Regions where Swedish is an official language spoken by the majority of the population (Sweden, Åland, Western Finland) Regions where Swedish is an official language spoken by a minority of the population (Finland)
Standard Swedish, spoken by mostSwedes, is thenational language that evolved from the CentralSwedish dialects in the 19th century, and was well established by the beginning of the 20th century. While distinct regionalvarieties and rural dialects still exist, the written language is uniform andstandardized. Swedish is the most widely spoken second language in Finland where its status is co-official language.
Swedish was long spoken in parts ofEstonia, although the current status of theEstonian Swedish speakers is almost extinct. It is also used in theSwedish diaspora, most notably inOslo, Norway, with more than 50,000 Swedish residents.[4]
Swedish is anIndo-European language belonging to theNorth Germanic branch of theGermanic languages. In the established classification, it belongs to theEast Scandinavian languages, together withDanish, separating it from theWest Scandinavian languages, consisting ofFaroese,Icelandic, andNorwegian. However, more recent analyses divide the North Germanic languages into two groups:Insular Scandinavian (Faroese and Icelandic), andContinental Scandinavian (Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish), based on mutual intelligibility due to heavy influence of East Scandinavian (particularly Danish) on Norwegian during the last millennium and divergence from both Faroese and Icelandic.[5]
By many general criteria of mutual intelligibility, the Continental Scandinavian languages could very well be considereddialects of a common Scandinavian language. However, because of several hundred years of sometimes quite intense rivalry betweenDenmark and Sweden, including a long series of wars from the 16th to 18th centuries, and thenationalist ideas that emerged during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the languages have separateorthographies, dictionaries, grammars, and regulatory bodies. Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish are thus from a linguistic perspective more accurately described as adialect continuum of Scandinavian (North Germanic), and some of the dialects, such as those on the border between Norway and Sweden, especially parts ofBohuslän,Dalsland, westernVärmland, westernDalarna,Härjedalen,Jämtland, andScania, could be described as intermediate dialects of the national standard languages.[5]
Swedish pronunciations also vary greatly from one region to another, a legacy of the vast geographic distances and historical isolation. Even so, the vocabulary is standardized to a level that make dialects within Sweden virtually fully mutually intelligible.
OtherGermanic languages with which Old Norse still retained some mutual intelligibility
In the 8th century, the common Germanic language of Scandinavia,Proto-Norse, evolved into Old Norse. This language underwent more changes that did not spread to all of Scandinavia, which resulted in the appearance of two similar dialects:Old West Norse (Norway, the Faroe Islands and Iceland) andOld East Norse (Denmark and Sweden). The dialects of Old East Norse spoken in Sweden are calledRunic Swedish, while the dialects of Denmark are referred to asRunic Danish. The dialects are described as "runic" because the main body of text appears in therunic alphabet. Unlike Proto-Norse, which was written with theElder Futhark alphabet, Old Norse was written with theYounger Futhark alphabet, which had only 16 letters. Because the number of runes was limited, some runes were used for a range ofphonemes, such as the rune for the vowelu, which was also used for the vowelso,ø andy, and the rune fori, also used fore.[6]
From 1200 onwards, the dialects in Denmark began to diverge from those of Sweden. The innovations spread unevenly from Denmark, creating a series of minor dialectal boundaries, orisoglosses, ranging fromZealand in the south toNorrland,Österbotten and northwesternFinland in the north.[6]
An early change that separated Runic Danish from the other dialects of Old East Norse was the change of thediphthongæi to themonophthongé, as instæinn tosténn "stone". This is reflected in runic inscriptions where the older readstain and the laterstin. There was also a change ofau as indauðr into a long openø as indøðr "dead". This change is shown in runic inscriptions as a change fromtauþr intotuþr. Moreover, theøy diphthong changed into a long,closeø, as in the Old Norse word for "island". By the end of the period, these innovations had affected most of the Runic Swedish-speaking area as well, with the exception of the dialects spoken north and east ofMälardalen where the diphthongs still exist in remote areas.[7]
