The sound system of Norwegian resembles that of Swedish. There is considerable variation among the dialects, and all pronunciations are considered by official policy to be equally correct – there is no official spoken standard, although it can be said that Eastern Norwegian Bokmål speech (not Norwegian Bokmål in general) has an unofficial spoken standard, called Urban East Norwegian or Standard East Norwegian (), loosely based on the speech of the literate classes of the Oslo area. This variant is the most common one taught to foreign students.
There is no official standard variety of Norwegian, and local dialects are used extensively in spoken and visual media.
Unless noted otherwise, this article describes the phonology of Urban East Norwegian. The spelling is always Bokmål.
Consonants
+ Consonant phonemes of Urban East Norwegian Labial Dental/Alveolar Retroflex Palatal Velar Glottal Nasal Plosive Fricative Approximant Flap
are laminal , either alveolar or denti-alveolar . are aspirated fully voiceless , whereas are unaspirated, either fully voiceless or partially voiced . After within the same syllable, only unaspirated voiceless stops occur. is dentalized laminal alveolar or (uncommonly) non-retracted apical alveolar . is pronounced with protruded lips . The degree of protrusion depends on the rounding of the following vowel. is a (usually voiceless) fricative. The friction is normally glottal , but sometimes it is dorsal: palatal when near front vowels, velar near back vowels. It can be voiced between two voiced sounds. are partially voiced or fully voiceless when they occur after (but not when precedes within the same syllable). The flap is also partially voiced or fully voiceless when it occurs postvocalically before . The approximants may be realized as fricatives : is sometimes a fricative, especially before a pause and in emphatic pronunciation. There is not an agreement about the frequency of occurrence of the fricative allophone of : states that is sometimes a fricative. states that the fricative variant of occurs often, especially before and after close vowels and in energetic pronunciation. is in the process of changing from laminal denti-alveolar to apical alveolar , which leads to neutralization with the retroflex allophone . Laminal realization is still possible before vowels, after front and close vowels and after consonants that are not coronal, and is obligatory after . A velarized laminal occurs after mid back vowels , open back vowels , and sometimes also after the close back vowels . However, states that at least in Oslo, the laminal variant is not velarized, and the difference is only between an apical and a laminal realization., cited in is a voiced apical alveolar flap . It is occasionally trilled , e.g. in emphatic speech. Retroflex allophones have been variously described as apical alveolar and apical postalveolar . alternates with in many words (in a small set of words also with ), but there is a small number of words in which only occurs. are velar, whereas is palatal. may be palatal , but is often alveolo-palatal instead. It is unstable in many dialects, and younger speakers in Bergen, Stavanger and Oslo merge with into . Glottal stop may be inserted before word-initial vowels. In very emphatic speech, it can also be inserted word-medially in stressed syllables beginning with a vowel.
Most of the retroflex (and postalveolar) consonants are mutations of +any other alveolar/dental consonant; rn > , rt > , rl > , rs > , etc. across word boundaries (sandhi), in loanwords and in a group of primarily literary words may be pronounced , e.g., , but it may also be pronounced in some dialects. Most of the dialects in Eastern, Central and Northern Norway use the retroflex consonants. Most Southern and Western dialects do not have these retroflex sounds; in these areas a guttural realization of the phoneme is commonplace, and seems to be expanding. Depending on phonetic context voiceless () or voiced uvular fricatives () are used. (See map at right.) Other possible pronunciations include a uvular approximant or, more rarely, a uvular trill . There is, however, a small number of dialects that use both the uvular and the retroflex allophones.
The retroflex flap, , colloquially known to Norwegians as ('thick l'), is a Central Scandinavian innovation that exists in Eastern Norwegian (including Trøndersk), the southmost Northern dialects, and the most eastern Western Norwegian dialects. It is non-existent in most Western and Northern dialects. Today there is doubtlessly distinctive opposition between and in the dialects that do have , e.g. 'farm' and 'crazy' in many Eastern Norwegian dialects. Although traditionally an Eastern Norwegian dialect phenomenon, it was considered vulgar, and for a long time it was avoided. Nowadays it is considered standard in the Eastern and Central Norwegian dialects, but is still clearly avoided in high-prestige sociolects or standardized speech. This avoidance calls into question the status of as a phoneme in certain sociolects.
According to Nina Grønnum, in Trøndersk is actually a postalveolar lateral flap .
