Läsform

Läsform is a term used primarily in Swedish linguistics and language education to refer to the form of a word as it is realized in reading or speech. The concept describes the phonetic or pronunciation form that a reader or speaker encounters when decoding written text or speaking, and is thus distinct from the written orthography (skriftform) and from the dictionary or lemma form (grundform).

In practice, läsform can cover everyday pronunciation, including regional variations, as well as standardized reading aloud forms used in teaching materials. The notion is used to connect how a word is seen in writing with how it is pronounced in actual use.

In dictionaries and language-teaching resources, läsform is used to indicate how a word is typically pronounced in running text, or how it should be pronounced in a given pedagogical context. The term is not always used consistently, and its exact meaning can vary between studies or educational programs.

Some linguists treat läsform as the spoken realization of a word’s surface form, while others use it more narrowly to denote the pronunciation used in classroom reading exercises. In corpus linguistics and speech technology, läsform annotations help align written tokens with their spoken realization, which supports tasks such as pronunciation modeling, speech synthesis, and reading-aloud assessment.

See also: grundform, böjningsform, skriftform, uttal, fonetik.