The Swedish alphabet and how it sounds
All 29 letters, the nine vowels, and the long/short vowel rule that changes what words mean. A first pronunciation guide for beginners.
Swedish uses the Latin alphabet plus three extra letters: å, ä, ö. That makes 29 letters in total. The three extra ones are not variants of a and o. They are separate letters with separate sounds, and they come at the very end of the alphabet, after z. This article walks through the alphabet, the nine vowels, and the one pronunciation rule you cannot skip: the difference between long and short vowels.
The Swedish alphabet, 29 letters
In order:
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Å Ä Ö
The position of å, ä, ö matters because Swedish dictionaries (and phone contact lists, and any sorted list of Swedish words) put them at the end. If you look up öl (beer) in a Swedish dictionary, you'll find it on the last few pages, not under O.
A few of the Latin letters do almost no work in modern Swedish. C appears mostly in loanwords (centrum, cancer) and in the digraph ch. Q, W, and Z appear almost only in loanwords and old spellings of names. You can mostly ignore them for now.
The nine vowels
Swedish has nine vowels: a, e, i, o, u, y, å, ä, ö.
That's a lot for a small language. English has six. The extra ones, plus the distinction between long and short vowels, are most of what makes Swedish sound the way it does.
Some rough orientation:
The vowels u, y, å, ä, ö don't have clean English equivalents. You can approximate them at first, but it's worth spending time now to hear and produce them properly, because every single Swedish word uses them. Tap any example in the table to hear it.
Long and short vowels
A Swedish vowel can be pronounced long or short, and the difference often changes the meaning of the word entirely. This is the most important pronunciation rule in the whole language.
The rule of thumb (good enough for most words):
- vowel + one consonant = long vowel: tak (roof)
- vowel + double consonant = short vowel: tack (thanks)
Some minimal pairs to internalise:
That last pair is a classic. Glas with a long a is the material glass. Glass with a short a is ice cream. Walk into a Swedish café and ask for en glass with a short a and they'll think you want ice cream. Ask for ett glas vatten with a long a and you'll get a glass of water.
Train your ear on these pairs early. Everything else in Swedish pronunciation is easier once you can hear the long/short difference.
The letter J
In Swedish, the letter j sounds like the English y.
- jag (I) sounds like "yag"
- ja (yes) sounds like "yah"
- jul (Christmas) sounds like "yool"
- järn (iron) sounds like "yairn"
A Swedish word that starts with j never makes the English "j" sound (as in "jam"). That sound doesn't exist in standard Swedish.
What we're deferring
Two famous Swedish sounds are missing from this article on purpose: the sj sound (as in sju, seven) and the tj sound (as in tjugo, twenty). They are genuinely strange, they deserve their own attention, and you don't need them to start speaking. The same goes for pitch accent, the musical rise and fall Swedish is famous for. Get the vowels right first; the rest builds on that.
Hear it in real sentences
Five short sentences using the sounds from this article. Tap any word for a translation, or play a whole line to train your ear.
Swedish
Hej! Jag heter Sara.
Tack så mycket!
Ett glas vatten, tack.
Jag bor i Göteborg.
Hej då!
English
Hi! My name is Sara.
Thank you very much!
A glass of water, please.
I live in Gothenburg.
Bye!