What language is spoken in Sweden?
Languages of Sweden
The Language Law of 2009 recognizes Swedish as the "main" and "common" language of society as well as being the official language in "international contexts".
Swedish alphabet
The Swedish alphabet is the writing system used for the Swedish language. The 29 letters of this alphabet are the modern 26-letter basic Latin alphabet ('A' through 'Z') plus 'Å', 'Ä', and 'Ö', in that order. It contains 20 consonants and 9 vowels (a e i o u y å ä ö).
Sweden Finns
In the 1600s, there were plans to set up a new region Järle län that would have contained most of the skogsfinnar. It should be noted that in Sweden at this time, all legislation and official journals were also published in Finnish. Bank-notes were issued in Swedish and Finnish etc. After 1809, and the loss of the eastern part of Sweden (Finland) to Russia, the Swedish church planned a Finnish-speaking bishopric with Filipstad as seat. However, after the mid-1800s cultural imperialism and nationalism lead to new policies of assimilation and Swedification of the Finnish-speaking population. These efforts peaked from the end of the 1800s and until the 1950s. Finnish speakers remain only along the border with Finland in the far North, and as domestic migrants due to unemployment in the North. Depending on definition they are reported to number to 30,000–90,000 — that is up to 1% of Sweden's population, but the proportion of active Finnish-speakers among them has declined drastically in the last generations, and Finnish is hardly spoken among the youngsters today. Since the 1970s largely unsuccessful efforts have been made to reverse some of the effects of Swedification, notably education and public broadcasts in Finnish, to raise the status of Finnish. As a result, a written standard of the local dialect Meänkieli has been established and taught, which has given reason to critical remarks from Finland, along the line that standard Finnish would be of more use for the students.
Swedes
The native language of nearly all Swedes is Swedish () a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is, to a considerable extent, mutually intelligible with Norwegian and to a lesser extent with Danish (see especially "Classification"). Along with the other North Germanic languages, Swedish is a descendant of Old Norse, the common language of the Germanic peoples living in Scandinavia during the Viking Era. It is the largest of the North Germanic languages by numbers of speakers.
Language and the euro
In Finland, the euro is the official currency, and Swedish is an official language alongside Finnish. The same spelling as in Sweden is used (officially Swedish in Finland is spelt as in Sweden). The pronunciation, however, is , which has some similarities to Finnish pronunciation. The abbreviation is like 3,14 €, same as for Finnish. Among Swedish-speaking as well as Finnish-speaking people in Helsinki, a common slang term is "ege".
Swedes (Germanic tribe)
In modern North Germanic languages, the adjectival form "svensk" and its plural "svenskar" have replaced the name "svear" and is, today, used to denote all the citizens of Sweden. The distinction between the tribal Swedes ("svear") and modern Swedes ("svenskar") appears to have been in effect by the early 20th century, when "Nordisk familjebok" noted that "svenskar" had almost replaced "svear" as a name for the Swedish people. Although this distinction is convention in modern Norwegian, Danish and Swedish, Icelandic and Faroese do not distinguish between "svíar" (Icelandic) or "sviar" (Faroese) and "sænskir" (Icelandic) or "svenskarar" (Faroese) as words for modern Swedes.
Languages of Sweden
Like many developed European countries from the late 1940s to the 1970s, Sweden has received tens of thousands of guest workers from countries in Southern Europe and the Middle East (i.e. Bulgaria, Greece, Iraq, Italy, Romania, Spain, Syria, Turkey, and the former Yugoslavia). Second and third-generation Swedes of Southern European or Middle Eastern descent have adopted Swedish as their main tongue, or in addition to their immigrant languages, such as Arabic, Bulgarian, Greek, Italian, Bosnian/Serbian/Croatian, and Turkish. However, the criteria in European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages state that minority languages need a long history in the country to receive the classification, and thus, these languages have not come into question.
Swedish-speaking population of Finland
Following an educational reform in the 1970s, both Swedish and Finnish became compulsory school subjects. The school subjects are not called "Finnish" or "Swedish"; the primary language in which lessons are taught depends upon the pupil's mother tongue. This language of instruction is officially and in general practice called the "mother tongue" (' in Finnish, ' in Swedish). The secondary language, as a school subject, is called the "other domestic language" (' in Finnish, ' in Swedish). Lessons in the "other domestic language" usually start in the third, fifth or seventh form of comprehensive school and are a part of the curriculum in all secondary education. In polytechnics and universities, all students are required to pass an examination in the "other domestic language" on a level that enables them to be employed as civil servants in bilingual offices and communities. The actual linguistic abilities of those who have passed the various examinations however vary considerably.
Languages of Sweden
Swedish Sign Language is an officially recognized language.
Kven people
In the past, the Kven language spoken in Norway was considered a dialect of Finnish language, much like the Finnic Meänkieli language spoken in northern Sweden. Today, both are officially recognized minority languages in the areas where the languages are spoken. The Finnish, Meänkieli and Sami all are officially recognized minority languages in the Kiruna Municipality in Sweden.
Sweden Finns
People with Finnish heritage comprise a relatively large share of the population of Sweden. In addition to a smaller part of Sweden Finns historically residing in Sweden, there were about 426,000 people in Sweden (4.46% of the total population in 2012) who were either born in Finland or had at least one parent who was born in Finland. Like the Swedish language, the Finnish language has been spoken on both sides of the Gulf of Bothnia since the late middle ages. Following military campaigns in Finland by Sweden in the 13th century, Finland gradually came under Swedish rule and made Finns in Finland and Sweden were subjugates of Sweden. Already in the 1400s, a sizeable population of Stockholm spoke Finnish, and around 4% in the 1700s. Finland remained a part of Sweden until 1809 when the peace after the Finnish War handed Finland to the Russian Empire, though leaving Finnish populations on the Swedish side of the Torne river.
