I'm curious to know if anyone else likes to play 'games' with phonology every now and then.
One thing I like to do is to take a sentence, replace every vowel with the same vowel, and see how comprehensible it is, as well as the aesthetic result. For example, you could replace every vowel with [i], which creates a really pinched sound but doesn't really make it difficult to understand the sentence. You could replace every vowel with an r-colored schwa, which makes it sound like you're a meme from 2008 ("ermergerd").
Though using the same vowel over and over again seems like it should be easy, I find myself subtly altering the vowels based on what I know the original vowel was. For example, in 'based on', I find myself saying [bist ɪn] to mimic the fact that [a] is more open than [eɪ]. Incorporating r-coloring is also more challenging for some vowels than others, as trying to do this challenge with [æ] shows.
There is no point to this game other than to produce silly sounds and see how comprehensible the sentences you produce are. I'm impressed by how comprehensible English is when you basically destroy all vowel information. Spanish is still quite comprehensible, but it loses more and I have to focus to really make out what's being said. I'm almost certain there's some computational phonology concept out there that discusses how much information is encoded in vowels. I know for individual vowels, there's a concept called the functional load, but that's about how much that vowel serves to distinguish from other vowels.
Having tried this experiment has convinced me that writing systems that only use consonants, such as Arabic and Hebrew, are not as restricted as they appear.
If you happen to have linguist friends or just fancy a challenge yourself, you could also try more particular phonology games. For example, you could challenge yourself to shift every vowel in a sentence clockwise based on a vowel diagram to create a new vowel shift. You could also pick a vowel and move it in a direction and then try to imagine what the resulting vowel shift would be like.
The IPA is a pretty good invention, allowing us to transcribe languages with as much precision as we feel is necessary. It's especially useful for language learners, as each IPA character's name is basically an instruction on how to pronounce it. However, you should be careful when it comes to the IPA, because a transcription is not always reality!
To start with a trivial example, consider that the General American English rhotic sound is represented as /r/ in most transcriptions, even though it is not an alveolar trill in any variant. This is for reasons of tradition, convenience ('r' is easier to type than 'ɻ'), and generalization ([ɻ] is not the only realization of the American rhotic, and 'r' is a suitable enough symbol for the rhotic). I doubt anyone has been misled to believe that American English uses an alveolar trill, but it serves as an example of this disconnect between map and territory.
All this to say, if you are trying to learn a new language, it is not enough to just read IPA transcriptions. Practice listening closely to the language.
For example, most IPA transcriptions of Russian /o/ are [o]. If you try to learn Russian pronunciation by referencing a table like this (as I know many autodidacts on the internet do), you may think that Russian has a monophthongal [o] sound, much like Spanish.
It is true that Russian [o] may be monophthongal, but Russian [o] is also often diphthongized! I had noticed this for years in listening to Russian, but it was only by looking up 'Russian o diphthong' and talking to Russian-speaking linguists that I found any sources on it. You'll definitely not find anything on it in beginner textbooks on Russian.
The /o/ vowel is a diphthongoid, with a closer lip rounding at the beginning of the vowel that gets progressively weaker [ᶷo] or even [ᶷɔᶺ], particularly when occurring word-initially or word-finally under the stress, e.g. očen' [ˈᶷoˑt͡ʃjɪn̠ʲ] ‘very’, okna [ˈᶷɔᶺkn̪ə] ‘windows’, moloko [məɫ̪ʌˈkᶷɔᶺ] ‘milk’.
(2015) "Illustrations of the IPA", Yanushevskaya and Bunčić. h/t to prikaz_da
The Swedish sj-sound is a drastic case of IPA misleading. If you have ever heard that the sj-sound is a 'coarticulation of [ʃ] and [x]', you may be entitled to financial compensation! Or at least, linguistic compensation, because it is not actually a coarticulation of [ʃ] and [x]. It's often something much simpler - a voiceless 'wh' [ʍ] (like in Southern American English), a labialized [xʷ], a [ʃ] or [ɕ]. Lindblad even offers up a velarized and labialized labiodental [fˠʷ] as a more likely pronunciation. The video below demonstrates:
I was never able to 'coarticulate' [ʃ] and [x], but a Swedish native speaker once told me that I had a pretty good approximation of 'sj'-sound. My approximation was based not off reading IPA descriptions but off listening to Swedish. I ended up doing something like [çʷ] or [xʷ], because that was what I heard.
This does not mean you shouldn't ever use the IPA a guide. Don't take broad IPA transcriptions as the final word, especially if you are just seeing a table of phonemes. If you notice that you hear something that does not seem to be in the standard IPA transcription, trust your ears! Look for articles on the phonetics of that sound if you can. Many descriptions of languages are old, or put together by someone on Wikipedia, and while there are many great Wikipedia editors, they may make mistakes or omit information for brevity's sake.
I'll finish with a quote from one of my phonetics professors - "write what you heard, not what you think you heard." What are some examples of pronunciations you've noticed that don't match common descriptions of the language?
We all know when someone is listing something in a speech, but what is it about the intonation that tells us a list is happening? I had always thought there was a particular intonation contour associated with lists. Some researchers of intonation have argued this as well, suggesting there are particular intonation contours for particular lists:
They are likely to have one of the following patterns, depending on whether they are complete or incomplete: Complete
(i) ́ ́ ́ `
(ii) ` ` ́ `
(iii) ` ` ` `
(i) there are hundreds of RÚSSian // CÚBan // and East German [SPÈCialists] and adVÌSors //
(ii) the horses were NÈIGHing; the oxen were BÈLlowing; the cows were LÓWing; and the pigs were GRÙNTing (Schubiger 1958: 72)
(iii) and they're about to die // M ̄Utilated // and B ̄URNED // and HÙRT [...]
Incomplete
(iv) ́ ́ ́ ́ ́
(v) ` ` ` ` ` (Schubiger 1958: 72f.)
(iv) if you ask people to speak about their LÁWyers // or their WÁSHer repairman // or their CÁR mechanic
(v) it's like FL ̄Uoride // it's like [C ̄APital] PÙnNishment // it's ̄ONE"
(Couper-Kuhlen 1986: 150)
A complete list is one that includes all members of a relevant category, and an incomplete list is one that does not. If you are making a list and you find yourself starting it with "for example" or ending it with "and so on," it is an incomplete list.
...it is not so much the particular intonation contour that is constitutive of lists, but a variety of similar contours plus the repetition of the chosen contour for at least some or even all of the list items. (Selting, 2003: 51).
In other words, list prosody isn’t a particular contour, but involves repeating a contour over and over again. You can have more than one contour so long as it is repeated for some of the items in the list.
In the following examples, you'll hear two lists with different intonation contours.
For example, here is an example from Jhett, where a rising intonation contour is used. Notice that before he starts listing the items, he was already ending his sentences with a rising intonation (list in bold):
“Your favorite Gamecube game is Shadow the hedgehog?↑ Do you know how many good gamecube games there are?↑
You could have said, Wind Waker↑, Metroid Prime↑, Super Smash Bros Melee↑, but your favorite is the one where Shadow the Hedgehog has a gun↑? I mean what is wrong↑ with you↓, I don't even...”
This is similar to the intonation contour (iv), where every list member has a high tone. In this example, we can hear that it's not just that there is a high tone, but that each list member ends with a rising intonation, unlike the example that Couper-Kuhlen gave for (iv).
“People started to study European science from books they bought from the Dutch↓. We’re talking geography↓, skeletons↓, physics↓, chemistry↓, astronomy↓, and maybe even electricity↓.”
This one is similar to both complete (iii) and incomplete (v), since every member has a falling contour. It's not clear to me whether the list is complete or incomplete (there could possibly be more subjects that were studied?).
