Languages of Sweden
The Kingdom of Sweden is a nation-state for the Swedish people, and as such, their national language is held in very high regard. Of Sweden's roughly ten million people, almost all speak Swedish as at least a second language, and the majority as a first language (7,825,000, according to SIL's Ethnologue). Swedish is also an official language in Finland where it is spoken by a large number of Swedish-speaking Finns. The language is also spoken to some degree by ethnic Swedes living outside Sweden, for example, just over half a million people of Swedish descent in the United States speak the language, according to Ethnologue.
Swedish language
In a poll conducted in 2005 by the Swedish Retail Institute ("Handelns Utredningsinstitut"), the attitudes of Swedes to the use of certain dialects by salesmen revealed that 54% believed that "rikssvenska" was the variety they would prefer to hear when speaking with salesmen over the phone, even though dialects such as "gotländska" or "skånska" were provided as alternatives in the poll.