Mandatory Swedish
The status of Swedish as a national language in Finland is defined by the Finnish constitution. There was migration of Swedish-speaking peasants to some Finnish coastal areas during the Middle Ages. During this period, when Finland was ruled by Sweden, Swedish language became part of the culture in the coastal areas. Swedish was also the language of the ruling class. The Finnish language was forbidden an official status alongside Swedish until the period of Russian rule (1809–1917), in 1860. The autonomous Åland Islands (pop. 26,000, 95% Swedish, 5% Finnish) has only one official language, Swedish, and the speaking of Finnish between employees is forbidden in some public services.
Swedish grammar
Swedish is descended from Old Norse. Compared to its progenitor, Swedish grammar is much less characterized by inflection. Modern Swedish has two genders and no longer conjugates verbs based on person or number. Its nouns have lost the morphological distinction between nominative and accusative cases that denoted grammatical subject and object in Old Norse in favor of marking by word order. Swedish uses some inflection with nouns, adjectives, and verbs. It is generally a subject–verb–object (SVO) language with V2 word order.
Meänkieli dialects
On April 1, 2000, Meänkieli became one of the now five nationally recognized minority languages of Sweden, which means it can be used for some communication with local and regional authorities in the communities along the Finnish border. Its minority language status applies in designated local communities and areas, not throughout Sweden.
Nordic Council
The Nordic Council uses the three Continental Scandinavian languages (Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish) as its official working languages, but also publishes material in Finnish, Icelandic, and English for information purposes. The council refers to Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish collectively as Scandinavian and considers them to be different forms of the same language forming a common language community. Since 1987, under the Nordic Language Convention, citizens of the Nordic countries have the opportunity to use their native language when interacting with official bodies in other Nordic countries without being liable to any interpretation or translation costs. The Convention covers visits to hospitals, job centres, the police and social security offices. The languages included are Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Finnish, and Icelandic.
Swedes
The largest area inhabited by Swedes, as well as the earliest known original area inhabited by their linguistic ancestors, is in the country of Sweden, situated on the eastern side of the Scandinavian Peninsula and the islands adjacent to it, situated west of the Baltic Sea in northern Europe. The Swedish-speaking people living in near-coastal areas on the north-eastern and eastern side of the Baltic Sea also have a long history of continuous settlement, which in some of these areas possibly started about a millennium ago. These people include the Swedish-speakers in mainland Finland – speaking Swedish dialect commonly referred as Finland Swedish (finlandssvenska which is part of East-Swedish dialect group) and the almost exclusively Swedish-speaking population of the Åland Islands speaking in a manner closer to the adjacent dialects in Sweden than to adjacent dialects of Finland Swedish. Estonia also had an important Swedish minority which persisted for about 650 years on the coast and isles. Smaller groups of historical descendants of 18th–20th-century Swedish emigrants who still retain varying aspects of Swedish identity to this day can be found in the Americas (especially Minnesota and Wisconsin, see Swedish Americans) and in Ukraine.
Swedish Sign Language
Per the Education Act 1998, deaf children are expected to be able to write in Swedish and English, in addition to expressing their thoughts in Swedish Sign Language. Thus, six state-run schools (one of which specializes in learning disabilities) have been established regionally for deaf children who cannot attend traditional comprehensive schools. Comprehensive and secondary schools in Sweden offer classes in addition to a one-year program to students to learn Swedish Sign Language as a third national language, as well as in hopes of becoming an interpreter. Interpreters are found in hospitals, and they also teach the language to the parents and siblings of deaf children. Sweden provides 240 hours of courses over four years to parents so that they may learn to communicate with their children. Additionally, weekly courses in the language are also available to the siblings of deaf children and the children of deaf parents.
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.
Swedish as a foreign language
Swedish belongs to the North Germanic branch of the Germanic sub-family of the Indo-European languages. As such, it is mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish. Because most of the loanwords present in Swedish come from English and German (originally Middle Low German, closely related to Dutch), and also because of similarities in grammar, native speakers of Germanic languages usually have an advantage over speakers of other, less related languages.
Official minority languages of Sweden
Meänkieli or Tornionlaaksonsuomi or Tornedalian language is spoken by a population in northern Sweden. It is closely related to and mutually intelligible with Finnish and often considered a dialect thereof, with many loanwords from Swedish. Especially in Finland the distinction of Meänkieli as a separate language is seen as language politics not based in linguistics (see Kven language for a similar situation in Norway). Meänkieli and Swedish are not mutualy inteligible. The number of speakers amounts to 50,000 or so.
History of Swedish
Formerly, there were Swedish-speaking communities in Estonia, particularly on the islands (Hiiumaa, Saaremaa and Vormsi) along the coast of the Baltic. The Swedish-speaking minority was represented in parliament, and entitled to use their native language in parliamentary debates. After the loss of the Baltic territories to Russia in the early 18th century, around 1,000 Swedish speakers were forced to march to Ukraine, where they founded a village, "Gammalsvenskby" ("Old Swedish Village"), north of the Crimea. A few elderly people in the village still speak Swedish and observe the holidays of the Swedish calendar, although the dialect is most likely facing extinction.
Finland Swedish
Finland Swedish is regulated by the Institute for the Languages of Finland. Official Swedish is not supposed to be very different from Swedish as found in Sweden. There are however e.g. words regarded as archaic in Sweden, but commonly used in Finland, and terms that differ from their counterparts in Sweden, often because of slight differences in the related legislation.