Old Swedish (Swedish:fornsvenska) is the term used for themedieval Swedish language. The start date is usually set to 1225 since this is the year thatVästgötalagen ("the Västgöta Law") is believed to have been compiled for the first time.[8] It is among the most important documents of the period written inLatin script and the oldest Swedishlaw codes. Old Swedish is divided intoäldre fornsvenska (1225–1375) andyngre fornsvenska (1375–1526), "older" and "younger" Old Swedish.[9] Important outside influences during this time came with the firm establishment of theChristian church and variousmonastic orders, introducing manyGreek andLatin loanwords. With the rise ofHanseatic power in the late 13th and early 14th century,Middle Low German became very influential. The Hanseatic league provided Swedish commerce and administration with a large number ofLow German-speaking immigrants. Many became quite influential members of Swedish medieval society, and brought terms from their native languages into the vocabulary. Besides a great number of loanwords for such areas as warfare, trade and administration, general grammatical suffixes and even conjunctions were imported. The League also brought a certain measure of influence from Danish (at the time Swedish and Danish were much more similar than today).[10]
Early Old Swedish was markedly different from the modern language in that it had a more complexcase structure and also retained the original Germanic three-gender system.Nouns,adjectives,pronouns and certainnumerals were inflected in four cases; besides the extantnominative, there were also thegenitive (laterpossessive),dative andaccusative. The gender system resembled that of modernGerman, having masculine, feminine and neuter genders. The masculine and feminine genders were later merged into acommon gender with thedefinite suffix-en and thedefinite articleden, in contrast with the neuter gender equivalents-et anddet. The verb system was also more complex: it includedsubjunctive andimperativemoods and verbs were conjugated according toperson as well asnumber. By the 16th century, the case and gender systems of the colloquial spoken language and the profane literature had been largely reduced to the two cases and two genders of modern Swedish.[11]
A transitional change of the Latin script in the Nordic countries was to spell the letter combination "ae" as æ – and sometimes as a' – though it varied between persons and regions. The combination "ao" was similarly rendered ao, and "oe" became oe. These three were later to evolve into the separate lettersä,å andö.[12] The first time the new letters were used in print was inAff dyäffwlsens frästilse ("By the Devil's temptation") published byJohan Gerson in 1495.[13]
Front page ofGustav Vasa's Bible from 1541, usingFraktur. The title translated to English reads: "The Bible / That is / The Holy Scripture / in Swedish. Printed inUppsala. 1541".
Modern Swedish (Swedish:nysvenska) begins with the advent of theprinting press and the EuropeanReformation. After assuming power, the new monarchGustav Vasa ordered a Swedish translation of theBible. TheNew Testament was published in 1526, followed by a fullBible translation in 1541, usually referred to as theGustav Vasa Bible, a translation deemed so successful and influential that, with revisions incorporated in successive editions, it remained the most common Bible translation until 1917. The main translators wereLaurentius Andreæ and the brothersLaurentius andOlaus Petri.[14]
The Vasa Bible is often considered to be a reasonable compromise between old and new; while not adhering to the colloquial spoken language of its day, it was not overly conservative in its use of archaic forms.[15] It was a major step towards a more consistentSwedish orthography. It established the use of the vowels "å", "ä", and "ö", and the spelling "ck" in place of "kk", distinguishing it clearly from the Danish Bible, perhaps intentionally, given the ongoing rivalry between the countries. All three translators came from central Sweden, which is generally seen as adding specific Central Swedish features to the new Bible.[16]
Though it might seem as if the Bible translation set a very powerful precedent for orthographic standards, spelling actually became more inconsistent during the remainder of the century. It was not until the 17th century that spelling began to be discussed, around the time when the first grammars were written.[17]Capitalization during this time was not standardized. It depended on the authors and their background. Those influenced byGerman capitalized all nouns, while others capitalized more sparsely. It is also not always apparent which letters are capitalized owing to the Gothic orblackletter typeface that was used to print the Bible. This typeface was in use until the mid-18th century, when it was gradually replaced with a Latin typeface (oftenAntiqua).[18]
Some important changes in sound during the Modern Swedish period were the gradual assimilation of several different consonant clusters into thefricative[ʃ] and later into[ɧ]. There was also the gradual softening of[ɡ] and[k] into[j] and thefricative[ɕ] beforefront vowels. Thevelar fricative[ɣ] was also transformed into the correspondingplosive[ɡ].[19]
August Strindberg, one of the most influential writers in modern Swedish literature
A sign on the wall of a Swedish hotel, using both the recommended[20]dem and the colloquialdom for the word "them" on the same sign.