Though each intonation contour is different, it’s clear from the intonation alone that items are being listed. The choice of intonation contour appears to be reflected by the context of the wider sentence. In the first one, the speaker is confused and taken aback by the addressee’s favorite video game, and is embedding the list in the context of an accusatory question. In the second one, the speaker is making a non-emotional declarative sentence about what Japanese people at the time were studying, and the sentence ends in a falling contour.
Have you noticed that Americans pronounce words like 'kitty' and 'kiddy' the same? The 't' and 'd' both become a lighter sound - they become a flap. This is called 't-flapping', and it happens when [t] and [d] are between vowels and at the end of a stressed syllable.
There's also th-stopping - this is when 'th' [θ] and voiced 'th' [ð] become harder sounds. Voiceless 'th' [θ] becomes a [t] and voiced 'th' [ð] becomes [d]. These sounds are still different from the normal 't' and 'd' founds in words like 'darn' and 'take' because these new sounds are dentals, made with the tongue hitting the back of the teeth and not the alveolar ridge.
Examples would be 'without' becoming 'wi[t̪]out' and 'there' becoming '[d̪]ere'.
Here's the fun part: when dental fricatives get t-stopped, they can even be flapped again. Here's an example from song:
"You wi[ɾ]out me ain't right" - break up with your girlfriend, Ariana Grande
This can happen across morpheme boundaries:
"Dreads to the top, gold in my mouth, woah[ɾ]ere" - Wish, Denzel curry
"G-g-get wi[ɾ]it" - Get Wit' It, Vanilla Ice
This particularly form of stopping is common in African American Vernacular English (which Denzel Curry speaks and which Ariana Grande and Vanilla Ice are trying to imitate).
In sung speech, I've even heard the flap fortitioned to [d]. This restores the [d] sound in a word like "pedal" (a Duke of York maneuver), but replaces "t" with "d" in words like "metal."
"This shi[d] always happen to me" - break up with your girlfriend, i'm bored , Ariana Grande
"pedal to the medal (metal)" - Gold Trans Am, Kesha
Just for fun, what if we combined all these processes... could we turn a voiceless th into a d?
Here are the rules in a VCV environment:
[θ] can become [t]
[t] becomes [ɾ]
[ɾ] can become [d]
One word that meets these constraints is 'toothache'.
So if we wanted to turn th into d, we'd need this sequence:
0. th.
We're starting with a 'th sound surrounded by two vowels.
too[θ]ache
1. [θ] becomes [t]
This t is usually a dental t and unaspirated, so it isn't the same as the alveolar aspirated [t] that is normally used. This should prevent mergers.
toothache -> too[t]ache
2. [t] becomes [ɾ]
This might be difficult if the t is dental - a dental flap doesn't sound all that easy to me. Perhaps the [t] can drift back towards the alveolar ridge, and make itself susceptible to tapping.
too[t]ache -> too[ɾ]ache
3. [r] becomes [d]
Another difficult one, since I've only encountered this in sung speech, but if you were to humor me:
too[ɾ]ache -> too[d]ache
So in an alternate universe, or a dialect-to-be, could you end up with 'toodache'?
Although Europeans dominate metal music, the lingua franca of the genre is still English. And not only is it English, but many subgenres of metal rely on specific vocabulary (fantastical and Tolkien-esque, or macabre and deathly). This leads to a lot of interesting little quirks of pronunciation and grammar. I've already documented some examples in the non-metal pop band, ABBA. I don't want to make fun of these singers or lyricists, as writing songs in a different language is difficult, and these mistakes are harmless - I just find them interesting and want to share. Here are some I've noticed from a handful of bands:
Nightwish, a symphonic metal band from Finland: their earliest records, understandably, had more L2 errors than later ones.
"And the [p]ath under my bare feet... the [e]lven [p]ath" - Pronouncing the 'p' sound without aspiration makes it sound like the "elven bath." Finnish does not have aspirated consonants, so it sounds like singer Tarja is transerring Finnish rules to English.
"Songs as a SED-uction of sirens" - Writer Tuomas appear to have thought that 'seduction' has the stress on the first syllable, and Tarja sings it with an unexpected 'eh' vowel.
"The unc[e]rven path" - A spelling pronunciation from Tarja, perhaps by analogy with words like 'care' [ker].
"The moonwitch took me TO a ride on a broomstick" - The expression in English is either "took me on a ride" or "took me for a ride." There is no expression "take to a ride."
"You stand a[k]used of robbery" - A lack of aspiration and no 'y' sound here (a spelling pronunciation?) makes this sound like "You stand a goose of robbery."
Burning Witches, a power metal band from Switzerland:
"Just stories on tape-stries" - a spelling pronunciation dividing 'tapestry' up not as 'ta - pes - try' but as 'tape - stry.'
Sonata Arctica, a power metal band from Finland, has relatively good pronunciation, but the writer struggles with stylistically appropriate English.
"Find a barn which to sleep in, but can he hide anymore?" - The use of 'anymore' without a negative sounds odd to me, especially in a question, but some people do use the word like this. If you're a 'positive anymore' user, does this sound grammatical to you? The 'barn which to sleep in' is clumsy. Stylistically you would prefer either 'Find a barn to sleep in' (no linking word necessary).
"Knock on the door and scream that is soon ending" - lack of article on both 'knock' and 'scream'.
Share your favorite moments of L2 errors in metal or other genres in the comments!
One of the more noticeable trends of pop music of the 60s and 70s was the popularity of covers, singing someone else's song. This practice has decreased in modern-day pop music for various reasons: the expectation that artists be 'authentic' and write their own music, as well as the loss of songwriting royalties for covering someone else's song are likely the two biggest contributors. So these covers from the mid-century represent a good opportunity to compare a sociolinguistic variable among different artists and see how they pronounce it.
The song I had in mind was Mr. Postman. It was first performed by the Motown girl group, the Marvelettes, in 1961. It was then covered by the English rock band, the Beatles, in 1963. It then got its third major cover more than a decade later by soft rock group Carpenters, in 1975. This makes it a fun look at how different groups interpret the same song.
The sound I wanted to investigate was the 'ay' sound, as in 'time' and 'I': /aɪ/. This sound is pronounced [aɪ] by white Americans and English people, but it was pronounced [aɛ] and [a] by Black Americans. White American southerners may also say [a]. These versions of /aɪ/ are called 'monophthongal'. This vowel sound was heavily copied by white English singers who desired the black sound found on Motown and blues records. On the other hand, it was used less by groups that wanted to sound 'mainstream' and 'whiter.' As such, it indexes 'blackness' in music. (You may ask why it does not index Southern-ness, but that is a topic for another article.)
We're going to look at how these three groups pronounce the /aɪ/ sound in this sound.
The Marvelettes
This all-black group from Michigan is the originator of the song, and therefore likely to have a lot of monophthongal 'ah's on there. Here is the tally:
aɪ = blueaɛ = pink
a = yellow
lyric
pronunciations
'Cause it's been a mighty long time (Whoa, yeah)
[aɛ] [a]
Since I heard from this boyfriend of mine
[a] [aɛ]
From my boyfriend who's so far away
[aɪ]
I've been standing here waiting, Mr. Postman (Wait, wait for you)
[a]
'Cause it's been a mighty long time (Whoa, yeah)
[aɪ] [aɪ]
Since I heard from this boyfriend of mine
[a] [a]
So many days, you've passed me by
[aɪ]
You saw the tears standing in my eye
[a] [aɪ]
By leaving me a card or a letter
[a]
Yeah, since I heard from this boyfriend of mine
[a] [aɛ]
Please check and see just one more time for me
[a]
Don’t pass me by, you see the tears in my eyes
[a], [a], [aɪ]
Absolute frequency
Relative frequency
Total tokens: 20
100%
Total unambiguous [a]: 11
55%
Total monophthongized [aɛ]: 3
15%
Total [aɪ]: 6
30%
Though the singers in the group natively speak African American Vernacular English, you will notice they don't use the most monophthongal [a] all the time. This is to be expected, as the shape of the vowel is influenced by the consonants that come after it. They also use a more diphthongal 'ai' several times, especially in the word 'eye'. The diphthongal variants of /ai/ appear around 70% of the time.
