kareina

Very soon after moving to Sweden they explained to me that in Swedish vowels are either long or short, depending on if they are next to a single or double consonant. For example: väg (road) vs vägg (wall). This is a concept I have had problems with ever since. In part because I don't really hear much difference between them, and in part because I have a bitch of a time remembering which is which, since they look and sound so much alike to me.

This morning lord_kjar finally helped me to distinguish these two words from one another. Now there are just all of the other 100s (or 1000?) of pairs to learn to tell apart.

The useful clue here is that while the vowels are, supposedly, short vs long, in reality most Swedes use pretty much the same number of beats per second to pronounce both of them, unless they are emphasizing the difference for non-Swedes, so "length" as I understand the word, doesn't really come into play. However, they do, in fact, change their pronunciation.

In this case the "ä" in vägg is pronounced nearly the same as the "e" in the American pronunciation of the English words "egg" and "elephant". This can be remembered because walls are convenient places to attach hooks to, and one normally needs more than one hook on a wall, so, just like the elephant's two tusks (which are also convenient hooks upon which to hang things) the word needs both "g"s (and their descending hooks) to show that this is the word for wall and not the word for road (in which the "ä" is pronounced more like the "a" in the American pronunciation of the English word "apple" (which, not surprisingly, is not at all pronounced like as the "ä" in the Swedish word "äpple", which, since it has two "p"s next to it, takes the same pronunciation as "vägg").

Now, if I can only remember this long enough to use the correct one, with the correct pronunciation, in casual conversation, and correctly recognize them if someone else happens to use them...