The period that includes Swedish as it is spoken today is termednusvenska (lit., "Now-Swedish") in linguistics, and started in the last decades of the 19th century. It saw a democratization of the language with a less formal written form that approached the spoken one. The growth of a state school system also led to the evolution of so-calledboksvenska (literally, "book Swedish"), especially among the working classes, where spelling to some extent influenced pronunciation, particularly in official contexts. With the industrialization and urbanization of Sweden well under way by the last decades of the 19th century, a new breed of authors made their mark onSwedish literature. Many scholars, politicians and other public figures had a great influence on the emerging national language, among them prolific authors like the poetGustaf Fröding, Nobel laureateSelma Lagerlöf and radical writer and playwrightAugust Strindberg.[21]
It was during the 20th century that a common, standardized national language became available to all Swedes. The orthography finally stabilized and became almost completely uniform, with some minor deviations, by the time of the spelling reform of 1906.[22] With the exception of plural forms of verbs and a slightly different syntax, particularly in the written language, the language was the same as the Swedish of today. The plural verb forms appeared decreasingly in formal writing into the 1950s, when their use was removed from all official recommendations.[23][24]
A very significant change in Swedish occurred in the late 1960s with the so-calleddu-reformen. Previously the proper way to address people of the same or higher social status had been by title and surname. The use ofherr ("Mr" or "Sir"),fru ("Mrs" or "Ma'am") orfröken ("Miss") was considered the only acceptable way to begin conversation with strangers of unknown occupation, academic title or military rank. The fact that the listener should preferably be referred to in the third person tended to further complicate spoken communication between members of society. In the early 20th century an unsuccessful attempt was made to replace the insistence on titles withni—the standardsecond person plural pronoun)—analogous to theFrenchvous (seeT-V distinction).Ni wound up being used as a slightly less familiar form ofdu, the second person singular pronoun, used to address people of lower social status. With the liberalization and radicalization of Swedish society in the 1950s and 1960s, these class distinctions became less important anddu became the standard, even in formal and official contexts. Though the reform was not an act of any centralized political decree but rather the result of sweeping change in social attitudes, it was completed in just a few years, from the late 1960s to early 1970s.[25] The use ofni as a polite form of address is sometimes encountered today in both the written and spoken language, particularly among older speakers.[26]
Swedish is the sole official national language ofSweden, and one of two in Finland (alongsideFinnish). As of 2006, it was the sole native language of 83% of Swedish residents.[27] In 2007, around 5.5% (c. 290,000) of the population of Finland were native speakers of Swedish,[28] partially due to a decline following the Russian annexation of Finland after theFinnish War 1808–1809.[29] TheFenno-Swedish-speaking minority is concentrated in the coastal areas andarchipelagos of southern and western Finland. In some of these areas, Swedish is the predominant language; in 19municipalities, 16 of which are locatedin Åland, Swedish is the sole official language.Åland county is an autonomous region of Finland.[30]
According to a rough estimation, as of 2010 there were up to 300,000 Swedish-speakers living outside Sweden and Finland. The largest populations were in the United States (up to 100,000), the UK, Spain and Germany (c. 30,000 each) and a large proportion of the remaining 100,000 in the Scandinavian countries, France, Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Canada and Australia.[31] Over three million people speak Swedish as a second language, with about 2,410,000 of those in Finland.[1] According to a survey by theEuropean Commission, 44% of respondents from Finland who did not have Swedish as a native language considered themselves to be proficient enough in Swedish to hold a conversation.[32] Due to the close relation between the Scandinavian languages, a considerable proportion of speakers of Danish and especially Norwegian are able to understand Swedish.[33]
There is considerable migration between theNordic countries, but owing to the similarity between the cultures and languages (with the exception ofFinnish), expatriates generallyassimilate quickly and do not stand out as a group. According to the 2000United States Census, some 67,000 people over the age of five were reported as Swedish speakers, though without any information on the degree of language proficiency.[34] Similarly, there were 16,915 reported Swedish speakers in Canada from the 2001 census.[35] Although there are no certain numbers, some 40,000 Swedes are estimated to live in the London area in the United Kingdom.[36] Outside Sweden and Finland, there are about 40,000 active learners enrolled in Swedish language courses.[37]
In theUnited States, particularly during the 19th and early 20th centuries, there was a significant Swedish-speaking immigrant population. This was notably true in states likeMinnesota, where many Swedish immigrants settled. By 1940, approximately 6% of Minnesota's population spoke Swedish.[38] Although the use of Swedish has significantly declined, it is not uncommon to find older generations and communities that still retain some use and knowledge of the language, particularly in rural communities likeLindström andScandia.[39][40]
Swedish is the official main language of Sweden.[41][42] Swedish is also one of two official languages of Finland. In Sweden, it has long been used in local and state government, and most of the educational system, but remained only ade facto primary language with no official status in law until 2009. A bill was proposed in 2005 that would have made Swedish an official language, but failed to pass by the narrowest possible margin (145–147) due to apairing-off failure.[43] A proposal for a broader language law, designating Swedish as the main language of the country and bolstering the status of the minority languages, was submitted by an expert committee to the Swedish Ministry of Culture in March 2008. It was subsequently enacted by theRiksdag, and entered into effect on 1 July 2009.[44]
Swedish is the sole official language ofÅland (anautonomous province under thesovereignty of Finland), where the vast majority of the 26,000 inhabitants speak Swedish as a first language. In Finland as a whole, Swedish is one of the two "national" languages, with the same official status asFinnish (spoken by the majority) at the state level and an official language in somemunicipalities.