The Beatles
lyric
pronunciations
I been waiting a long long time
[a] [a]
Since I heard from that girl of mine
[a] [a]
From my girlfriend so far away
[a]
I been standing here waiting Mister postman
[a]
I been waiting a long long time
[a] [a]
Since I heard from that girl of mine
[a] [a]
So many days you passed me by
[a]
See the tear standing in my eye
[a] [aɪ]
By leaving me a card or a letter
[a]
I been waiting a long long time
[a] [a]
Since I heard from that girlfriend of mine
[a] [a]
You gotta check it and see one more time for me
[a]
Absolute frequency
Relative frequency
Tokens: 17
100%
Monophthongal a: 16
94%
Diphthongal a: 1
6%
This one is stunning. Though the Beatles is a band of all white members from Liverpool, they have a higher rate of monophthongal /ai/ than the Marvelettes do! Additionally, they only use the pure monophthong [a] and the not the [aɛ] variant. [aɪ] is only used clearly in 'eye'.
Carpenters
Why’s it taking such a long time (Whoa, yeah)
[a] [aɪ]
For me to hear from that boy of mine?
[aɛ]
From my boyfriend so far away
[aɪ]
I've been standing here waiting, Mr. Postman
[a]
Why’s it taking such a long time (Whoa, yeah)
[aɪ] [aɪ]
For me to hear from that boy of mine
[aɪ]
So many days, you've passed me by
[a]
You saw the tears standing in myeyes
[aɪ] [aɪ]
By leaving me a card or a letter
[a]
Why’s it taking such a long time?
[aɪ] [aɪ]
Why don’t you check it and see one more time for me?
[aɛ] [a]
Absolute frequency
Relative frequency
Tokens: 16
100%
Monophthongal [a]: 5
31%
[aɪ]: 9
56%
[aɛ]: 2
13%
Soft rock band Carpenters is associated with middle-of-the-road music, stereotypically for older generations (in their time, for the Silent and Greatest generation). They use a much higher number of [aɪ] than the Beatles or Marvelettes do. Nevertheless, they do use a fair amount of monophthongal sounds as well, 31%. They prefer to use the sound on quick and unstressed beats, but it does get the spotlight on some longer notes: 'passed me ba-a-a-a'.
Analysis
Perhaps the most astounding finding is that the Beatles used the [a] sound more than the Marvelettes. In Trudgill's study on the sociolinguistics of English rock bands, he found that they often did not mimick native patterns of (Black) American, which suggested that the singers were not sure of how to accurately copy them. It seems the Beatles picked up on the fact that the Marvelettes and other Black singers pronounced /aɪ/ more diphthongally, but they did not realize that they did not always pronounce it like that. Instead of going for the more middle-ground [aɛ] version, they sang the most distinct one with [a]. This could show a failure to imitate correctly, but it could also show a desire to show off the sound that was most 'different' from their own Liverpool English.
Another interesting finding is that the Carpenters used the [a] variant a third of the time. The Carpenters were recognized (and derided) as being music for old people afraid of new forms like rock and funk, so their consistent usage of [a] shows that by 1975, using it some of the time was considered unremarkable. The lead singer, Karen, gives it special attention on longer notes like 'one more time for me' and 'passed me by', suggesting it serves as sort of 'accent vowel' for specially marked passages.
The Marvelettes' own pronunciation shows the most varied approach, which is to be expected from native speakers. Having a closed syllable is the biggest trigger for a more diphthongal vowel ('time', 'eyes', 'mine'). As in the other variants, having a long note is also more likely to have the monophthongal variant.
I suspect that the Carpenters may not have heard the original version by the Marvelettes. For one, they copy some lyrical changes made by the Beatles: ('mighty long time' -> 'long long time' -> 'such a long time'), as well as excluding the 'pass me by, you saw the tears in my eye' lyric. Finding old records would have been much harder in the 1960s and 70s than it is today - old records were not always re-released and easily available. If this is true, then the Carpenter's version is based on imitating the Beatles imitating the Marvelettes. This is deliciously close to showing a certain pattern in American music: Black Americans create a new musical genre -> white English people or white Americans imitate it and exaggerate it -> white Americans tone down the 'blackness' to make it friendlier for musically conservative audiences. This also suggests that Karen Carpenter's decision to sing [a] in 'time' and 'by' was not influenced by Gladys Horton's original version, but both felt it more musically appropriate to use [a] in high-emphasis beats.
This is just a selection of three songs, and hardly representative of the variety that existed during the 60s and 70s, but they do happen to show a clear sociolinguistic pattern. I wonder what other songs we could find that exhibit interesting linguistic differences between covers, and whether they also share this pattern (white groups imitating black groups use [a] flatly, or increase usage of [aɪ]).
Some American English sound changes are very well documented, such as the PIN-PEN merger or the COT-CAUGHT merger. Others, not so much. One example is back vowels before an /l/ sound. Back in 2006, Labov noticed four potential mergers happening in some North American English varieties:
/ʊl/ and /oʊl/ (BULL vs BOWL)
/ʌl/ and /ɔːl/ (HULL vs HALL)
/ʊl/ and /ʌl/ (BULL vs HULL)
/ʌl/ and /oʊl/ (HULL vs BOWL)
I have a small collection of examples for these, as well as other potential mergers and vowel shifts involving back vowels before /l/. Let's take a look!
HULL and DOLL (new) ✔️
This one was not mentioned by Labov, probably due to overlap with HULL vs HALL with the COT-CAUGHT merger applied. The /ʌl/ sequence is pronounced as [al].
"You're not getting any added b[ɑ]lk from your finish, in fact it's taking away balk" - Love To Sew at 15:10
"Blossom's behavior [ɑ]ltimately pushed them" - Sarah Z, Johnlock, 53:00
BULL and BOWL ✔️
Short u /ʊl/ is pronounced as [ol], so theoretically 'bowl' and 'pull' ended up rhyming.
'Uh' /ʌl/ is pronounced as [ol], so 'hull' and 'bowl' rhyme. In my experience, this one is quite common among Americans and isn't restricted to a particular region.
"[O]ltron has been a long-time adversary of the Avengers" - Comic Drake
Not mentioned by Labov. I've noticed a trend towards words with 'ol' in them being pronounced as [ol] instead of [ɑl]. Most examples I've found are of words with 'olve' in them (resolve, revolve) so it's possible this is just a reanalysis of 'olve'. I've also heard the variant 'psych[o]logy' and 'alcoh[o]l' (no audio clip). I haven't found anyone that turns all /al/ into [ol]. This means [o] may exist as an allophone of /ɑ/ before /l/ for some speakers with the COT-CAUGHT merger. This allophone may restore the CAUGHT vowel in some words (e.g. 'all' with [ol] is very common) while also innovating [ol] in places where it isn't found historically, like [olv].
"Try to focus on s[o]lving the problem" - Natalie Wynn
"Many of the criticisms rev[o]lved around..." - Sarah Z
"So central to the American psych[o]logy" - Not Just Bikes
HULL and HALL ❌
Unsure in which direction these are merged: does /ʌl/ become [ol] or does [ol] become [ʌl]? It's also complicated because the COT-CAUGHT merger affects HALL words, and it's unclear if this merger is meant to apply to accents with a separate 'aw' /ɔ/ vowel or also ones with a COT-CAUGHT merger (in which case, see HULL-DOLL above).
