Is Swedish a tonal language?
From UniLang Wiki
A peculiarity of Swedish, compared to other Germanic languages, is its use of a strange kind of high-pitched tone in the middle of a word, resulting in a kind of sing-song sound of the language.
In typical tonal languages, such as Mandarin Chinese or Thai, different tones are used to distinguish words. Getting the tones wrong will make your speech either incomprehensible or completely change the meaning. However, the ~50 words which are separated by tones in Swedish are hardly subject for misinterpretation (judging by context):
anden = the spirit / the duck
tanken = the thought / the tank
tomten = the property / Santa Claus
buren = carried / the cage
fallen = fallen / the falls
stegen = the steps / the ladder
Some words though are constructed in the same (noun/verb + en) way as showed above, but don't use tones and are thus only interpretable by the use of context (homonyms), e.g.:
vinden = the attic / the wind
When it comes to other words than those only separable by tones many Swedish dialects aren't very precise in the tonal pronounciation. It's still good to know though that words could change tone depending on whether they're existing independently or as a compund in a compound word:
"Tonal Sandhi"
acute + acute = acute + grave
fönster + karm = fönster.karm
(window, frame, windowframe)
grave + grave = grave + acute
månad + skifte = månads.skifte
(month, change, turn of the month)
I will try finding more about this as I'm not 100% sure :/
In languages such as Swedish or Japanese you will normally do fine in the beginning by not paying so much attention to the correct stress, and will acquire it naturally once you are exposed to it more often. In Mandarin Chinese, however, it is vital from the very beginning that you get the tones right.
