Norwegian phonology

Most Southern and Western dialects do not have these retroflex sounds; in these areas a guttural realization of the /r/ phoneme is commonplace, and seems to be expanding.

Although traditionally an Eastern Norwegian dialect phenomenon, it was considered vulgar, and for a long time it was avoided.

In most of Eastern Norway, including the capital Oslo, the so-called low pitch dialects are spoken.

That rise culminates in the final syllable of an accentual phrase, while the fall to utterance-final low pitch that is so common in most languages[57] is either very small or absent.

The two tones can be transcribed on the first vowel as ⟨ɑ̀⟩ for accent 1 and ⟨ɑ̂⟩ for accent 2; the modern reading of the IPA tone diacritics (low ⟨ɑ̀⟩ and falling ⟨ɑ̂⟩) corresponds to the pronunciation of eastern Norway, whereas an older tradition of using diacritics to represent the shape of the pitch trace (falling ⟨ɑ̀⟩ and rising-falling ⟨ɑ̂⟩) corresponds to the pronunciation of western Norway.

In a compound word, the pitch accent is lost on one of the elements of the compound (the one with weaker or secondary stress), but the erstwhile tonic syllable retains the full length (long vowel or geminate consonant) of a stressed syllable.

[58] In some dialects of Norwegian, mainly those from Nordmøre and Trøndelag to Lofoten, there may also be tonal opposition in monosyllables, as in [bîːl] ('car') vs. [bìːl] ('axe').

Amongst the various views on how to interpret this situation, the most promising one may be that the words displaying these complex tones have an extra mora.

The Finland Swedish dialects also lack a tonal accent; no such phenomenon exists in Finnish.

[59] The sample text is a reading of the first sentence of The North Wind and the Sun by a 47-year-old professor from Oslo's Nordstrand borough.

[60] [²nuːɾɑˌʋɪnˑn̩ ɔ ˈsuːln̩ ²kɾɑŋlət ɔm ʋɛm ɑ dɛm sɱ̍ ˈʋɑː ɖɳ̍ ²stæɾ̥kəstə][61] Nordavinden og solen kranglet om hvem av dem som var den sterkeste.

The map shows the extent of palatalization of long dental/alveolar consonants in Norway.
palatalization only in stressed syllables
palatalization both in stressed and unstressed syllables
no palatalization
The language areas in Europe where some kind of guttural R may be heard by some local natives. Guttural R is not necessarily predominant in all of these areas.
Monophthongs of Urban East Norwegian on a formant chart, from Kristoffersen (2000 :16–17). The vowel space is triangular, with /æː/ being much lower than /ɑː/ . This suggests that the former has the quality of cardinal [ a ] .
Short monophthongs of Urban East Norwegian on a vowel chart, based on formant values in Kristoffersen (2000 :16–17)
Long monophthongs of Urban East Norwegian on a vowel chart, based on formant values in Kristoffersen (2000 :16–17)
Diphthongs of Urban East Norwegian on a vowel chart, based on formant values in Kristoffersen (2000 :16–17)
Marginal and non-native diphthongs of Urban East Norwegian on a vowel chart, based on formant values in Kristoffersen (2000 :16–17)
Map of the major tonal dialects of Norwegian and Swedish, from Riad (2014) .
• Dark areas have a low tone in accent 2, whereas the light areas have a high tone in accent 2.
• The isogloss marks the boundary between connective and non-connective dialects. East and north of it, all of the compounds get accent 2, whereas west and south of the isogloss, compounds vary in accent.

Note that contrary to the information in the map, the dialects of Rogaland , Aust-Agder and Trøndelag are not traditionally classified as East Norwegian, but as West Norwegian , South Norwegian and Trøndersk , respectively.