Miscellaneous
Many of these speakers are Canadians (Love To Sew, Sarah Z, Linus from Tech Tips) which makes me wonder if these pronunciations are affected by the Canadian Vowel Shift. Sarah Z, for example, has HULL-DOLL and DOLL-BOWL - and I would not be surprisd if she also has HULL-BOWL and BULL-BOWL. I am also curious how many of these changes result in proper mergers - I did not look for comparative examples of 'BOWL' to see if there was a merger, for example.
If trends continue, then there may be a phonological movement towards simplifying the back vowel space before /l/. Many of these are moving towards [ol]. I'd love to know if there's a speaker out there who has a PULL, HULL, and DOLL all with the BOWL vowel.
Off-the-cuff speculation: I suspect some of this instability with /ol/ is caused by an incomplete COT-CAUGHT merger leaving some words with lexicalized pronunciations. In my area (South Florida), most people do not have the COT-CAUGHT merger but some people continue to use the [o] vowel in 'all', 'mall', and other high-frequency -all words (yes, mall is a high-frequency word here). These are reanalyzed as having the same vowel as BOWL (no surprise, as American /ɔ/ is usually realized as [o] with an offglide by people who distinguish it). There may be some reanalysis involved - the DOLL words that are being pronounced with [ol] are words that are also spelled with 'o'. I would be curious to see if COT-CAUGHT merged North Americans with the DOLL-BOWL merger actually extend it to words spelled with 'al', like 'halter'.
There is a rumor that Sweden's top three exports are Volvo, Ikea, and ABBA. Regardless of whether it's true, it shows that ABBA is an international brand on the level of Ikea and Volvo, and at the same time quintessentially Swedish. From 1972 to 1981, ABBA won Eurovision, recorded 8 studio albums studio, pioneered the concept of music videos, and toured the world thrice. They also gained a second life in the 90s with the release of ABBA Gold, a Greatest Hits record that your mom almost certainly owns on CD. The ABBA revival led to the production of the Mamma Mia musical, which itself got turned into a movie in the 2000s. Few artists have found this level of success after their peak.
Looking back, it is easy to assume they were fated to win. ABBA crafted intricately catchy melodies, distinctive walls of sound, and had a recognizable visual image. They were from Sweden, a country nowadays associated with pumping out pop songwriters in assembly-line fashion. Our pop stars no longer have to be from a native English-speaking country to be taken seriously.
None of this was clear in the 70s, where the idea that ABBA was disposible pop garbage for children was repeated by critics abroad and in their home country of Sweden. Indeed, their international success was taken as proof that their music was low grade, capitalist claptrap. Alternatively, there was the xenophobic implication that ABBA were only capable of making that appealed to the lowest common denominator because, as second language speakers, they could not be expected to write anything of value. More than one radio jockey suggested the members of ABBA may not even speak English at all.
Was ABBA's English really that bad? Were they trying to sound American, British, or something in-between? How did they fare in other languages? And what impact does this have on their legacy? These are the questions we'll be looking into on this Dialect Dissection.
ABBA was made up of four members. In the the above image, from left to right: Björn Ulvaeus, Agnetha Fältskog, Anni-Frid (Frida) Lyngstad, and Benny Andersson. Agnetha and Frida took the lead vocals, Björn and Benny wrote the songs, and Björn also handled the lyrics. None of them speak English as a first language.
They all have native-level proficiency in Swedish, but they learned English as a second language. Before beginning their careers as ABBA, they had their own separate musical careers in Sweden where they sang primarily in Swedish. ABBA decided to sing on English because there was no future for an international band that song solely in Swedish (Palm, 2002)
Björn and Benny wrote the music together, but Björn alone handled the lyrics. Early on, their manager Stig Andersson assisted with lyrics and song titles, and Benny pitched it now and then, but it quickly became clear that Björn was best suited to writing lyrics: "When an English version of the lyrics were needed, Björn, who was by far the better English-speaker, would have the main responsibility, and that's the way it had been from the start. 'It came much, much easier to me than to Stig, who hadn't studied English as much in school, and was also of an earlier generation'" (Palm, 2017).
Being a second-language speaker of English meant Björn faced additional hurdles to songwriting: "That is our major problem - we're not born with English and don't have it as our first language," Björn admitted to an American reporter in 1974. "The phrasing has to be right so that it doesn't sound like you try to put something in that doesn't belong there. Nobody has complained so far, but it's our major problem" (Palm, 2017). As ABBA became more popular, the lyrics and even pronunciation came under additional scrutiny - but some critics took it too far.
The foreignness of ABBA's English has often been exaggerated for comic effect, or to denigrate them by suggesting that they are not as involved in the musical process as they claim. In truth, ABBA took pronunciation seriously. You can even see in some of the handwritten lyrical notes they used in the studio that they marked up the lyrics with pronunciation notes.
Original lyric sheet for "One Man, One Woman" featuring lyric changes by Björn as well as pronunciation notes by Frida. Notice the diaresis over "woman" to mark that the pronunciation is 'eh', not 'ah'. The pronunciation for 'live' is also clarified by writing an 'e' over the 'i' and crossing out the 'e', probaly to distinguish the pronunciation from 'live' as in 'live music.' Source: ABBA: The Complete Recording Sessions by Carl Magnus Palm
Because ABBA did not pick up English as a native language, they had to learn it as a second language - and with that came interference from their native Swedish. Swedish and English have a noticeable overlap in vowels and consonants, which goes a long way towards helping Swedish speakers sound closer to how native English speakers sound. But the overlap is not perfect, and they are missing vowels and consonants that appear in English. Sounds that are similar may also not be 100% the same, resulting in a pronunciation that's 'good enough' when heard over a low-fi AM radio, but unusual with high-quality headphones.
ABBA's accents also came through when they sang and spoke live. This is to be expected - ABBA owned their studio, so they could record as many takes as they wanted without having to worry about money or time. When performing live, you only have one take, and you are in a much more excitable environment than the calm, sterile atmosphere of a studio. With that said, let's take a look at how ABBA's English was influenced by their learning it as a second language:
The vowel in STRUT /ʌ/ is moved towards [a]. Swedish does not have an [ʌ] sound.
"Still my w[a]n and only." - My Love, My Life
No /z/ sound. Swedish does not have [z], so the nearest sound is [s].
"Where they play the right mu[s]ic." - Dancing Queen
No 'zh' /ʒ/ sound. Swedish also does not have [ʒ], and the nearest sound is the 'sh' sound [ʃ].
"Disillu[ʃ]ion" - Disillusion
The short 'oo' sound [ʊ] is sometimes [u]. Short 'i' is also sometimes fronted towards [i].
"You sh[u]dn't be so mean." Me and I
"It used to be so g[u]d." - SOS (Live at Wembley)
"They got the l[u]k in their eyes." Dancing Queen (early version)
"G[i]vin' love is a reason for l[i]vin'.
The /j/ sound in Swedish has a buzzy, fricated quality to it. ABBA sometimes carry this over into English.
"She's pushing [j]u around." - The King Has Lost His Crown
"We were [j]ung and full of life." - Fernando (Live)
The vowel in TRAP sounds like the 'eh' vowel in DRESS. Although Swedish does have an [æ] sound, it only appears in certain situations, and the next closest sound available is [ɛ]. The ABBA singers usually use an [æ] sound, but on occasion they use an [ɛ].
"In my fl[ɛ]t all alone." - Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)
Spelling pronunciations. Swedish spelling is more straightforward than English spelling, and it does not have many 'silent' consonants.