Swedish is one of the official languages of theEuropean Union, and one of the working languages of theNordic Council. Under theNordic Language Convention, citizens of theNordic countries speaking Swedish have the opportunity to use their native language when interacting with official bodies in other Nordic countries without being liable for interpretation or translation costs.[45][46]
Map of theEstonian islands, which formerly housed "Coastal Swede" populations
TheSwedish Language Council (Språkrådet) is the regulator of Swedish in Sweden but does not attempt to enforce control of the language, as for instance theAcadémie française does forFrench. However, many organizations and agencies require the use of the council's publicationSvenska skrivregler in official contexts, with it otherwise being regarded as ade facto orthographic standard. Among the many organizations that make up the Swedish Language Council, theSwedish Academy (established 1786) is arguably the most influential. Its primary instruments are thespelling dictionarySvenska Akademiens ordlista (SAOL, currently in its 14th edition) and the dictionarySvenska Akademiens Ordbok, in addition to various books on grammar, spelling and manuals of style. Although the dictionaries have aprescriptive element, they mainly describe current usage.[47]
In Finland, a special branch of theResearch Institute for the Languages of Finland has official status as the regulatory body for Swedish in Finland. Among its highest priorities is to maintain intelligibility with the language spoken in Sweden. It has publishedFinlandssvensk ordbok, a dictionary about the differences between Swedish in Finland and Sweden.[48]
From the 13th to 20th century, there wereSwedish-speaking communities in Estonia, particularly on the islands (e. g.,Hiiumaa,Vormsi,Ruhnu; in Swedish, known asDagö,Ormsö,Runö, respectively) along the coast of theBaltic, communities that today have all disappeared. The Swedish-speaking minority was represented inparliament, and entitled to use their native language in parliamentary debates. After the loss of Estonia to theRussian Empire in the early 18th century, around 1,000Estonian Swedish speakers were forced to march to southernUkraine, where they founded a village,Gammalsvenskby ("Old Swedish Village"). A few elderly people in the village still speak aSwedish dialect and observe the holidays of the Swedish calendar, although their dialect is most likely facing extinction.[49]
From 1918 to 1940, when Estonia was independent, the small Swedish community was well treated. Municipalities with a Swedish majority, mainly found along the coast, used Swedish as the administrative language and Swedish-Estonian culture saw an upswing. However, most Swedish-speaking people fled to Sweden before the end ofWorld War II, that is before the invasion of Estonia by the Soviet army in 1944. Only a handful of speakers remain.[50]
The vowel phonemes of Central Standard Swedish[51]
Swedish dialects have either 17 or 18 vowelphonemes, 9 long and 9 short. As in the other Germanic languages, including English, most long vowels are phonetically paired with one of the short vowels, and the pairs are such that the two vowels are of similarquality, but with the short vowel being slightly lower and slightly centralized. In contrast to e.g. Danish, which has only tense vowels, the short vowels are slightly more lax, but the tense vs. lax contrast is not nearly as pronounced as in English, German or Dutch. In many dialects, the short vowel sound pronounced[ɛ] or[æ] has merged with the short/e/ (transcribed ⟨ɛ⟩ in the chart below).[52]
There are 18 consonant phonemes, two of which,/ɧ/ and/r/, vary considerably in pronunciation depending on the dialect and social status of the speaker. In many dialects, sequences of/r/ (pronounced alveolarly) with a dental consonant result inretroflex consonants; alveolarity of the pronunciation of/r/ is a precondition for this retroflexion./r/ has aguttural or "French R" pronunciation in theSouth Swedish dialects; consequently, these dialects lackretroflex consonants.[53]
Swedish is astress-timed language, where the time intervals betweenstressed syllables are equal. However, when casually spoken, it tends to besyllable-timed.[54] Any stressed syllable carries one of twotones, which gives Swedish much of its characteristic sound.Prosody is often one of the most noticeable differences between dialects.[55]
