Sound Correspondence Between English and Swedish

English and Swedish are both Germanic languages with many similarities. One of the similarities is a sound correspondence of the fricatives /f/ and /v/. The voiceless labiodental fricative of English is often voiced in Swedish. Here are examples:

calf kalv
deaf döv
half halv
knife kniv
life liv
of av
self själv
stiff styv
thief tjuv
wolf ulv

The English words have a voiced fricative in the plural forms such as calves, knives and wolves. The word of, though spelt with an f, is pronounced with a voiced fricative. In the words calf and half, the lateral is pronounced in Swedish but not in English.

The Swedish words are almost identical in Danish and Norwegian. Here are the Danish and Norwegian words for comparison:

calf kalv kalv
deaf døv døv
half halv halv
knife kniv kniv
life liv liv
of af av
self selv selv
stiff stiv stiv
thief tyv tyv
wolf ulv ulv

The words for calf, half, knife, life and wolf are the same in Danish, Norwegian and Swedish. The word of is the same in Norwegian and Swedish but different in Danish. There is no word that is different in all three languages.

One of the many sound correspondences which English and Swedish share is that of the fricatives /f/ and /v/. This sound correspondence is also evident between English and the North Germanic languages of Danish and Norwegian. The examples illustrate that the word-final /f/ of English is often a /v/ in Swedish. The word of is an exception because it has a word-final /v/ in both languages.