"No more [tʃ]ampagne." - Happy New Year
"I'm not a c[o]ward." - I Wonder (Departure)
"They say my w[o]und will heal." - Disillusion
"Clim[b]ing the apple tree." - Me and Bobby and Bobby's Brother
"It doesn't really b[v]ther you if this boy cries" - I Saw It In The Mirror
Non-standard grammar, or unidiomatic usage. This is more prevalent in their demos.
"Since many years, I haven't seen a rifle in your hands." - Fernando
"I'm down and I feel depressed, sitting here just waiting for next bus traveling downtown. It's a crying shame. Isn't it a beautiful weather?" - Free As A Bumblebee (Demo)
"Now I see you've broken a feather." - Chiquitita
"There's not, I think, a single episode of Dallas that I didn't see." - The Day Before You Came
American or English?
There are two major standards of English in both number of speakers and cultural power - English based on 'Received Pronunciation,' a prestige form from the United Kingdom; and General American, based on a variety of English spoken in America that is seen as 'region-free.' In Sweden, English textbooks and classes use UK English as the model for learners. However, the incredible cultural reach of American music and film means that Swedish speakers also have tremendous exposure to American English, and this is especially true for the generation born during and after the Second World War.
The increased availability of American media and English-language media in general meant that English became seen as a cosmopolitan language allowing access to the world beyond the borders of a then-ignored Scandinavian country. The Swedish language itself lost prestige, as Palm notes:
Björn's generation was perhaps the first that had grown up surrounded by English being spoken and sung, through 1950s rock'n'roll and then 1960s pop. For those born in the 1940s, English became the "cool" language, whereas for most in Stig's generation (he was born in 1931), Swedish always came first. Generally speaking, they wouldn't have romanticised the English language and all its connotations to quite the same extent as those who were 10 or 15 years younger. Not least importantly in Björn's case, he was the only ABBA member who'd gone on to senior high school, and had studied not only English but German and Spanish as well. (Palm, 2017)
Being inundated in both American and UK English meant that ABBA were aware of different possible pronunciations. For the most part, they made the choice to go with General American English in their music. However, they didn't play it straight - they also added in some features of British English.
Unlike many other artists of the time, ABBA avoided using aspects of African American English. This is not out of some sense of national or racial chauvinism - the members of ABBA were clearly aware of Black American music, and tried making songs in that vein on their earlier albums. These r-and-b attempts were, at best, cute, but they failed to live up to the artists they were cloning. A similar attempt at breaking into rock music, which was more in the Anglo-American vein (with appropriated Black language and culture) also failed, as audiences and critics alike weren't interested in their attempts at swagger. Their most successful forays were into pure pop, informed by their love of Swedish folk melody. Beyond the occasional flattening of 'I' to 'ah' and turning 'crazy' into 'crazih', ABBA did not use African American English - a fact that did not go unnoticed.
Variably rhoticism. ABBA mostly pronounce their R's, but will switch to a non-rhotic pronunciation when it's useful for a rhyme.
"In the night, a new day dawning and the f[ɜ]st b[ɜ]ds start to sing. In the pale light of the m[o]ning, nothing's worth remembering" - Summer Night City
COT-CAUGHT distinction: very noticeable in British English, more subtle in American English of the 70s, and increasingly disappearing from modern American English.
"From the first moment I s[o] you" - Love Isn't Easy (But It Sure Is Hard Enough)
"And I th[o]t" - Angeleyes
"In the night, a new day d[o]ning and the first birds start to sing. In the pale light of the morning, nothing's worth remembering" - Summer Night City
ABBA usually lacks the TRAP-BATH distinction, going with an American [æ] for both sets of words. The only exception is when a rhyme requires it in the song "I Let The Music Speak."
"Hiding their shame behind hollow l[æ]ghter." - Cassandra
"Let it be a f[a]ce if it makes me laugh." - I Let The Music Speak
They don't consistently distinguish between the MARY-MERRY-MARRY words the way an RP speaker would.
"I'm C[e]rri not the kind of girl you m[e]rry, that's me." - That's Me
"And your name is H[æ]rry." - Our Last Summer
Mixed RP and GA specific pronunciations.
"They all worship me and pay their [h]omage." - I Am The City
Varying realizations of words. These are not based on any accent, but selected for rhyme and euphony. For example, ABBA uses a 'u' sound in 'sure' in one of the early songs. This pronunciation is relatively conservative and likely to have been taught in schoolbooks. In a later song, they use the more common 'shore' pronunciation and even rhyme it with 'more'.
"Love isn't easy, but it s[u]re is hard enough." - Love Isn't Easy (But It Sure Is Hard Enough)
"Are you s[o] you wanna hear more?" - That's Me
Sung in Spanish
ABBA has recorded in multiple languages besides English. They've made a handful of official releases in their native language, Swedish. They've also done a few recordings in German and even one in French. But the non-English language they most recorded in was Spanish. After a Spanish-language version of Chiquitita was released to great success, ABBA began recording more songs in Spanish.
Their Spanish also shows signs of Swedish interference, and it is more noticeably non-native. Some examples follow.
/p/, /t/, and /k/ are aspirated
In Swedish and English, the sounds 'p', 't', and 'k' are accompanied by a little puff of air afterwards. In Spanish, these sounds are never aspirated. Agnetha and Frida seem to inconsistently aspirate these sounds.
"Yo pʰor tʰi me engane hace tʰiempo lo se" (I was cheated by you a while ago, I know it) - Mamma Mia (Spanish)
/e/ is raised
One noticeable L2 feature in their Spanish is their pronounciation of the sound 'e'. In Spanish, this sound is made in the center of the mouth. See the following vowel chart:
In Swedish, you'll notice that there are two vowels that are in that area, /e:/ and /ɛ/. Which one will ABBA use?
It turns out that they decide to go with the higher one. To a Spanish speaker, ABBA's 'e' vowels in Spanish sound like a short 'i' or even a long 'ee'.
"Donde se fu[e]?" (Where did it go?) - Hasta Manana
Taps and trills are not distinguished
Spanish has two contrasting 'r' sounds: 'r' and 'rr'. The single 'r' is pronounced as a tap between vowels, sounding like American English 'butter'. 'rr' sounds like a trill. If 'r' is at the beginning of a word, it is pronounced as a trill. In other positions, 'r' may be a trill or a tap.
Swedish has one r sound, and it can have multiple different forms. The important thing is that there is no meaningful distinction between the tap and the trill in Swedish. In Spanish, "caro" (expensive) and "carro" (car) are distinguished solely by whether the middle sound is a tapped or trilled 'r'; there is no situation like that in Swedish.
It seems that Agnetha and Frida had trouble remembering the rules, and defaulted to a trill. This is not surprising, as the trill is both more common in Spanish and in Swedish.
"Veras que el futurro" (You'll see that the future...) - Yo Lo Sone
"Te sabre esperrar" (I'll know how to wait for you) - Hasta Manana (Spanish)
Which Spanish?
Another interesting aspect of their Spanish is that they seem to change the model. For example, 'll' is a sound that varies widely in the Spanish speaking world. Some speakers pronounce it the same as 'y', which is a /j/. Some speakers from Spain pronounce it as a /lj/. And speakers from Argentina may pronounce it as /sh/. ABBA have used all three pronunciations.
The earliest song they recorded in Spanish, Ring Ring, uses the /j/ pronunciation.
"[j]amame al fin por favor" (Please, call me already) - Ring Ring (Spanish)
They then recorded "Chiquitita" in Spanish. After the success of this single, they also recorded "I Have a Dream" in Spanish. Chiquitita uses a harder version, while Yo Lo Sone uses the 'sh' pronunciation typical of Argentina.
