Setting up a Swedish voice
- Record 5 to 15 seconds of a native speaker with the accent your audience expects.
- Set the voice's Language to Swedish.
- Test with numbers, an abbreviation and a few two-syllable words with tone.
Word tones and the sample
Swedish has two word accents that give it its melody, and a few words are told apart only by them: anden can be "the duck" or "the spirit" depending on the tone. The model works out which from context, and the melody itself comes largely from the sample, so a voice cloned from a native speaker sounds far more natural than one speaking Swedish from a sample in another language.
Sweden or Finland
Finland Swedish has a distinct, flatter sound. Use a sample from a Finland Swedish speaker for audiences in Finland, and a Sweden Swedish speaker for Sweden.
Writing Swedish for the voice
- Keep å, ä and ö: får (sheep, gets) is not far (father).
- Numbers as words: tjugoett, tvåtusentjugosex.
- Times: halv tre is 2:30. Write kl. 14.30 as halv tre or fjorton och trettio.
- Abbreviations: t.ex. → till exempel, bl.a. → bland annat, osv. → och så vidare, ca → cirka, kr → kronor.
- English loanwords are common in Swedish scripts; check that they come out the way your audience says them.
A passage to record
Jag har velat spela in det här i flera veckor, så nu kör vi. Det är en lugn kväll, kaffet är klart och jag har
äntligen några minuter för mig själv. Vi får se hur det låter.
"I've wanted to record this for weeks, so here we go. It's a quiet evening, the coffee's ready and I finally have a few minutes to myself. Let's see how it sounds."
A dialogue to test with
Elsa: Är du redan här? Jag har väntat sedan klockan åtta.
Oskar: Förlåt! Det var kö hela vägen.
Elsa: Nåja, nu är du här. Ska vi beställa?Nordic projects
Swedish often sits alongside Finnish, Norwegian and Danish in Nordic training and product videos. Keep one script per language with the same line order. See Finnish and Norwegian.