r sounds can be some deviating patterns. Perceptually promi- heard in five. Among them, there are both frica- nent accent II words are, e.g., not always as- tive and approximant r sounds and the more signed two F0 peaks (the focal rise is missing), perceptually salient trilled r sounds. see Figure 2. Also in the Stockholm SMG material, the r sounds differ from the regional dialect in that trilled r sounds appear to be used more fre- Proceedings, FONETIK 2005, Department of Linguistics, Göteborg University 400 600 500 300 400 300 200 200 100 100 de(t är) ''skìt,go(d) 'mat de(t är) tju(go)sju p(ro)centsom villha kvar kungen 0 1 0 1.8 Time (s) Time (s) Figure 2. F0 contour of speaker L31’s production of Figure 5. F0 contour of speaker D40’s production the accent II word skitgod ‘very good’. of det är tjugosju procent som vill ha kvar kungen ‘it’s twenty-seven percent that want to keep the The word accents in the Gothenburg SMG ma- king’ with an expanded F0 range (female speaker terial still remain to be investigated. from Malmö). Intonation In summary, the SMG varieties have both fea- tures in common and regional features.

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