Swedishnouns andadjectives are declined ingenders as well asnumber. Nouns are ofcommon gender (en form) orneuter gender (ett form).[57] The gender determines the declension of theadjectives. For example, the wordfisk ("fish") is a noun of common gender (en fisk) and can have the following forms:
Singular
Plural
Indefinite form
fisk
fiskar
Definite form
fisken
fiskarna
The definite singular form of a noun is created by adding a suffix (-en,-n,-et or-t), depending on its gender and if the noun ends in a vowel or not. The definite articlesden,det, andde are used for variations to the definitiveness of a noun. They can double asdemonstrativepronouns ordemonstrative determiners when used withadverbs such ashär ("here") ordär ("there") to formden/det här (can also be "denna/detta") ("this"),de här (can also be "dessa") ("these"),den/det där ("that"), andde där ("those"). For example,den där fisken means "that fish" and refers to a specific fish;den fisken is less definite and means "that fish" in a more abstract sense, such as that set of fish; whilefisken means "the fish". In certain cases, the definite form indicates possession, e. g.,jag måste tvätta håret ("I must washmy hair").[58]
Adjectives are inflected in two declensions – indefinite and definite – and they must match the noun they modify in gender and number. The indefinite neuter and plural forms of an adjective are usually created by adding a suffix (-t or-a) to the common form of the adjective, e. g.,en grön stol (a green chair),ett grönt hus (a green house), andgröna stolar ("green chairs"). The definite form of an adjective is identical to the indefinite plural form, e. g.,den gröna stolen ("the green chair"),det gröna huset ("the green house"), andde gröna stolarna ("the green chairs").[58]
Swedishpronouns are similar to those of English. Besides the two natural gendershan andhon ("he" and "she"), there are also the twogrammatical gendersden anddet, usually termedcommon and neuter. In recent years, agender-neutral pronounhen has been introduced, particularly in literary Swedish. Unlike the nouns, pronouns have an additionalobject form, derived from the olddative form.Hon, for example, has the following nominative, possessive, and object forms:[58]
hon –hennes –henne
Swedish also uses third-person possessivereflexive pronouns that refer to the subject in a clause, a trait that is restricted to North Germanic languages:
Anna gav Maria sin bok.; "Anna gave Maria her [Anna's] book." (reflexive)
Anna gav Maria hennes bok.; "Anna gave Maria her [Maria's] book." (not reflexive)
Swedish used to have agenitive that was placed at the end of the head of a noun phrase. In modern Swedish, it has become anenclitic-s, which attaches to the end of the noun phrase, rather than the noun itself.[59]
hästen; "the horse" –hästens "the horse's"
hästen på den blommande ängens svarta man; "the horse in the flowering meadow's black mane"
In formal written language, it used to be considered correct to place the genitive-s after the head of the noun phrase (hästen), though this is today considered dated, and different grammatical constructions are often used.[60]
Verbs areconjugated according totense. One group of verbs (the ones ending in-er in present tense) has a specialimperative form (generally the verbstem), but with most verbs the imperative is identical to theinfinitive form.Perfect andpresentparticiples as adjectival verbs are very common:[58]
Perfect participle:en stekt fisk; "a fried fish" (steka = to fry)
Present participle:en stinkande fisk; "a stinking fish" (stinka = to stink)
In contrast to English and many other languages, Swedish does not use the perfect participle to form the present perfect and past perfect. Rather, theauxiliary verbhar ("have"),hade ("had") is followed by a special form, called thesupine, used solely for this purpose (although often identical to the neuter form of the perfect participle):[58]
When building the compound passive voice using the verbatt bli, the past participle is used:
den blir målad; "it's being painted"
den blev målad; "it was painted"
There exists also an inflected passive voice formed by adding-s, replacing the finalr in the present tense:
den målas; "it's being painted"
den målades; "it was painted"
In a subordinateclause, the auxiliaryhar is optional and often omitted, particularly in written Swedish.