Sweden
Sweden is first described in a written source in "Germania" by Tacitus in 98 AD. In he mentions the Swedes ("Suiones") as a powerful tribe ("distinguished not merely for their arms and men, but for their powerful fleets") with ships that had a prow at each end (longships). Which kings ("kuningaz") ruled these Suiones is unknown, but Norse mythology presents a long line of legendary and semi-legendary kings going back to the last centuries BC. As for literacy in Sweden itself, the runic script was in use among the south Scandinavian elite by at least the 2nd century AD, but all that has come down to the present from the Roman Period is curt inscriptions on artefacts, mainly of male names, demonstrating that the people of south Scandinavia spoke Proto-Norse at the time, a language ancestral to Swedish and other North Germanic languages.
North Germanic languages
Sweden left the Kalmar Union in 1523 due to conflicts with Denmark, leaving two Scandinavian units: The union of Denmark–Norway (ruled from Copenhagen, Denmark) and Sweden (including present-day Finland). The two countries took different sides during several wars until 1814, when the Denmark-Norway unit was disestablished, and made different international contacts. This led to different borrowings from foreign languages (Sweden had a francophone period), for example the Old Swedish word "vindöga" ‘window’ was replaced by "fönster" (from Middle Low German), whereas native "vindue" was kept in Danish. Norwegians, who spoke (and still speak) the Norwegian dialects derived from Old Norse, would say "vindauga" or similar. The written language of Denmark-Norway however, was based on the dialect of Copenhagen and thus had "vindue". On the other hand, the word "begynde" ‘begin’ (now written "begynne" in Norwegian Bokmål) was borrowed into Danish and Norwegian, whereas native "börja" was kept in Swedish. Even though standard Swedish and Danish were moving apart, the dialects were not influenced that much. Thus Norwegian and Swedish remained similar in pronunciation, and words like "børja" were able to survive in some of the Norwegian dialects whereas "vindöga" survived in some of the Swedish dialects. Nynorsk incorporates much of these words, like "byrja" (cf. Swedish "börja", Danish "begynde"), "veke" (cf. Sw "vecka", Dan "uge") and "vatn" (Sw "vatten", Dan "vand") whereas Bokmål has retained the Danish forms ("begynne", "uke", "vann"). As a result, Nynorsk does not conform the above model, since it shares a lot of features with Swedish. According to the Norwegian linguist Arne Torp, the Nynorsk project (which had as a goal to re-establish a written Norwegian language) would have been much harder to carry out if Norway had been in a union with Sweden instead of with Denmark, simply because the differences would have been smaller.
Swedish-speaking population of Finland
Even though the proportional distribution of Swedish-speakers among different social strata closely reflects that of the general population, there is still a lingering conception of Swedish as a language of the historical upper class culture of Finland. This is reinforced by the fact that Swedish-speakers are statistically overrepresented among "old money " families as well as within the Finnish nobility consisting of about 6000 persons, of which about two thirds are Swedish-speakers. Still the majority of the Swedish-speaking Finns have traditionally been farmers and fishermen from the Finnish coastal municipalities and archipelago.
Swedish language
Standard Swedish, spoken by most Swedes, is the national language that evolved from the Central Swedish dialects in the 19th century and was well established by the beginning of the 20th century. While distinct regional varieties descending from the older rural dialects still exist, the spoken and written language is uniform and standardized.
Swedish language
This type of classification, however, is based on a somewhat romanticized nationalist 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 of mass 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 in Dalarna, Norrbotten and, to some extent, Gotland can be considered to be part of a common, mutually intelligible dialect continuum. This continuum may also include Norwegian and some Danish dialects.
Kalix dialect
Kalix (kölismåle ) is a divergent Swedish dialect spoken in the Kalix Municipality along with Sami, Finnish, Meänkieli, and the national standard language Swedish. Like other Scandinavian languages, the Kalix dialect originates in Proto-Norse and dialects of Old Norse, spoken by immigrating Germanic settlers during the Viking Age. It has three grammatical genders, two plural forms of indefinite nouns, and broad usage of definite nouns. Nouns are also inflected differently in dative and accusative case, and there are three forms of expressing genitive. Most verbs are conjugated differently in singular and plural, while most adjectives are not. Some adjectives can though be serially joined with nouns and some have two plural forms. A pleonastic article is also always used before people's and pet's names.
Swedes
Standard Swedish, used by most Swedish people, is the national language that evolved from the Central Swedish dialects in the 19th century and was well established by the beginning of the 20th century. While distinct regional varieties descended from the older rural dialects still exist, the spoken and written language is uniform and standardized. Some dialects differ considerably from the standard language in grammar and vocabulary and are not always mutually intelligible with Standard Swedish. These dialects are confined to rural areas and are spoken primarily by small numbers of people with low social mobility. Though not facing imminent extinction, such dialects have been in decline during the past century, despite the fact that they are well researched and their use is often encouraged by local authorities.
Swedish language
Old Swedish (Swedish: "fornsvenska") is the term used for the medieval Swedish language. The start date is usually set to 1225 since this is the year that "Västgötalagen" ("the Västgöta Law") is believed to have been compiled for the first time. It is among the most important documents of the period written in Latin script and the oldest Swedish law codes. Old Swedish is divided into "äldre fornsvenska" (1225–1375) and "yngre fornsvenska" (1375–1526), "older" and "younger" Old Swedish. Important outside influences during this time came with the firm establishment of the Christian church and various monastic orders, introducing many Greek and Latin loanwords. With the rise of Hanseatic 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 of Low 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 much more similar than today's language).
Swedish as a foreign language
Swedish as a foreign language is studied by about 40,000 people worldwide at the university level and by over one million people on Duolingo. It is taught at over two hundred universities and colleges in 38 countries. Swedish is the Scandinavian language which is most studied abroad.
Languages of Sweden
In 2009, the Riksdag passed the Language Law (SFS 2009:600) which contains provisions concerning the Swedish language, the five national minority languages ​​and the Swedish sign language. Among its provisions is the general mandate to safeguard the Swedish language, the linguistic diversity in Sweden, and the individual's access to language.
