In recent years the situation on the Horn of Africa has meant that the number of people in Sweden whose mother tongue is Somali has increased. To better understand the specific difficulties for Somali speakers when learning Swedish as a second language, we need more knowledge about the differences as well as similarities between the two languages. Although there is a vowel length contrast in both languages, this study shows that speakers with Somali L1 have difficulty distinguishing between long and short vowels and consonants in the syllable in Swedish words, which makes native listeners confused. When producing minimal pairs with distinctive lexical word stress the L2‐learners do not use the same cues as native speakers, namely duration and pitch. These findings are important for the development of pedagogical strategies when teaching Somali speakers Swedish as their second language.