Jag ser att han (har) stekt fisken; "I see that he has fried the fish"
Subjunctive mood is occasionally used for some verbs, but its use is in sharp decline and few speakers perceive the handful of commonly used verbs (as for instance:vore, månne) as separate conjugations, most of them remaining only as set ofidiomatic expressions.[58]
Where other languages may usegrammatical cases, Swedish uses numerousprepositions, similar to those found inEnglish. As in modernGerman, prepositions formerly determined case in Swedish, but this feature can only be found in certain idiomatic expressions liketill fots ("on foot", genitive).[61]
As Swedish is a Germanic language, thesyntax shows similarities to both English and German. Like English, Swedish has asubject–verb–object basic word order, but like German it utilizesverb-second word order in main clauses, for instance afteradverbs and adverbial phrases, anddependent clauses. (Adverbial phrases denoting time are usually placed at the beginning of a main clause that is at the head of a sentence.)Prepositional phrases are placed in aplace–manner–time order, as in English (but not German). Adjectives precede the noun they modify.[62] Verb-second (inverted) word order is also used for questions.[63]
Thevocabulary of Swedish is mainly Germanic, either through common Germanic heritage or through loans from German, Middle Low German, and to some extent, English. Examples of Germanic words in Swedish aremus ("mouse"),kung ("king"), andgås ("goose"). A significant part of the religious and scientific vocabulary is ofLatin orGreek origin, often borrowed fromFrench and, lately, English. Some 1–200 words are also borrowed fromScandoromani orRomani, often as slang varieties; a commonly used word from Romani istjej ("girl").[64]
A large number ofFrench words were imported into Sweden around the 18th century. These words have beentranscribed to the Swedish spelling system and are therefore pronounced recognizably to a French-speaker. Most of them are distinguished by a "French accent", characterized by emphasis on the last syllable. For example,nivå (fr.niveau, "level"),fåtölj (fr.fauteuil, "armchair") andaffär ("shop; affair"), etc. Cross-borrowing from other Germanic languages has also been common, at first from Middle Low German, thelingua franca of theHanseatic league and later fromStandard German. Some compounds are translations of the elements (calques) of German original compounds into Swedish, likebomull from GermanBaumwolle ("cotton"; literally,tree-wool).[65]
As with many Germanic languages, new words can be formed by compounding, e. g., nouns likenagellackborttagningsmedel ("nail polish remover") or verbs likesmyglyssna ("to eavesdrop").[66][67] Compound nouns take theirgender from thehead, which in Swedish is always the last morpheme.[66] New words can also be coined byderivation from other established words, such as theverbification ofnouns by the adding of thesuffix-a, as inbil ("car") andbila ("travel (recreationally) by car").[68] The opposite, making nouns of verbs, is also possible, as intänk ("way of thinking; concept") fromtänka ("to think").[69]
TheSwedish alphabet is a 29-letteralphabet, using the 26-letterISO basic Latin alphabet plus the three additional letters⟨å⟩,⟨ä⟩, and⟨ö⟩ constructed in the 16th century by writing⟨o⟩ and⟨e⟩ on top of an⟨a⟩, and an⟨e⟩ on top of an⟨o⟩. Though these combinations are historically modified versions of⟨a⟩ and⟨o⟩ according to the English range of usage for the termdiacritic, these three characters are not considered to be diacritics within the Swedish application, but rather separate letters, and are independent letters following⟨z⟩. Before the release of the 13th edition ofSvenska Akademiens ordlista in April 2006,⟨w⟩ was treated as merely a variant of⟨v⟩ used only in names (such as "Wallenberg") and foreign words ("bowling"), and so was both sorted and pronounced as a⟨v⟩. Otherdiacritics (to use the broader English term usage referenced here) are unusual in Swedish;⟨é⟩ is sometimes used to indicate that the stress falls on a terminal syllable containing⟨e⟩, especially when the stress changes the meaning (ide vs.idé, "winter lair" vs. "idea") as well as in some names, likeKastrén; occasionally otheracute accents and, less often,grave accents can be seen in names and some foreign words. The letter⟨à⟩ is used to refer to unit cost (a loan from the French), equivalent to theat sign (⟨@⟩) in English.[70]
The German⟨ü⟩ is treated as a variant of⟨y⟩ and sometimes retained in foreign names and words, e. g.,müsli ("muesli/granola"). A properdiaeresis may very exceptionally be seen in elaborated style (for instance: "Aïda"). The German convention of writing⟨ä⟩ and⟨ö⟩ as⟨ae⟩ and⟨oe⟩ if the characters are unavailable is an unusual convention for speakers of modern Swedish. Despite the availability of all these characters in the Swedish nationaltop-level Internet domain and other such domains, Swedish sites are frequently labelled using⟨a⟩ and⟨o⟩, based on visual similarity, though Swedish domains could be registered using the characters⟨å⟩,⟨ä⟩, and⟨ö⟩ from 2003.[71]
In Swedishorthography, thecolon is used in asimilar manner as in English, with some exceptions: the colon is used for some abbreviations, such as3:e fortredje ("third") andS:t forSankt ("Saint"), and for all types ofendings that can be added to numbers, letters and abbreviations, such asa:et ("the a") andCD:n ("the CD"), or the genitive formUSA:s ("USA's").[72]