Name of Sweden
The name of Sweden was Latinized as "Suecia" adopted in various Romance and Slavic languages, including Spanish "Suecia", Catalan "Suècia", Portuguese "Suécia", Russian Швеция "Shvetsiya", and in non-European languages influenced by such languages, In these languages, there is frequent confusion between the names of Sweden and of Switzerland (Spanish "Suiza", Catalan "Suïssa", Portuguese "Suíça", Russian Швейцария "Shveytsariya"). There is a historical tradition going back to at least the 15th century to the effect that Schwyz (the settlement which gave its name to Switzerland) was indeed named after the Swedes.
Ericus Olai in his "Chronica regni Gothorum " (c. 1470) notes the similarity in toponymy, "Swycia, quasi Suecia". This tradition was taken seriously in 19th-century scholarly reception of the Swiss Swedish origin legend, especially in Swedish romantic nationalism (e.g. Erik Gustaf Geijer's 1836 "History of the Swedes"), but is not now considered likely.
History of Swedish
The period that includes Swedish as it is spoken today is termed "nusvenska" ("Contemporary Swedish", lit. "Now-Swedish") in linguistic terminology. 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 on Swedish literature. Many authors, scholars, politicians and other public figures had a great influence on the new national language that was emerging, the most influential of these being August Strindberg (1849–1912).
Finland–Sweden relations
Finland gradually became an integrated and important part of Sweden. Finland became known as Österland, and its main urban settlement evolved in Turku. Turku was one of the biggest towns in the kingdom of Sweden, and its population included German merchants and craftsmen. Otherwise the degree of urbanization was very low in medieval Finland. During the 12th and 13th centuries, great numbers of Swedish settlers moved to the southern and north-western coasts of Finland, including the Åland Islands and the archipelago between Turku and the Åland Islands. In these regions, the Swedish language is widely spoken even today. Swedish came to be the language of the high-status people in many other parts of Finland as well.
Nordic countries
Danish, Faroese, Icelandic, Norwegian and Swedish belong to the North Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages. The languages have developed from a common Nordic language, but have moved away from each other during the past 1000 years. However, it is still possible for Danish, Norwegian and Swedish speakers to understand each other. These languages are taught in school throughout the Nordic countries: for example, Swedish is a mandatory subject in Finnish schools, whereas Danish is mandatory in Icelandic and Faroese schools. Approximately 5,3 per cent of population of Finland speak Swedish as their mother tongue.
In the Finnish-Sami group of the Finno-Ugric languages, Finnish is the most widely spoken language in the Nordic countries. However, other languages in this family are also spoken in the region. Various Sami languages are spoken in northern Finland, Norway and Sweden. Karelian is spoken a little in Finland, the Kven language in Norway and Meänkieli or "Torne Valley Finnish" in Sweden. Finns are also the largest immigrant group in Sweden, around 4.46 per cent of the total population; and Finnish is an official minority language of Sweden.
Sweden
English became a compulsory subject for secondary school students studying natural sciences as early as 1849, and has been a compulsory subject for all Swedish students since the late 1940s. Depending on the local school authorities, English is currently a compulsory subject between first grade and ninth grade, with all students continuing in secondary school studying English for at least another year. Most students also study one and sometimes two additional languages. These include (but are not limited to) German, French and Spanish. Some Danish and Norwegian is at times also taught as part of Swedish courses for native speakers. Because of the extensive mutual intelligibility between the three continental Scandinavian languages Swedish speakers often use their native language when visiting or living in Norway or Denmark.
Sweden Finns
The city of Eskilstuna, Södermanland, is one of the most heavily populated Sweden Finnish cities of Sweden, due to migration from Finland, during the 1950s until the 1970s, due to Eskilstuna's large number of industries. In Eskilstuna, the Finnish-speaking minority have both a private school (the only one in the city of Eskilstuna, there is no public school or teachers in Finnish at the public schools. Only the lower level is in Finnish, upper level is in Swedish) and only one magazine in Finnish. Some of the municipal administration is also available in Finnish.
In the Finnish mindset, the term "Sweden Finns" "(ruotsinsuomalaiset)" is first and foremost directed at these immigrants and their offspring, who at the end of the 20th century numbered almost 200,000 first-generation immigrants, and about 250,000 second-generation immigrants. Of these some 250,000 are estimated to use Finnish in their daily lives, and 100,000 remain citizens of Finland. This usage isn't quite embraced in Sweden. According to the latest research by Radio of Sweden (Sveriges Radio), there are almost 470,000 people who speak or understand Finnish or "Meänkieli", which is about 5.2% of the population of Sweden.
Standard Swedish
Standard Swedish ("standardsvenska", "rikssvenska", "högsvenska") denotes Swedish as a spoken and written standard language. While Swedish as a written language is uniform and standardized, the spoken standard may vary considerably from region to region. Several prestige dialects have developed around the major urban centers of Stockholm, Helsinki, Gothenburg and Malmö-Lund.
Demographics of Sweden
The Sami language, spoken by about 7,000 people in Sweden, may be used in government agencies, courts, preschools and nursing homes in the municipalities of Arjeplog, Gällivare, Jokkmokk and Kiruna and its immediate neighbourhood.
Norwegian language
Norwegian () is a North Germanic language spoken mainly in Norway, where it is the official language. Along with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a dialect continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional varieties, and some Norwegian and Swedish dialects, in particular, are very close. These Scandinavian languages, together with Faroese and Icelandic as well as some extinct languages, constitute the North Germanic languages. Faroese and Icelandic are hardly mutually intelligible with Norwegian in their spoken form because continental Scandinavian has diverged from them. While the two Germanic languages with the greatest numbers of speakers, English and German, have close similarities with Norwegian, neither is mutually intelligible with it. Norwegian is a descendant of Old Norse, the common language of the Germanic peoples living in Scandinavia during the Viking Era.
