Swedish language

Swedish
svenska
Pronunciation	[ˈsvɛ̂nskâ]
Native to	Sweden, Finland
Native speakers	11.1 million (2017)
Language family	Indo-European Germanic North Germanic East Scandinavian Swedish
Early forms	Old Swedish Modern Swedish
Writing system	Latin (Swedish alphabet) Swedish Braille
Official status
Official language in	Sweden Finland Åland Islands European Union Nordic Council
Regulated by	Swedish Language Council (in Sweden) Swedish Academy (in Sweden) Research Institute for the Languages of Finland (in Finland)
Language codes
ISO 639-1	sv
ISO 639-2	swe
ISO 639-3	swe
Linguasphere	52-AAA-ck to -cw
Major Swedish-speaking areas

Spoken Swedish

Swedish (svenska ) is a language mostly spoken in Sweden and in parts of Finland, typically along the southern and western coasts 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 with 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/En	One
Två	Two
Tre	Three
Fyra	Four
Fem	Five
Sex	Six
Sju	Seven
Åtta	Eight
Nio	Nine
Tio	Ten
Ja	Yes
Nej	No
Jag	I
Du	You
Mig	Me
Han	He
Hon	She
Vi	We
De/dem	They/them
Jag är	I am
Sverige	Sweden
Hus	House
Hem	Home
Väg	Way
Björnar	Bears
Hjälp	Help

Basic Swedish Expressions

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

• Swedish Dictionary Archived 2012-02-23 at the Wayback Machine from Webster's Dictionary Archived 2012-02-23 at the Wayback Machine
• An introduction to Swedish Archived 2006-08-29 at the Wayback Machine
• Lexin Swedish-English dictionary