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Swedish language
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| Swedish | |
|---|---|
| svenska | |
| Pronunciation | [ˈsvɛ̂nskâ] |
| Native to | Sweden, Finland |
Native speakers | 11.1 million (2017)[1] |
Language family | Indo-European
|
Early forms | Old Swedish
|
Writing system | Latin (Swedish alphabet) Swedish Braille |
| Official status | |
Official language in |  Sweden Finland European UnionNordic 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 (help·info)) 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".
Contents
1 Example of some words in Swedish
2 Basic Swedish Expressions
3 References
4 Other websites
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 |
References |
↑ Nationalencyklopedin "Världens 100 största språk 2007" The World's 100 Largest Languages in 2007
Other websites |
 | Swedish edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia |
Wikibooks has more about this subject:
Swedish Dictionary from Webster's Dictionary- An introduction to Swedish
- Lexin Swedish-English dictionary
Categories:
- Languages with ISO 639-2 code
- Languages with ISO 639-1 code
- Germanic languages
- Languages of Europe
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