North Germanic languages
In Scandinavia, the term "Scandinavian languages" refers specifically to the generally mutually intelligible languages of the three continental Scandinavian countries, and is thus used in a more narrow sense as a subset of the Nordic languages, leaving aside the insular subset of Faroese and Icelandic. Danish, Norwegian and Swedish are also referred to as Scandinavian or Nordic languages, while Faroese and Icelandic are grouped together as Insular Nordic languages. The term "Scandinavian" arose in the 18th century as a result of the early linguistic and cultural Scandinavist movement, referring to the people, cultures, and languages of the three Scandinavian countries and stressing their common heritage.
Swedish language
As Swedish is a Germanic language, the syntax shows similarities to both English and German. Like English, Swedish has a subject–verb–object basic word order, but like German it utilizes verb-second word order in main clauses, for instance after adverbs and adverbial phrases, and dependent 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 a place–manner–time order, as in English (but not German). Adjectives precede the noun they modify. Verb-second (inverted) word order is also used for questions.
Demographics of Sweden
Since 1999, Sweden has five officially recognised minority languages: Sami, Meänkieli, Standard Finnish, Romani chib and Yiddish.
Scandinavia
The name Scandinavia originally referred to the former Danish, now Swedish, region of Scania. "Scandinavia" and "Scandinavian" entered usage in the late 18th century, being introduced by the early linguistic and cultural Scandinavist movement. The majority of the population of Scandinavia are descended from several North Germanic tribes who originally inhabited the southern part of Scandinavia and spoke a Germanic language that evolved into Old Norse. Icelanders and the Faroese are to a significant extent descended from the Norse and are therefore often seen as Scandinavian. Finland is mainly populated by Finns, with a minority of approximately 5% of Swedish speakers. A small minority of Sami people live in the extreme north of Scandinavia. The Danish, Norwegian and Swedish languages form a dialect continuum and are known as the Scandinavian languages—all of which are considered mutually intelligible with one another. Faroese and Icelandic, sometimes referred to as insular Scandinavian languages, are intelligible in continental Scandinavian languages only to a limited extent. Finnish and Meänkieli are closely related to each other and more distantly to the Sami languages, but are entirely unrelated to the Scandinavian languages. Apart from these, German, Yiddish and Romani are recognized minority languages in parts of Scandinavia.
Digital currency
Sweden
North Germanic languages
The mutual intelligibility between the Continental Scandinavian languages is asymmetrical. Various studies have shown Norwegian speakers to be the best in Scandinavia at understanding other languages within the language group. According to a study undertaken during 2002–2005 and funded by the Nordic Cultural Fund, Swedish speakers in Stockholm and Danish speakers in Copenhagen have the greatest difficulty in understanding other Nordic languages. The study, which focused mainly on native speakers under the age of 25, showed that the lowest ability to comprehend another language is demonstrated by youth in Stockholm in regard to Danish, producing the lowest ability score in the survey. The greatest variation in results between participants within the same country was also demonstrated by the Swedish speakers in the study. Participants from Malmö, located in the southernmost Swedish province of Scania (Skåne), demonstrated a better understanding of Danish than Swedish speakers to the north.
Old Swedish
Old Swedish (Modern Swedish: "fornsvenska") is the name for two distinct stages of the Swedish language that were spoken in the Middle Ages: Early Old Swedish ("Klassisk fornsvenska"), spoken from around 1225 until 1375, and Late Old Swedish ("Yngre fornsvenska"), spoken from 1375 until 1526.
Nordic countries
A number of other minority languages also exist in the region. German is spoken by a minority in Southern Jutland and their cultural and language rights are protected by the government. Finnish Kale, Norwegian and Swedish Travellers and other Romani peoples of the Nordic countries have the right to maintain and develop their language and culture. Yiddish is also an official minority language in Sweden. Besides the so-called "natural" languages national variants of sign languages are used. The Icelandic Sign Language is derived from the Danish, while the Finnish Sign Language is developed on the basis of the Swedish variant. The right to use sign language is set in the Finnish Language Act and in Sweden the Swedish sign language is an official minority language.
Finland Swedish
A common misconception among many Swedes is that Finland Swedish is simply Swedish spoken with a Finnish accent, something that can be a considerable source of frustration to most native Swedish-speakers in Finland. Any language adopts features, especially pronunciation habits, from dominant languages it comes in touch with, but many of the traits of Finland Swedish exist also in monolingual areas and some are in fact preserved features of old Swedish, as with Scots in comparison with English, Afrikaans in comparison with Dutch, or Galician and Brazilian and African dialects in comparison with modern mainland European Portuguese.
Swedish language
Swedish is the sole official language of Åland (an autonomous province under the sovereignty 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 as Finnish (spoken by the majority) at the state level and an official language in some municipalities.
Standard Swedish
The creation of the autonomous Russian Grand Duchy of Finland in 1809 drastically decreased communication between Sweden and Finland, but Swedish remained the language of administration and higher education until Finnish was given equal status in the late 19th century. The position of Swedish gradually eroded in the 20th century, as population shifts from industrialisation and war increasingly caused many ethnic Finns to move to the traditional coastal and urban Swedish enclaves. In reaction, Swedish-speaking Finns renewed their cultural and linguistic connections with Sweden and a "Högsvenska", based on the current variety spoken by educated mainland Swedes, emerged. However, alienation between the two countries by the lack of tangible support from Sweden during both world wars, the Finnish Civil War, and the Åland crisis gradually led to "Högsvenska" being seen as the prestige dialect of Finland Swedish.