"En mi hombro aqui [J]orando" (Here on my shoulder, crying) - Chiquitita (Spanish)
"Y [sh]egare" (And I'll arrive) - Yo Lo Sone
Once the success of the Spanish model was clear, Agnetha and Frida embarked on the journey of recording a large number of songs in Spanish. These use the Spain /lj/ pronunciation. Once this mass of Spanish songs were recorded, ABBA recorded four more Spanish songs: two for the release of Super Trouper, and two for the release of The Visitors (Palm, 2017). These songs songs varied in their usage of /j/.
"Estre[lj]aciones" - Fernando
"Bri[lj]as con plenitud" (you shine with plenty) - La Reina Del Baile
"Risas, [j]antos" - Conociendome, Conociendote
ABBA uses the velar fricative [x] for Spanish words with 'j', which is standard for Mexican and Spain Spanish. Caribbean varieties use a softer, English-like 'h' instead.
"La ve[x]ez llego" (Old age came) - Fernando (Spanish)
Cultural Analysis
English Parochialism
Perhaps even more impressive, in 2010 the group overcame considerable musical and cultural handicaps to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, an American institution that's always been heavily geared towards acts from the U.S. and the U.K. "I didn't think this would happen, because we were a pop band, not a rock band," the group's Benny Andersson was quoted as saying in Rolling Stone. "Being a foreigner from the North Pole, this feels really good." (Vincentelli, 2011)
Björn recently pointed out, "We were not taken seriously: one-hit wonders, here today, gone tomorrow - 'This is something we dismiss, these strange, exotic Swedes.' It was difficult to cope with it. It wasn't like that in Germany or other places on the continent, but it definitely was the attitude in America and England. British music journalists were especially vitriolic, almost hateful: 'Go back to your bloody country in the north!" (Vincentelli, 2011)
A 2002 interview, American singer Dionne Warwick admitted, “I watched ABBA on TV during
their breakthrough. Their English wasn’t good so I thought they were adorable."
ABBA was popular throughout the world, including the US and the UK. Those two countries also produced the most scrutiny regarding their nationality.
A listener in Japan or the Soviet Union or Germany won't speak English as a native language, and will be less able to judge whether Agnetha and Frida's accents were native-like, or whether Björn's lyrics were idiomatic. The listeners may not even speak English at all, and just enjoy the sound of the melody. This is how Björn and Benny got their first exposure to English music, after all (Palm, 2002).
Native English speakers, on the other hand, do have a strong command of English and are sensitive to accent and sentence construction, as well as the lyricism. No doubt that their ABBA's simple lyrics, especially in their first four albums, seemed to be begging to be dismissed as foreign speakerese. Few ABBA fans are bold enough to defend lyrics like "She used to follow us in school, we really thought that she was a little fool."
Björn himself said he didn't pay much attention to the lyrics when he began writing them, focusing on meeting a bare standard of grammaticality and a pleasing sound to the ear: "It was far more important [in the 1960s] for a song to have been written as 'pop music in English' than to utilize the correct grammar or any real sense of logic, commitment, or significance" (Vincentelli, 2011). It was only beginning with the "Arrival" album that Björn tried to take songwriting more seriously, and "The Album" showed a maturation of his writing style.
The early, sillier song lyrics would dog ABBA for the rest of their career. The criticisms were sometimes fair, but often tinged with essentialist arguments about how non-native speakers can't really understand English lyricism, or were just mindlessly babbling. Even positive reviews excused the weaker lyrics as second-language problems:
What certainly served them well in smaller international markets may have detracted from early success in the U.S. and the UK. Some critics, such as Peter Hackman, felt as though ABBA’s members were unable to properly pronounce their own English lyrics, that ‘‘they [were] completely insensitive to the energetic rhythm of English language.” The Swedish band’s eager effort to sing in a variety of non-native languages calls into question the xenophobia that surrounds American and British assessments of the musicians’ occasional semantic missteps. Source
Ken Tucker in Rolling Stone: "Arrival is Muzak mesmerizing in its modality. By reducing their already vapid lyrics to utter irrelevance, lead singers Anni-Frid Lyngstad and Agnetha Falstkog are liberated to natter on in their shrill voices without regard to emotion or expression, and the language barrier is broken." (Vincentelli, 2011)
"... Those of us who love Abba do so because the band is about as pure an example of smart/dumb pop imaginable. Significant rock is all well and good, but there is always a place for pop music that is fun. Most of Abba's past hits have been unadulterated pop, with lyrics - written in English by Swedes who've always had a slightly quaint conception of English syntax and pronunciation - that operate at the most basic level of childish/adolescent fantasy." Review of 'The Album' by John Rockwell, from Vincentelli, 2011.
The attitude is encapsulated in the following segment from the British parody show 'Not the 9 o clock news.' They make fun of ABBA for their simple but repeated song titles, "wholesome" image, and "poor" English:
Two of us write music, two have way a song
Sorry in translation, that line come out wrong
[...]
The world is just a great big stage
Each man plays his part
In this concrete jungle, my sleeve is on my heart
On the beaches we go swimming in the nude
Oh how I wish now and then that we could sing something rude
Super duper, super duper, its a super duper refrain
So we thought how super duper to sing "super duper" again
ABBA's supposedly bad English was played up beyond what the evidence holds. What people called 'ungrammatical' was more often than not just weird phrasing or word choice. There is nothing ungrammatical about a phrase like "I feel like I win when I lose" or "come on, I'll give you consolation." Some other rumors regarding ABBA's craft I've been told:
ABBA were supermodels hired to mime pre-written pop songs (!)
These conspiracy theories were more likely to be spread by DJs and random people than serious critics, but they show an attitude of disbelief regarding the authenticity.
Moreover, the idea that the members of ABBA sounded like the 'Swedish Chef' character is promulgated by revival acts, such as Björn Again. (Disclosure: I've been to a Björn Again concert.) Part of the experience of going to see an ABBA revival band is in playing up the Swedish nationality, and too often by making their English sound far more cartoonish than it actually did. An ABBA fan writes as to the ubiquity of these bad Swedish accents in revival acts:
Open Letter to ABBA Tribute Bands
I’ve recently had the opportunity to see “ABBA Gold,” one of several ABBA tribute acts that I’ve had the chance to see over the years. While I certainly consider ABBA Gold to be one of the better ones I’ve seen, I’ve also seen some bad ones and just wanted to highlight some of the good and bad things I’ve seen at all these various tribute performances that I’ve seen in hopes that your shows can be improved.
1. Fake Swedish accents.
We know ABBA is from Sweden and their speaking English is slightly accented, but most tribute act performances take their fake Swedish to the extent of the Swedish Chef from the Muppet Show. This is completely unnecessary. Most of your audiences will only have casual knowledge of ABBA being from Sweden so it’s not necessary to use a fake Swedish accent when speaking to the audience. All it does is irritate the most diehard ABBA fans and it adds a “cheese factor” into your tribute performance that makes it feel more of a parody than a tribute.
The best tribute band utilizing a Swedish accent that I have seen is “ABBA: The Music” but that’s because they are really from Sweden, their accent is real, not fake. If you must employ a Swedish accent to channel ABBA for your performance, at least buy a couple of the CDs from the ABBAMAIL web shop that have interviews with the members of ABBA so you at least know what the real members of ABBA sounded like when they talked. - Ryan, ABBAMAil, April 2005
And Björn himself found the exaggerated accents less than flattering:
And what does he think about Björn Again, the fake-ABBA’s from Australia, carrying his first name, who are so successful?
“I’m flattered in a way, but I’m astonished that people are willing to pay money to see that group. What I like less is that they are copying us with an accent that reminds one of the Swedish cook from the Muppet Show. Now, I don’t have an accent like that, do I? Other than that I don’t object, although I only know them from television.”