Isogloss for the pronunciation of "R" (c. 1960), beingalveolar north of the boundary anduvular ("French R") south of it. It follows that the R+S combination is pronounced as spelled south of the boundary, while pronounced[ʂ] (similar to "sh" in "shark") north of it. This isogloss is the most imperative of all Swedish pronunciation differences.
The traditional definition of a Swedishdialect has been a local variant that has not been heavily influenced by the standard language and that can trace a separate development all the way back toOld Norse. Many of the genuine rural dialects, such as those ofOrsa inDalarna orNärpes inÖsterbotten, have very distinct phonetic and grammatical features, such as plural forms of verbs or archaiccase inflections. These dialects can be near-incomprehensible to a majority of Swedes, and most of their speakers are also fluent in Standard Swedish. The different dialects are often so localized that they are limited to individualparishes and are referred to by Swedish linguists assockenmål (lit., "parish speech"). They are generally separated into six major groups, with common characteristics of prosody, grammar and vocabulary. One or several examples from each group are given here. Though each example is intended to be also representative of the nearby dialects, the actual number of dialects is several hundred if each individual community is considered separately.[75]
This type of classification, however, is based on a somewhat romanticizednationalist view of ethnicity and language. The idea that only rural variants of Swedish should be considered "genuine" is not generally accepted by modern scholars. No dialects, no matter how remote or obscure, remained unchanged or undisturbed by a minimum of influences from surrounding dialects or the standard language, especially not from the late 19th century onwards with the advent ofmass media and advanced forms of transport. The differences are today more accurately described by a scale that runs from "standard language" to "rural dialect" where the speech even of the same person may vary from one extreme to the other depending on the situation. All Swedish dialects with the exception of the highly diverging forms of speech inDalarna,Norrbotten and, to some extent,Gotland can be considered to be part of a common, mutually intelligibledialect continuum. This continuum may also includeNorwegian and someDanish dialects.[76]
Standard Swedish is the language used by virtually all Swedes and mostSwedish-speaking Finns. It is calledrikssvenska orstandardsvenska ("Standard Swedish") in Sweden.[77] In Finland,högsvenska ("High Swedish") is used for the Finnish variant of standard Swedish andrikssvenska refers to Swedish as spoken in Sweden in general.[78]
In a poll conducted in 2005 by theSwedish Retail Institute (Handelns Utredningsinstitut), the attitudes of Swedes to the use of certain dialects by salesmen revealed that 54% believed thatrikssvenska was the variety they would prefer to hear when speaking with salesmen over the phone, even though dialects such asgotländska orskånska were provided as alternatives in the poll.[79]
Finland was a part of Sweden from the 13th century until the loss of the Finnish territories toRussia in 1809. Swedish was the sole administrative language until 1902 as well as the dominant language of culture and education until Finnish independence in 1917. The percentage of Swedish speakers in Finland has steadily decreased since then. The Swedish-speaking population is mainly concentrated in the coastal areas ofOstrobothnia,Southwest Finland andNyland where the percentage of Finland Swedes partly is high, with Swedish being spoken by more than 90% of the population in several municipalities, and on Åland, where Swedish is spoken by a vast majority of the population and is the only official language. Swedish is an official language also in the rest of Finland, though, with the same official status asFinnish.[80] The country's public broadcaster,Yle, provides two Swedish-language radio stations,Yle Vega andYle X3M, as well a TV channel,Yle Fem.[81]
Rinkeby Swedish (afterRinkeby, a suburb of northern Stockholm with a large immigrant population) is a common name among linguists for varieties of Swedish spoken by young people of foreign heritage in certain suburbs and urban districts in the major cities of Stockholm,Gothenburg andMalmö. These varieties could alternatively be classified associolects, because the immigrant dialects share common traits independent of their geographical spread or the native country of the speakers. However, some studies have found distinctive features and led to terms such as Rosengård Swedish (afterRosengård in Malmö), a variant ofScanian.[82] A survey made by the Swedish linguistUlla-Britt Kotsinas showed that foreign learners had difficulties in guessing the origins of Rinkeby Swedish speakers in Stockholm. The greatest difficulty proved to be identifying the speech of a boy speaking Rinkeby Swedish whose parents were both Swedish; only 1.8% guessed his native language correctly.[83]
New linguistic practices in multilingual urban contexts in fiction and hip-hop culture and rap lyrics have been introduced that go beyond traditional socio-linguistic domains.[84] See also Källström (Chapter 12) and Knudsen (Chapter 13).