Languages of Europe
The North Germanic languages are spoken in Scandinavian countries and include Danish (Denmark), Norwegian (Norway), Swedish (Sweden and parts of Finland), or Elfdalian (in a small part of central Sweden), Faroese (Faroe Islands), and Icelandic (Iceland).
Sweden
Along with Finnish, four other minority languages are also recognised: Meänkieli, Sami, Romani, and Yiddish. Swedish became Sweden's official language on 1 July 2009, when a new language law was implemented. The issue of whether Swedish should be declared the official language had been raised in the past, and the Riksdag voted on the matter in 2005, but the proposal narrowly failed.
Swedish Language Council
The Swedish Language Council () is the primary regulatory body for the advancement and cultivation of the Swedish language. The council is partially funded by the Swedish government and has semi-official status. The council asserts control over the language through the publication of various books with recommendations in spelling and grammar as well as books on linguistics intended for a general audience, the sales of which are used to fund its operation. The council also works with the five official minority languages in Sweden: Finnish, Meänkieli, Yiddish, Romani and Sami alongside the Swedish Sign Language.
Sweden
In varying degrees, depending largely on frequency of interaction with English, a majority of Swedes, especially those born after World War II, understand and speak English, owing to trade links, the popularity of overseas travel, a strong Anglo-American influence and the tradition of subtitling rather than dubbing foreign television shows and films, and the relative similarity of the two languages which makes learning English easier. In a 2005 survey by Eurobarometer, 89% of Swedes reported the ability to speak English.
Name of Sweden
Outside of Dutch (Zweden), German (Schweden) and English, the name "Sweden" has also been adopted in Welsh. The English form in "-n" has also influenced a number of non-European languages, including Yoruba "Swídìn" and the Chinese rendition 瑞典 (pinyin "Ruìdiǎn"), and via the Chinese Hanzi spelling various other languages in the larger Sinosphere (such as Vietnamese "Thụy Điển", Southern Min "Sūi-tián", etc.).
Languages of Sweden
Latin as the language of the Catholic Church was introduced in Sweden with the Christianisation, around AD 1000. As in most of Europe, Latin remained the lingua franca and scholarly language of the educated communities for centuries in Sweden. For instance, Carl Linnaeus' most famous work Systema Naturae, published in 1735, was written in Latin.
Languages of Sweden
Since the Middle Ages until the end of World War II, Germany was usually the country outside Scandinavia having the closest cultural, commercial and political relations with Sweden. Thus, study of the German language had always been promoted by the Swedish state as the main foreign language. Many of Sweden's administrative and social institutions, including the education system, had also been organised along the German and Prussian model, as a lot of Swedish pioneering intellectuals of the Seventeenth century had been educated in German universities. This changed after the end of the Second World War, when it was no longer acceptable to emphasise a closer link with defeated Germany.
A majority of Swedes, especially those born after World War II, are able to understand and speak English thanks to trade links, the popularity of overseas travel, a strong American influence, especially in regards to arts and culture, and the tradition of subtitling rather than dubbing foreign television shows and films. English, whether in American, Commonwealth (Australian, Canadian, and Kiwi), or British dialects, became a compulsory subject for secondary school students studying natural sciences as early as 1849 and has been a compulsory subject for all Swedish students since 1952, when it replaced German as the compulsory language subject.
Sweden
News media
Swedish language
Swedish is officially the main language of Sweden. 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 a "de 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 a pairing-off failure. 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 the Riksdag, and entered into effect on 1 July 2009.
Swedish dialects in Ostrobothnia
Ostrobothnian Swedish () is a variety of Finland-Swedish, spoken in Finland. Outside the autonomous island province of Åland, which is officially monolingually Swedish, Ostrobothnia is the only region of Finland where Swedish-speakers are the majority (51%). Ostrobothnian Swedish-speakers are traditionally farmers, and as such, isolation of the communities produces strong dialectal variations.
Meänkieli dialects
Linguistically, Meänkieli consists of two dialect subgroups, the Torne Valley dialects (also spoken on the Finnish side of the Torne River) and the Gällivare dialects, which both belong to the larger Peräpohjola dialect group ("see Dialect chart"). For historical reasons it has the status of a minority language in Sweden. In modern Swedish the language is normally referred to officially as "meänkieli", although colloquially an older name, "tornedalsfinska" ("Torne Valley Finnish"), is still commonly used. Sveriges Radio tends to use "tornedalsfinska" for the culture generally and "meänkieli" specifically for the language.
Sweden Finns
Today, Finns are the largest immigrant group in Sweden, and Finnish is an official minority language of Sweden. The benefits of being a "minority language" are however limited to Finnish-speakers being able to use Finnish for some communication with local and regional authorities in a small number of communities "(Borås, Borlänge, Botkyrka, Degerfors, Enköping, Eskilstuna, Fagersta, Finspång, Gällivare, Gävle, Göteborg, Gislaved, Hällefors, Håbo, Hallstahammar, Haninge, Haparanda, Hofors, Huddinge, Järfälla, Köping, Kalix, Karlskoga, Kiruna, Lindesberg, Ludvika, Luleå, Malmö, Mariestad, Motala, Norrköping, Nykvarn, Oxelösund, Pajala, Söderhamn, Södertälje, Sandviken, Sigtuna, Skövde, Skellefteå, Skinnskatteberg, Smedjebacken, Solna, Stockholm, Sundbyberg, Sundsvall, Surahammar, Tierp, Trelleborg, Trollhättan, Trosa, Uddevalla, Umeå, Upplands-Väsby, Uppsala, Västerås, Norrtälje, Upplands-Bro, Älvkarleby, Örebro, Örnsköldsvik, Österåker, Östhammar, Övertorneå)" where Finnish immigrants make up a considerable share of the population, but not in the rest of Sweden.