Source
ABBA's foreign accents weren't always played negatively, though. At least some fans seemed to view them as part of artistic effect:
And in the second verse [of the song 'Me & I'] Frida brings forward the Swedish accent, uses it to make the verse sound even more edgy and challenging. I'm not sure if it's my ear, but sometimes I think Swedish and some Eastern European accents of English sound like hard steel spikes puncturing the flow of the language. And these accents can, if they are used in the right way, make the speaker sound slightly edgy and not really with "all bolts fastened properly". (Think crazy Russians in 80:ies cold war movies!) The vocoder and that accent goes together perfect, strengthening the effect of each other. Making it really spicy!! I might be reading in too much here, but this is how I hear Frida. She's using the accent to emphasise the lyrics about freakish behaviour. - Linda Grandqvist, Swedish ABBA Fan, ABBAMail
Race and American Music
ABBA made what one may call 'pure pop' or 'bubblegum pop' music, which is a label that is more useful in pointing out what something is not than what it is. ABBA dabbled in rock, rhythm and blues, and even reggae, but for the most part, their music was not in these genres nor was their influence directly felt. 'Pure pop' can perhaps be defined as pop music that lacks influence from genres created by Black Americans, such as the three R's mentioned earlier. This is always context-dependent, of course: by the 70s, rock was recontextualied as a white Anglo-American phenomenon. Music being made by Black Americans can vary in how 'Black' it is considered to be: the Supremes was made of three Black women, but their style of music appealed to white audiences. For the most part, ABBA's music followed the vein of light 60s pop, pre-Beatles seriousness.
The decision to avoid the self-seriousness, sonic experimentation, and introspection associated with other white acts made ABBA a target for accusations of frivolity. Their decision (or lack thereof?) to not draw from the Black American tradition drew some attention. Noted music critic Robert Christgau lambasted ABBA for embodying "late capitalism" and "aversion to singing like Negros," two characteristics that were somehow linked.
It is hard to imagine a music critic today complaining that white artists don't draw enough from Black musicians, let alone copying their pronunciation, but the cultural dialogue of the 70s was quite different from today's. Christgau was drawing a line between ABBA's conceptualization as a product for mass white America, and their failure to cross a racial boundary. Arguments about segregation were still fresh in the minds of Americans. Some people idealistically thought that white musicians using Black musical forms would succeed in breaking down racial barriers and hasten the end of racism. Not all people thought this (and certainly not all Black people), but it was a cultural idea that informed this critique of ABBA.
The Sweden the members of ABBA grew up in was racially (though not ethnically) homogenous. It is hard to estimate how many Black folks lived in Sweden, but here is one statistic: in 1960, the population of Sweden was 7 million, and the number of immigrants from Africa was 596. Some Black folks from America moved to Sweden, but it's hard to find hard numbers on this. Of note is Lotte, a Black singer from Brooklyn who moved to Sweden, formed a musical act with Svenne, and was signed to Polar, the same label as ABBA. Björn and Benny wrote songs for them, as they did for their other labelmates. People like Lotte are an exception in an overall rather white country.
Neither Björn nor Benny seem to recall hearing Black musicians like Chuck Berry played over the radio when they were children (Palm 2002) (though Benny backtracks on this in later interviews, see Vincentelli 2011). They instead heard white singers like Elvis and Connie Francis. This means they did not have direct exposure to Black English, only to white Americans imitating it (or not imitating it at all). Why did Swedish radio stations not play Chuck Berry? No explanation is given in the definitive ABBA biography Bright Lights, Dark Shadows. It may be that white singers were signed to labels that were able to create distribution deals in countries like Sweden and Black singers weren't. There were racist attitudes in Sweden and broader Scandinavia against Black people (Weisbord, 1972), which one speculates may have influenced which records DJs played. The point is that during a critical period of musical identity formation, ABBA were not exposed to Black singers the way white Americans were. As a result, their sung speech sounds more white American (versus white British).
After the experimentation on their first three albums, ABBA stuck to the pure pop template. It is what got them the most sales and acclaim. Although ABBA always wanted to do more rock-type music, it seems to have fallen on its face. "So Long," an underappreciated single, was an absolute disaster in the UK, and it took the immaculate pure pop "SOS" to steer their career back on track. ABBA didn't make a serious attempt at engaging with Black-created musical forms again until 1979's "Voulez-Vous," when they tried to adapt their sound to be more modern. (What alternative did they have, punk?) This was already quite late in the lifetime of disco, such that it had become less distinctly Black. For context, ABBA released "Voulez-Vous" in April of 1979, and the 'Disco Demolition Derby' happened a mere two months later in July of 1979. Their final two albums stuck to various flavors of synth-pop. Overall, ABBA's cautious relation towards Black music and language separated them from other white mainstream acts.
Swedes Go Cosmopolitan
In the linguistic analysis, we saw that ABBA split their English: non-rhotic American English for singing, Received Pronunciation when speaking. Why would they sing in American English when they were taught British English? The obvious answer is that the pop music that influenced them was American, or American-imitating, and this formed their mental template for what pop music should sound like. But we would be remiss if we didn't point out that there may have been a commercial aspect as well. Sounding 'neutral' meant you didn't stick out. You could have some non-Americanisms - the Beatles, after all, kept many of their Liverpool features. But sounding unapologetically English simply wasn't done in the international pop sphere. Choosing American English was a safe bet.
Regardless of how listeners perceived it, English language was an important vehicle in the band’s early stages of recognition. As Simon Frith and Peter Langley wrote in a 1977 article in Creem magazine, Rock is an essentially Anglo-American enterprise, and most other countries do have their rock groups. ABBA, by entering the Eurovision Contest, made clear they weren't one of them.
ABBA's aim towards global domination got them some consternation. I recall reading an English newspaper that blasted ABBA for their "pseudo-American accents." ABBA's mix of American English with RP non-rhoticity, as well as their second-language flavor, made them sound as if they belonged to no group for some people, like these posters.
Hey Nude Spock, it was me who said that when singing accents are lost (and it was me who said American ones were unsexy too). Now, there are definitely some people who sing with an accent. I was listening to Carole King today and she sings with a major American accent. But then bands like Aqua & Bjork & Abba & anyone Japanese don't sound American (even when they are trying to) and very few English and Australian and NZ bands do either. - toraneko, 2001. (emphasis mine)
Abba do a very convincing job of singing in the mid-Atlantic accent favoured by British performers of modern popular music. This was developed as a concession to the predominance of the USA in the 1950s and established itself as the norm from the 1960s onwards. 'Wahderloo' now sounds fairly natural to a British ear. However, I have no idea what the Americans think when they hear it. - Lancashireman, 2010.
I did not know they were Swedish for quite a long time! Having been used to lots of accents from Anglo-Indian to various American and Canadian to a range of northern and southern British... I could not place ABBA, but that did not worry me. - Christine Andersen, 2010.
They sound mid-Atlantic to me. Not pleasant. Harsh, flat, without inflection, pronounced as though a machine were speaking English. But does it really matter all that much how Abba sounds? Should I be lying awake at night worrying about this? - Tom in London, 2010.
Finally, ABBA's music and career always had an international bent. The name 'ABBA' was selected because it "had no specific connection to any one language or culture" (McMullen, 2019) and "sounds right in as many languages as possible" (Palm, 2002). Additionally, their earlier song titles were also chosen for sounding good in multiple languages. For their first four albums, their manager Stig had a hand in suggesting good song titles. They ventured into singing in German and French before recording a Spanish album late in their career. Their use of language melded with their international, almost universalist ambitions.
