Swedish language

Swedish (( svenska (info • help)) is a language mostly spoken in Sweden and in parts of Finland, especially along the coast and on the Åland islands. More than nine million people speak Swedish. It is similar to two of the other Scandinavian languages, Norwegian and Danish, and a person who understands one of these languages can understand the others. Other Scandinavian languages, such as Icelandic and Faroese, are less closely related and cannot be understood by Swedish speakers. Standard Swedish is spoken and written throughout Sweden, but there are some local dialects with differences in grammar and vocabulary in small towns and rural areas.

Swedish began as a dialect of Old Norse, which was a language that everyone in Scandinavia understood during the Viking Age. Around the 12th century Swedish began to slowly become different from the other dialects. These dialects later became what we today call Norwegian, Icelandic, Faroese and Danish. Swedish is a Germanic language and some similarities to English because of the Vikings that invaded England in the 10th Century. It is even more similar to German and Dutch, partly because of the Hanseatic League of the Middle Ages, when Sweden traded very openly with Germany.

There are three characters in the Swedish language that are not used in English. These are å, ä and ö. The letter å is a vowel sound between [a] and [o], similar to the English word awe. The letter ä is a vowel sound similar to [ɛ], like in the English word bed. The letter ö is a vowel sound between [o] and [ɛ], pronounced [øː] like the u in the English word burn. These characters are also used in the Finnish language, while Norwegian and Danish languages replace ä and ö with similar characters æ and ø.

Swedish also has some important differences in grammar. Definite articles are suffixed onto the end of their nouns, so ett hus (a house) becomes huset (the house). Also unlike English, Swedish uses two grammatical genders called Common and Neuter. Nouns of the Common gender are sometimes called "en words", and many words for living (or once-living) things are "en words". Nouns of the Neuter gender are sometimes called "ett words".

Example of some words in Swedish

Swedish	English
Ett	One
Två	Two
Tre	Three
Ja	Yes
Nej	No
Jag	I
Du	You
Han	He
Hon	She
Vi	We
De	They
Jag är	I am
Sverige	Sweden
Hus	House
Hem	Home
Väg	Way
Björnar	Bears

Basic Swedish Expressions

Swedish	English
God dag/Hej	Good day/Hello
Hur mår du?	How are you?
Jag mår bra, tack	Very good, thank you
Tack	Thank you
Tack så mycket	Thank you very much
God morgon	Good morning
God eftermiddag	Good evening
Hej då	Goodbye

Other websites

This language has its own Wikipedia Project.

See the Swedish language edition

Wikibooks has more about this subject:

Swedish

• Swedish Dictionary from Webster's Dictionary
• An introduction to Swedish
• Lexin Swedish-English dictionary