tense vs. lax contrast is not nearly as pronounced as in English, German or Dutch. In many dialects, the short vowel sound pronounced or has merged with the short (transcribed in the chart below). There are 18 consonant phonemes, two of which, and , vary considerably in pronunciation depending on the dialect and social status of the speaker. In many dialects, sequences of (pronounced alveolarly) with a dental consonant result in retroflex consonants; alveolarity of the pronunciation of is a precondition for this retroflexion. has a guttural or "French R" pronunciation in the South Swedish dialects; consequently, these dialects lack retroflex consonants. Swedish is a stress-timed language, where the time intervals between stressed syllables are equal. However, when casually spoken, it tends to be syllable-timed. Any stressed syllable carries one of two tones, which gives Swedish much of its characteristic sound. Prosody is often one of the most noticeable differences between dialects. Grammar The standard word order is, as in most Germanic languages, V2, which means that the finite verb (V) appears in the second position (2) of a declarative main clause. Swedish morphology is similar to English; that is, words have comparatively few inflections. Swedish has two genders and is generally seen to have two grammatical cases – nominative and genitive (except for pronouns that, as in English, also are inflected in the object form) – although it is debated if the genitive in Swedish should be seen as a genitive case or just the nominative plus the so-called genitive s, then seen as a clitic. Swedish has two grammatical numbers – plural and singular. Adjectives have discrete comparative and superlative forms and are also inflected according to gender, number and definiteness. The definiteness of nouns is marked primarily through suffixes (endings), complemented with separate definite and indefinite articles. The prosody features both stress and in most dialects tonal qualities. The language has a comparatively large vowel inventory. Swedish is also notable for the voiceless dorso-palatal velar fricative, a highly variable consonant phoneme. Swedish nouns and adjectives are declined in genders as well as number. Nouns are of common gender (en form) or neuter gender (ett form). The gender determines the declension of the adjectives. For example, the word fisk ("fish") is a noun of common gender (en fisk) and can have the following forms: The definite singular form of a noun is created by adding a suffix (-en,