Finland Swedish
Swedish is one of the two national languages of the republic of Finland, the other being Finnish. These two languages have formally equal status in nearly all legislation. The other minority languages (such as Sami) are regulated separately.
History of Swedish
Old East Norse is in Sweden called "Runic Swedish" and in Denmark "Runic Danish", but until the 12th century, the dialect was the same in the two countries. The dialects are called "runic" because the main body of text appears in the runic alphabet. Unlike Proto-Norse, which was written with the Elder Futhark alphabet, Old Norse was written with the Younger Futhark alphabet, which only had 16 letters. Due to the limited number of runes, some runes were used for a range of phonemes, such as the rune for the vowel "u" which was also used for the vowels "o", "ø" and "y", and the rune for "i" which was also used for "e".
Languages of Sweden
In 1999, the Minority Language Committee of Sweden formally declared five minority languages of Sweden: Finnish, Meänkieli (also known as Tornedal, Tornionlaaksonsuomi or Tornedalian), the Sami languages, Romani, and Yiddish. The Language Law of 2009 confirms the recognition of these five languages as "national minority languages".
Languages of Sweden
In medieval Sweden, the Low German language had a very important role as a commercial language and the lingua franca of the Hanseatic league. As such, the Low German language influenced Swedish and other languages in the region considerably. In medieval Stockholm, half of the population were Low German speakers. Low German was also the language spoken in the 17th-century Swedish territories in northern Germany i.e. Swedish Pomerania, Bremen-Verden, Wismar and Wildeshausen (as well as the rest of northern Germany) and by the German minority in Estonia and Swedish Livonia. Livonia was also inhabited by Latvians, Estonians and Livonians.
Finnish language
Finnish is one of two official languages of Finland (the other being Swedish, spoken by 5.42% of the population ) and one of the official languages in the European Union since 1995. Finnish language started to gain its role during the Grand Duchy of Finland, along with the nationalistic Fennoman movement, and obtained its official status in the Finnish Diet of 1863. It enjoys the status of an official minority language in Sweden. Under the Nordic Language Convention, citizens of the Nordic countries speaking Finnish have the opportunity to use their native language when interacting with official bodies in other Nordic countries without being liable to any interpretation or translation costs. Concerns about future status of Finnish language in Sweden have been expressed.
Languages of Sweden
Spoken in the Swedish province of Scania ("Skåne" in Swedish), the Scanian dialect is considered by some to be a dialect of Danish, and a related dialect is also spoken in Bornholm, where it is called "East Danish" (Scania was part of the kingdom of Denmark until 1658). The variety generally spoken today is heavily influenced by standard Swedish.
Sweden
The first literary text from Sweden is the Rök Runestone, carved during the Viking Age c. 800 AD. With the conversion of the land to Christianity around 1100 AD, Sweden entered the Middle Ages, during which monastic writers preferred to use Latin. Therefore, there are only a few texts in the Old Swedish from that period. Swedish literature only flourished when the Swedish language was standardised in the 16th century, a standardisation largely due to the full translation of the Bible into Swedish in 1541. This translation is the so-called Gustav Vasa Bible.
Swedish language
Standard Swedish is the language used by virtually all Swedes and most Swedish-speaking Finns. It is called "rikssvenska" or "standardsvenska" ("Standard Swedish") in Sweden. In Finland, "högsvenska" ("High Swedish") is used for the Finnish variant of standard Swedish and "rikssvenska" refers to Swedish as spoken in Sweden in general.
Official minority languages of Sweden
The Swedish language dominates commercial and cultural life in Sweden but did not officially become the country's main language until 2009, when a new language law entered into effect. The need for this legal status had been the subject of protracted debate and proposed legislation was narrowly defeated in 2005.
Languages of Sweden
Finnish was the majority language of Sweden's eastern parts, though it was used almost exclusively as a spoken language. These areas were also home of a significant Swedish-speaking minority. Finnish became a minority language in the west as well since many Finnish speakers migrated there (mostly for economic reasons).
Languages of Finland
Swedish is the main language of 5.3% of the population (92.4% in the Åland autonomous province), down from 14% at the beginning of the 20th century. In 2012, 44% of Finnish citizens with another registered primary language than Swedish could hold a conversation in this language. Swedish is a North Germanic language, closely related to Norwegian and Danish. As a subbranch of Indo-European, it is also closely related to other Germanic languages such as German, Dutch, and English.
Scandinavian studies
Scandinavian studies is an interdisciplinary academic field of area studies, mainly in the United States and Germany, that covers topics related to Scandinavia and the Nordic countries, including languages, literatures, histories, cultures and societies. The term "Scandinavia" mainly refers to Denmark, Norway and Sweden, although the term "Scandinavian" in an ethnic, cultural and linguistic sense also refers to the peoples and languages of the Faroe Islands and Iceland, and the Scandinavian-speaking (that is, Swedish-speaking) minority in Finland. Scandinavian studies does not exist as a separate field within Scandinavia or the Nordic countries themselves, as its scope would be considered far too broad to be treated meaningfully within a single discipline. The closest related field in Scandinavia would be the more narrow discipline of "Nordic linguistics", which covers North Germanic languages. A major focus of Scandinavian studies is the teaching of Scandinavian languages, especially the three large languages Danish, Norwegian and Swedish.
Swedish language
There is considerable migration between the Nordic countries, but owing to the similarity between the cultures and languages (with the exception of Finnish), expatriates generally assimilate quickly and do not stand out as a group. According to the 2000 United 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. Similarly, there were 16,915 reported Swedish speakers in Canada from the 2001 census. Although there are no certain numbers, some 40,000 Swedes are estimated to live in the London area in the United Kingdom. Outside Sweden and Finland, there are about 40,000 active learners enrolled in Swedish language courses.