Vowels
+ Urban East Norwegian vowels Front Central Back unrounded rounded short long short long short long short long Close Mid () Open () Diphthongs
Unless preceding another vowel within the same word, all unstressed vowels are short. is much rarer than (when spelled ) and, to a lesser extent, (when spelled ). Among the three vowels, only has an unambiguous spelling (alongside the ambiguous ). When spelled with , the close back appears especially before and . Many words that have the mid (such as 'around' and 'up') in the south-eastern part of Norway have the close in other dialects: . Kristoffersen states that is an unstressed allophone of . However, he also states that at least in his study, has the same formant values as , suggesting a phonemic merger of with some instances of unstressed (those that are centralized to ) to , though the vowels are hardly contrastive. For this reason, in this article it is treated as a separate phoneme that can only occur in unstressed non-initial syllables. The phonemic status of in Urban East Norwegian is unclear since and pattern as allophones of and before the flaps and . However, there are also words in which is realized as , despite the following flap, such as the present indicative 'see, sees'. According to Kristoffersen, the diphthongs are non-phonemic. can be analyzed as sequences of and which is allophonically labialized to after rounded vowels. His analysis requires positing an additional phoneme (which corresponds to the central , not back ) to analyze in a similar way. According to him, is best analyzed as . The second element of is often realized as labiodental . Some speakers have an additional diphthong in their inventory which, like and , is restricted to loanwords. According to Kristoffersen's analysis, is then best analyzed as + , whereas the best phonemic representation of the marginal is . Another (very rare) diphthong is , which appears only in the word ('haste'). The second element of the fronting diphthongs can be fricated . This means that 'me' and 'high' can be pronounced and , with two phonetic consonants and a monophthong. In emphatic speech an epenthetic schwa can follow the fricative (). However, close vowels in closely related Swedish have also been reported to end in a fricative (as in 'strainer'), but the fricative element is typically analyzed as a part of the vowel. Frication of word-final close monophthongs accompanied with devoicing of the fricative element has been reported to occur in Parisian French and Dutch, with varying degrees of frequency. Those are invariably analyzed as vowels, not least because they are monophthongal in other positions. The native diphthongs , and are monophthongized in some dialects, with the first two merging with and the last one with . This monophthongization is reflected in spelling in the case of Swedish and Danish, where it is a part of the standard language.
The following section describe each monophthong in detail.
Phonetic realisation are unrounded, whereas are rounded: The close have been variously described as protruded and compressed as well as compressed and protruded . The backness of has also been variously described as central and near-front . Therefore, may be differentiated from by backness and the type of rounding or even only by the type of rounding. The close back are compressed . The mid are protruded . The height and backness of Norwegian vowels is as follows: have been variously described as near-close and close . In addition, and are more peripheral than the canonical values of IPA ( and , respectively). are phonetically close . is mid front . are close-mid . is front, yet has been variously described as front and central . has been variously described as open-mid front and mid central . has been variously described as near-open back and close-mid back . has been variously described as mid back and close-mid back . have often been described as near-open front . However, Kristoffersen's formant chart places much lower than , suggesting that the former has the quality of cardinal . is similarly lowered to . are open back . are frequently realized as centering diphthongs . can also be realized as , yet are always monophthongal. However, according to , the diphthongal variants of are opening , not centering.
Symbols The vowels are invariably transcribed with .For example by , , or . are most often transcribed with ,For example by , and . but may be transcribed with an obsolete by older sources.For example by . In addition, uses both and for . This article transcribes those vowels with . is most often transcribed with ,, , and . yet this article uses , following .This article uses because other mid vowels (that is, and ) are also transcribed with close-mid symbols. Urban East Norwegian is also never as open as as it has been variously described as mid (, ) and close-mid back (). The open back are most often transcribed with ,For example by , , and . but transcribes them with . This article uses the former set. The short close vowels are transcribed with either or . The short is occasionally transcribed with or a non-IPA symbol instead, whereas is transcribed with an obsolete symbol in some older sources.Sources that use include and . also uses , but admits that is just as correct a transcription (see p. 11). Sources that use include . Some sources mix these sets, e.g. uses . The short close central vowel is transcribed with by most sources, but use a non-IPA symbol . also mentions as a possible transcription. Sources that use for include . This article uses . The short mid front vowels are transcribed with either or .Sources that use include . Sources that use include and . Some sources mix these sets, e.g. uses whereas uses . This article uses .
Accent
Norwegian is a stress-accent language, but has elements of pitch accent, with two distinct pitch patterns. They are used to differentiate polysyllabic words with otherwise identical pronunciation. Although difference in spelling occasionally allows the words to be distinguished in the written language (such as ), in most cases the minimal pairs are written alike. For example, in most Norwegian dialects, the word ('pronounce') is pronounced using tone 1 (), while ('pronunciation') uses tone 2 ().