^Grünbaun, Katharina (2012)."Svenska språket" [The Swedish language](PDF) (in Swedish). Svenska institutet. Archived fromthe original(PDF) on 25 October 2012.
^Gellerstam, Martin (2002)."Norm och bruk i SAOL" (in Swedish). Nordisk forening for leksikografi i samarbeit med Nordisk språksekretariat.Archived from the original on 3 March 2018. Retrieved2 March 2018.
^The number of registered Swedes in Zmeyovka (the modern Ukrainian name ofGammalsvenskby) in 1994 was 116 according toNationalencyklopedin, articlesvenskbyborna.
^Stensson, Leif (August 2013)."Swedish Grammar | Syntax". Lysator Society, Linköping University.Archived from the original on 19 December 2017. Retrieved9 March 2018.
^"Smyglyssna".Woxikon.Archived from the original on 3 March 2018. Retrieved3 March 2018.
^Gomer, Eva; Morris-Nygren, Mona, eds. (1976).Bila. Modern Svensk Engelsk Ordbok. Prisma. p. 57.
^"Språket lever | tänk" (in Swedish). Institutet för de inhemska språken. 18 February 2016. Archived fromthe original on 4 March 2018. Retrieved3 March 2018.
^"standardspråk" (in Swedish). Nationalencyklopedin AB.Archived from the original on 3 March 2018. Retrieved3 March 2018.
^Mattfolk, Leila."Do answers to a questionnaire give reliable data?"(PDF). Helsinki University. Archived fromthe original(PDF) on 2 November 2004. Retrieved3 March 2018.Employees on radio and television do not always follow the same Swedish norm. What do you think about them using their own ordinary spoken language instead of standard Finland-Swedish (högsvenska) in the broadcasted programs?
^Aronsson, Cecilia (3 May 2005),"Norrländska låter bäst",Dagens Industri, archived fromthe original on 13 October 2007, retrieved24 August 2007,Norrländska och rikssvenska är de mest förtroendeingivande dialekterna. Men gotländska och värmländska gör svenskarna misstänksamma, enligt en ny riksomfattande undersökning. Handelns utredningsinstitut (HUI) har frågat 800 svenskar om hur de uppfattar olika dialekter som de hör i telefonservicesamtal, exempelvis från försäljare eller upplysningscentraler. Undersökningen visar att 54 procent föredrar att motparten pratar rikssvenska, vilket troligen hänger ihop med dess tydlighet. Men även norrländskan plockar höga poäng – 25 procent tycker att det är den mest förtroendeingivande dialekten. Tilltron till norrländska är ännu större hos personer under 29 år, medan stödet för rikssvenska är störst bland personer över 55 år.
^"Finlands grundlag – Constitution of Finland". Archived fromthe original on 9 October 2017. 17 § Rätt till eget språk och egen kultur Finlands nationalspråk är finska och svenska. Vars och ens rätt att hos domstol och andra myndigheter i egen sak använda sitt eget språk, antingen finska eller svenska, samt att få expeditioner på detta språk skall tryggas genom lag. Det allmänna skall tillgodose landets finskspråkiga och svenskspråkiga befolknings kulturella och samhälleliga behov enligt lika grunder.
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