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  1. LearnNoW
  2. 7
  3. Pronunciation

Språkvelger

7 Pronunciation LearnNoW

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7 Pronunciation

7 Pronunciation


Retroflex sounds

Norwegian contains some speech sounds that are expressed by letter combinations. Here we will have a look at one group of five sounds that are articulated with the tip of the tongue curled upwards and a little bit backwards. The bottom part of the tip of the tongue is touching the ridge behind the upper front teeth. As the tongue is touching the rear part of the alveolar ridge - that is; the ridge in the roof of the mouth between the upper teeth and the hard palate - the sounds are called retroflex sounds (an alternative name is postalveolar sounds).

In general these sounds are written as combinations of the letter < r > and < t, d, n, l , s >. In phonetic writing the sounds are represented with special letters as shown below.

Letter sequence Pronunciation of letter sequence
< rt > as in fort  quick, fast  /r/ + /t/   →  /ʈ/ 
< rd > as in ferdig  finished  /r/ + /d/   →  /ɖ/ 
< rn > as in barn  children  /r/ + /n/   →  /ɳ/ 
< rl > as in farlig  dangerous  /r/ + /l/   →  /ɭ/ 
< rs > as in mars  March  /r/ + /s/   →  /ʃ/ 


The examples above are shown with the sound occurring inside words. The same effect will be observed when /r/ is the last sound of one word and /t, d, n, l, s/ is the first sound in the following word. The two sounds melt together and create a new sound. This process, the coalescence of two sounds into one, is often referred to as assimilation.

/ t, d, n, l, s / / ʈ , ɖ , ɳ , ɭ , ʃ /
må ta  /mo 1tɑ:/  must take  har tatt  /hɑ 1ʈɑt/  has taken 
må dra  /mo 1drɑ:/  must leave  har dratt  /hɑ 1ɖrɑt/  has gone 
må nå  /mo 1no:/  must reach  har nådd  /hɑ 1ɳod/  has reached 
må lese  /mo 2le:se/  must read  har lest  /hɑ 1ɭe:st/  has read 
må se  /mo 1se:/  must see  har sett  /hɑ 1ʃet/  has seen 


As a speaker of Norwegian you are used to listen for the /r/-sound in the end of a word, as it may signal present tense as in leser, snakker, skriver, spiser. From the description above it follows that the r-sound of present tense will be absent if the following word in isolation is starting with /t, d, n, l, s/.  This means that the only sign of present tense is the retroflex sound.  Thus the listener has to analyze /ʈ , ɖ , ɳ , ɭ , ʃ/ as /r/+/t/, /r/+/d/ and so on.

As the plural indefinite form of nouns also ends in -r (jenter, gutter, biler, busser), the phenomenon described above is valid here as well.

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