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Rinkeby Swedish (Swedish:Rinkebysvenska[ˈrɪ̂ŋːkɛbyːˌsvɛnska]) is any of a number ofvarieties ofSwedish spoken mainly in urban districts with a high proportion ofimmigrant residents which emerged as a linguistic phenomenon in the 1980s.Rinkeby inStockholm is one such suburb, but the term Rinkeby Swedish may sometimes be used for similar varieties in other Swedish cities as well. A similar term isRosengårdssvenska ("Rosengård Swedish") after theRosengård district inMalmö. The one magazine in Sweden published in these varieties, Gringo, proposesmiljonsvenska ("Million Swedish") based on theMillion Programme.^[1]

Different varieties of Rinkeby Swedish exist which are based on theregional dialects, especially in the major urban centers of Stockholm (Svealand dialects), Malmö (Scanian) andGothenburg (westernGötaland dialects).

Opinions among linguists differ on whether to regard Rinkeby Swedish as asociolect,dialect,ethnolect, or maybe a "multiethnolect". Since the number of influencing languages involved is rather large, and extremely few speakers are likely to be fluent in more than a few of these, the definition ofpidgin language may appear more accurate than that ofmixed language. The varieties may also be characterized as aregister for informal communication between peers, since the speakers often use them only in specific social contexts and switch to other varieties where appropriate.

Professor Ulla-Britt Kotsinas, a scholar frequently cited on Rinkeby Swedish, argues that these varieties primarily are spoken byteenagers fromsuburbs where immigrants and immigrant descendants are concentrated, and can be interpreted as expressions ofyouth culture: The language is a marker of belonging to a certainsubculture and at the same time opposition to a perceived mainstream non-immigrant culture that seems not to value the immigrant descendants.

Rinkeby Swedish and similar varieties thus express belonging to the rather large group of youths with roots in other countries that have grown up in immigrant neighborhoods in apost-industrial society and with a disproportionately highunemployment rate for youths with immigrant background. Except for the fact that thelinguistic distance is greater, Kotsinas sees in principle no difference from the suburban and urban working class varieties that followedIndustrial Revolution andurbanization a century ago.

Many words from Rinkeby Swedish have now been incorporated into all kinds of other Swedish youthslang and are used by many young people without immigrant heritage as a marker of group solidarity and identity.^[2]

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Variants of Rinkeby Swedish are reported from suburbs ofStockholm, Uppsala,Malmö, andGothenburg with a predominantly immigrant population. These variants tend to be based on the local town accents, or on the variety ofStandard Swedish taught in school. These varieties can be described as having a somewhat simplified version of the Swedishgrammar and a richness ofloanwords from the languages of the countries the speakers' parents or grandparents originated in: mainlyTurkish, with traces ofKurdish,Arabic,Greek,Persian,Serbo-Croatian,Syriac, and to some extent Latin AmericanSpanish. ManyEnglish words and some English grammar are also used, due to a fairly widespread identification withAfrican Americans and the appreciation of rap andhip hop music and culture.

Among younger speakers, the different varieties show a considerable variation in vocabulary and to some extent in grammar and syntax. However, they all share somegrammatical similarities, such as discarding theVerb-second word order of Standard Swedish, instead usingsubject–verb–objectword order after anadverb or adverbial phrase (as inEnglish, compareIdag jag tog bussen ("Today I took the bus") to Standard SwedishIdag tog jag bussen ("Today took I the bus").

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Novels written partially or completely in Rinkeby Swedish include

• Till vår ära by Alejandro Leiva Wenger; ("To our honour")
• Ett öga rött byJonas Hassen Khemiri; ("One eye red")
• Shoo Bre by Douglas Foley
• Kalla det vad fan du vill byMarjaneh Bakhtiari. ("Call it whatever the hell you want")

• Multicultural London English
• Multicultural Toronto English
• Swedish hip hop
• Post-war Sweden
• Swedish dialects
• Kebabnorsk
• Perkerdansk
• Ebonics

• Ellen Bijvoet (2020). "3.4 Förortsindexerad svenska".Attityder till spår av andra språk i svenskan [Attitudes towards traces of other languages in Swedish](PDF) (Report). Rapporter från Språkrådet (in Swedish). Graphic design by Gellerstedt, Tone. Swedish Language Council. pp. 45–50.ISBN 978-91-86959-64-7.^{[dead link]}

• Language and language use among young people in multilingual urban settings- a research project atUniversity of GothenburgArchived 2006-03-01 at theWayback Machine

• Swedish dialects
• Swedish hip-hop

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