Traditional Dialects
The linguistic definition of a Swedish traditional dialect, in the literature merely called dialect, is a local variant that has not been heavily influenced by the standard language and that can trace a separate development all the way back to Old Norse. Many of the genuine rural dialects have very distinct phonetic and grammatical features, such as plural forms of verbs or archaic case inflections. These dialects can be near-incomprehensible to a majority of Swedes, and most of their speakers are also fluent in Standard Swedish. The different dialects are often so localized that they are limited to individual parishes and are referred to by Swedish linguists as sockenmål (lit. "parish speech"). They are generally separated into six major groups, with common characteristics of prosody, grammar and vocabulary (the color represents the core area and the samples are from Svenska Dagbladet's dialect project):
- Sydsvenska mål (dark blue); Sample (Skåne, Perstorps socken, N. Åsbo härad).
- Götamål (red); Sample (Västergötland, Korsberga socken, Vartofta härad, Skaraborgs län).
- Sveamål (dark green); Sample (Uppland, Håtuna socken, Håbo härad).
- Norrländska mål (light blue); Sample (Västerbotten, Skellefte socken, Löparnäs).
- Östsvenska mål (orange); Sample (Finland, Österbotten, Sideby socken).
- Gotländska mål (light green); Sample (Gotland, Lau Socken, Gotlands södra härad).
The areas with mixed colors as stripes are transitional areas (övergångsområden, following the terminology of Gertrud Pettersson's Svenska under sjuhundra år). The parts in yellow with coloured dots represent various distinct dialect areas which are not easily defined as belonging to any of the six major groups above (särpräglade, following the terminology of Gertrud Pettersson's Svenska under sjuhundra år). The areas west of the core for Norrländska mål, west of Sveamål and north of Göta are related to each of these, respectively, indicated by the colour of the dots. Samples from these areas: Jämtland, Föllinge socken (related to Norrländska mål), Dalarna, Älvdalens socken (related to Sveamål) and Värmland, Nordmarks härad, Töcksmarks socken (related to Götamål). The dialects of this category have in common that they all show more or less strong Norwegian influences, especially the dialects in Härjedalen, Northwestern Jämtland and Northwestern Dalarna. Dialects often show similarities along traditional travelling routes such as the great rivers in Northern Sweden, which start in the mountains at the Norwegian border and then follow a South-Easterly path towards the Bothnian Sea. The grey area does not have any independently developed Swedish dialect.
Below we have a summary (from Svenska språket under sjuhundra år, Gertrud Pettersson) of some of the most important differences between the major groups.
| Feature | Sydsvenska mål | Götamål | Sveamål | Norrländska mål | Östsvenska mål | Gotländska mål |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Diphthongs | Secondary in most of the area | No | No | Primary and secondary in north | Primary | Primary and secondary |
| Long a > å | Yes (secondary diphthong) | Yes | Yes | Yes in south | Yes | No |
| p, t, k > b, d, g | In most of the area | No | No | No | No | No |
| Intervocalic g > j or w | In most of the area | No | No | No | No | No |
| Ending vowel -a | Remains | Weakened in parts of the area | Remains | Vowel balance | Vowel balance | Weakened in most of the area |
| Dropping of -r in plur. | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | No | No |
| Allophone of r | Back | Front | Front | Front | Front | Front |
| Postpos. poss. pron. | No | Only family words | Only family words | Yes | Yes | Only family words |
| Softening initial g, k, sk | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| Dropping of -n | No | Yes | Only in a small part of the area | Yes | No | Yes |
| Dropping of -t | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| "Thick" l, also of rd | No | Yes | Yes | Yes in south | Only in the west | No |
| Supradentals | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Only in the west | No |
| Dropping of -de in pret. | In parts of the area | In parts of the area | Yes | Yes | Yes | Only -e is dropped |
| Prolong. vowel in short stemmed words, also in front of p, t, k, s | Yes | Yes | No | Some of the system of short stemmed words preserved | Some of the system of short stemmed words preserved | No |
| Stem vowel i, y > e, ö, also in long stemmed words and in front of i, u | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | No |
| Vowel balance | No | No | No | Yes | Yes | No |
Note that this table does not hold for the distinct (dotted) or transitional (striped) areas.
Götamål is mostly heard in Västergötland, Dalsland, northern Halland, northern Småland and Östergötland although it is also heard in Bohuslän and Värmland and Öland. Examples of Götamål features are vowel reduction, vowel shortening in front of endings and loss of—r in suffixes (as in hästa' (hästar = horses)). In addition, connect adjacent areas, mainly Dalsland, northern Småland and Östergötland southwest. Värmland can also be counted here, although its dialects in many ways is a special case.
Svealand (Swedish: Sveamål) is clearly distinguished from Finland-Swedish, and the Swedish spoken in Svealand.
A major characteristic of Svealand Swedish is the coalescence of the alveolar trill with following dental and alveolar consonants — also over word-boundaries — that transforms them into retroflex consonants that in some cases reduces the distinction between words (as for instance vana — varna, i.e. "habit" — "warn"). This feature is also found in East Norwegian, North Swedish and in some dialects of Scottish Gaelic.
- /r/ + /l/ →
- /r/ + /n/ →
- /r/ + /s/ →
- /r/ + /t/ →
A special development holds for rd:
- /r/ + /d/ →
One high-status variety of Swedish, that of the capital region of Stockholm–Uppsala, sometimes ambiguously designated as rikssvenska, belongs to Svealand Swedish, though /r/ + /d/ → is employed instead of the traditional transformation to a flap.
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