Distribution of Alveopalatal and Palatovelar Fricatives of Swedish

Swedish has a fricative which is unique among the languages of the world. It has many realizations, but it has a postalveolar articulation and is usually labialized. One articulatory description of the sound is palatovelar fricative. Many speakers also have another fricative which can be a retroflex alveopalatal fricative, alveopalatal fricative or palatal fricative. For those speakers who have two sounds, one can be classified as front and the other as back.

Many Swedish speakers use both the front and back fricatives. The front fricative is used at the end of a word and before a consonant. Here are examples:

schnitzel (schnitzel)
Schweiz (Switzerland)

dusch (shower)
garage (garage)

The back fricative is used at the beginning of a syllable. Here are examples:

sked (spoon)
position (position)

With words that have the front fricative in word-final position, the same fricative is used in words with inflectional morphemes. For examples, the words duschar (showers) and garagen (the garage) maintain the front fricative.

In the southernmost part of Sweden, only the back fricative is used in all words. However, in other areas such as northern Sweden, parts of western Sweden and Finland, only the front fricative is used. The majority of Swedes, however, use both the front and back fricatives.

The front fricative used to be the most common fricative in Swedish. It is still the only one used in Finland. However, the back fricative is now more common in Swedish. This is an example of language change in progress.