"I was looking for a word that wouldn't need a translation, something that everybody would be familiar with... I needed a three-syllable word that would fit the melody." - Stig Anderson on 'Waterloo'. (Palm, 2002)
"In an artificial world of neon, Abba appeared onstage and disappeared in the same way. Afterwards these four people seemed just as unreal and elusive as the smoke that stayed behind at the stage....A perfect show with well-directed spontaneous laughter and musicianship. Nothing personal that could disturb Stig Anderson's consummate hit products.... The songs are built on simple harmonies and multinational repetition... "I love you," Abba sing and point towards the audience. But it's a lie. Abba don't love us. They love the 20 kronor they can steal from us when we've been swept away by the Abbamania and lose our grip on reality for an hour." Reviewer for ABBA concert. Quoted in Palm 2002, 268. From McMullen, 2011. Emphasis mine.
One the one hand, ABBA was too international, but on the other their English was not good enough. Would not poor English pronunciation be a good thing and make ABBA less of a vehicle for the international music industry and more of a Swedish group? There seemed to be no limit as to what one could accuse ABBA of: Composer Jan W. Morthenson even referred to ABBA as ‘‘a totalitarian culture’’(Morthenson 1977a). But English was important for ABBA. It was an important vehicle for international success. During the Brighton contest,they performed ‘‘Waterloo’’ in Swedish during the competition—as prescribed by the rules at the time—but had prepared an English version in case they won and were given the opportunity to perform another time on stage (Broman 2005, p. 52)
As mentioned above, ABBA was sometimes seen as not American or English enough to truly appeal. At the same time, their American-ness was trotted out when ABBA needed to be perceived as an international evil by leftist Swedes. ABBA's use of language was ambiguous enough to support whatever interpretation of them you wanted to.
Thank You For The Music
So “when all is said and done,” what was ABBA’s linguistic legacy? And how did it fit in with their image?
Both leftist Swedish music critics and Anglo-American rock critics agreed that ABBA was ‘too commercial,’ but they had different bases for their claims. The ‘proggers’ (leftist music critics) saw ABBA as making disembodied, international messageless music. The rock critics saw ABBA as foreign mindless babblers selling sonic candy floss. Both agreed that ABBA was nothing but a money-making machine, sure to fade as soon as possible.
To some extent, the ABBA circle internalized some of these messages. Björn certainly felt inspired to step up the lyrics starting with their fifth album. And even musically, the group felt they needed to prove they could hang with the big dogs on account of not being Anglo-American:
"They were very confident about 'Dancing Queen' because that was a really good piece of music," [their recording engineer] Tretow, a master of understatement, said. "It was so together, and the swing and the feel to it was different from everything they did before and after. We used 'Rock Me Baby' as a guide for the feel of the swing. We're Swedish and that's quite different from being American or English - because we weren't brought up with that music. We had to make our own; it wasn't natural." (Vincentelli, 2011) Emphasis mine.
At the same time, it was hardly an albatross. Indeed, the members of ABBA took pride in not being from the UK or US, and some critics saw it as a much-needed shakeup in the pop scene.
In a 1978 article for The New York Times, John Rockwell observed that "ABBA represents a healthy challenge to the two-decades-long dominance of Western pop music by Britain and the United States. The musical context from which ABBA evolved is that of so-called Euro-pop - a flossy, bouncy, sometimes triumphantly silly fluff-music that derives not from the urgency of American blues (the source of rock) but from older forms of European folk music."
"Maybe that's another reason ABBA still exists," Benny mused recently. "We come from Sweden and we were raised on music that was not just Anglo-Saxon. We listened to Chuck Berry, Little Richard, the Beatles, the Kinks, and all that - at the same time that we had [bandleader and composer] Hugo Montenegro and [strings arranger] Mantovani, German schlager, Italian songs and French chansons. It all comes to you and probably stays there. If you grow up with three chords and only Little Richard and Elvis stuff, and you continue in that spirit, it will limit you. But if you grow up in a country like Sweden, with all this stuff from France, Italy, German, Denmark, along with England and America, together with classical music and folk traditional music, it keeps your possibilities open." (Vincentelli, 2011)
By now, you've noticed that we've spent more time talking about how ABBA was perceived than what they intended to do. This is by design: the members of ABBA were notoriously private for being part of such a popular group. They didn't appear in the press for scandals (Vincentelli, 2011). They rarely spoke about what their songs meant, who they were for, or their inspirations while writing them. This gave everyone else space to project their own cultural anxieties and expectations on to them.
This was aided along by ABBA’s ambition to universal appeal. Per McMullen, ABBA “sought to avoid what they considered the ‘particular,’” such as “ethnic sounds.” With the exception of the Swedish folk-influenced track “Arrival,” ABBA stuck to radio-ready pop. Their international commercial ambitions wouldn’t allow anything outside that mold. A great example is the demo track, “Hamlet III.” It is obviously influenced by Swedish folk music, particularly the “schottis.” But it was too much a schottis, and Benny and Björn felt the track didn’t work as a pop song, and it was shelved until Benny released an accordeon-only version on his own folk album decades letter. Avoiding the “particular” indeed. This also influenced ABBA’s reputation as "some of the brightest whiteness pop has ever known", per Barry Walters (McMullen 2019).
Combined with their desire to reach as many audiences as possible by singing in different languages and using language-agnostic names, it is perhaps inevitable that ABBA became a blank screen ready for projection. “Because it was so visible, perfect, delineated, and vacuous, Palm suggests ‘the audience could spin their own fantasies around Abba's slightly unreal, almost too perfect appearance’” (McMullen, 2019).
But this seemingly formless outreach had a bright side, too: ABBA’s music reached a broad swathe of the public that had perhaps never felt represented by Anglo-American rock. They showed it was possible to make great, international pop music without being American or English – or even speaking English as a first language. They showed you didn’t need to conform to rock critic sensibilities to touch people. They showed it’s okay to have fun and dance through the tears, even if everyone else think it’s cringe – a doubtless factor among ABBA’s decades-long popularity with LGBT listeners.
In the comments section of entertainment writer Owen Gleiberman’s July 2018 Variety article titled “The Secret Majesty of ABBA,” one fan speaks to the dual effect of the band’s unapologetically-European sensibilities: I am an Asian American growing up in Europe and I remember so well, after the ‘Eurovision Contest’ in 1973 [sic], ABBA was loved and appreciated by all European people. Unlike the Beatles, or the Bee Gees, ABBA sang songs not only in English, [but] also in Spanish, French, Italian and their native tongue Swedish.
From our modern perspective, the idea that an all-white group of heterosexual musicians could, in any way, be 'outsiders', may seem nonsensical. But pop music was so homogenous in the 60s and 70s that a group coming from Sweden was seen as both threatening and laughable. ABBA reflected an international approach to music that didn't center American and British tastes: a tiny crack, but a crack nonetheless. The rest of the world is here, and the US and the UK no longer have sole control over the musical discourse.
Hey Nude Spock, it was me who said that when singing accents are lost (and it was me who said American ones were unsexy too). Now, there are definitely some people who sing with an accent. I was listening to Carole King today and she sings with a major American accent. But then bands like Aqua & Bjork & Abba & anyone Japanese don't sound American (even when they are trying to) and very few English and Australian and NZ bands do either. - toraneko, 2001. (emphasis mine)
Kim Petras: L2 English, California Dreamin': Like the members of ABBA, Kim Petras speaks English as a second language - and still has a thriving career as a pop singer. Compare how Kim chooses different models of English that better suit her desired genre.
Dialect Dissection: The Beatles and Regional Identity: One of the most famous rock bands of all the time, with an accent nobody expected. Read about how the Beatles countered common expectations for how a rock band 'should' sound - and how the UK and the US reacted.