Swedish-speaking population of Finland
According to Statistics Finland, Swedish is the mother tongue of about 270,000 people in mainland Finland and of about 25,000 people in Åland, a self-governing archipelago of islands off the west coast of Finland, where Swedish speakers constitute a majority. Swedish-speakers comprise 5.4% of the total Finnish population or about 4.9% without Åland. The proportion has been steadily diminishing since the early 19th century, when Swedish was the mother tongue of approximately 15% of the population and considered a prestige language. According to a statistical analysis made by Fjalar Finnäs, the population of the minority group is today stable and may even be increasing slightly in total numbers since more parents from bilingual families tend to register their children as Swedish speakers. It is estimated that 70% of bilingual families—that is, ones with one parent Finnish-speaking and the other Swedish-speaking—register their children as Swedish-speaking.
Swedish-speaking population of Finland
According to a sociological study published in 1981, the Swedish-speaking Finns meet the four major criteria for a separate ethnic group: self-identification of ethnicity, language, social structure, and ancestry. However, not all Swedish-speaking Finns are willing to self-identify as representatives of a distinct ethnicity. The major political organisation representing the Swedish-speakers in Finland, the Swedish People's Party, has defined the Swedish-speaking Finns as a people who express Finnish identity in the Swedish language. The issue is debated: an opposite view is still that the Swedish-speaking Finns are a sub-group of the ethnic Swedes, "östsvenskar" or "East Swedes".
Sweden Finns
In the 1940s, 70,000 young Finnish children were evacuated from Finland. Most of them came to Sweden during the Winter War and the Continuation War, and around 20% remained after the war. Helped by the Nordic Passport Union, Finnish immigration to Sweden was considerable during the 1950s and 1960s. In 2015, Finnish immigrants to Sweden made out 156 045 persons (or 1.58% of the Swedish population) Not all of them, however, were Finnish speakers. The national minority of Sweden Finns usually does not include immigrated Swedish-speaking Finns, and the national minority of Sweden Finns is protected by Swedish laws that grant specific rights to speakers of the Finnish language. English somewhat lacks the distinction between Finns in Sweden (), which emphases nationality rather than linguistic or ethnic belonging and thereby includes all Finnish heritage regardless of language, and Sweden Finns () which emphases linguistic and ethnic belonging rather than nationality and usually excludes Swedish-speaking Finns. Such distinctions are, however, blurred by the dynamics of migration, bilingualism, and national identities in the two countries. Note that speakers of Meänkieli are singled out as a separate linguistic minority by Swedish authorities.
Swedish literature
The Swedish language is an official language in Finland, with approximately 5.6% of the population having it as their mother tongue. Hence Swedish language literature has a considerable following in Finland, with several well-known Swedish-speaking Finnish writers, such as Bo Carpelan, Christer Kihlman and Tove Jansson. Jansson, perhaps best known for her Moomin books for children, wrote novels and short stories for adults, including "Sommarboken", (1972, "The Summer Book").
Languages of Sweden
Spoken mainly in Jämtland, but with a scattered speaker population throughout the rest of Sweden, Jamtlandic or Jamska is a West Scandinavian language with 95% lexical similarity to Norwegian and Swedish, but generally more archaic. It has a native speaker population of 30,000.
Nordic countries
The combined area of the Nordic countries is . Uninhabitable icecaps and glaciers comprise about half of this area, mostly in Greenland. In January 2013, the region had a population of around 26 million people. The Nordic countries cluster near the top in numerous metrics of national performance, including education, economic competitiveness, civil liberties, quality of life and human development. With only four language groups, the common linguistic heterogeneous heritage is one of the factors making up the Nordic identity. The languages of Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Icelandic, and Faroese are all rooted in Old Norse and Danish, Norwegian and Swedish are considered mutually intelligible. These three dominating languages are taught in schools throughout the Nordic region. For example, Swedish is a mandatory subject in Finnish schools, since Finland by law is a bilingual country. Danish is mandatory in Faroese and Greenlandic schools, as these insular states are a part of the Danish Realm ("Rigsfællesskabet"). Iceland also teaches Danish, since Iceland too was a part of the Danish Realm until 1918. Beside these and the insular Scandinavian languages Faroese and Icelandic, which are also North Germanic languages, there are the Finnic and Sami branches of the Uralic languages, spoken in Finland and in northern Norway, Sweden and Finland, respectively; and Greenlandic, an Eskimo–Aleut language, spoken in Greenland. All the Nordic countries have a North Germanic official language, commonly called a Nordic language in the Nordic countries. The working languages of the Nordic region's two political bodies are Danish, Norwegian and Swedish.
Languages of Sweden
During the 18th century, French was the second language of Europe's upper classes and Sweden was no exception. The Swedish aristocracy often spoke French among themselves and code-switching between French and Swedish was common. The Swedish King Gustav III was a true Francophile and French was the common language at his court.
Finnish language
Finnish (, or "suomen kieli" ) is a Finnic language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. Finnish is one of the two official languages of Finland (the other being the Swedish language); Finnish is also an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both Standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a Finnish dialect, are spoken. The Kven language, a dialect of Finnish, is spoken in Northern Norway by a minority group of Finnish descent.
2011 Finnish parliamentary election
Yet another important issue during the campaign was that of the languages in the country. The status of the Swedish and Russian languages was an hot-button issue. A growing number of people believe that the Swedish language should be abolished as the country's second official language, as only a small percentage of the country use Swedish as their first language and that a large number of government officials do not use Swedish. A report by the Council of Europe stated that the Swedish language's status as Finland's second official language was in danger of being eroded in the longer term because of the officials' poor language skills and the lack of opportunities to study the language. However, the status of Russian was considered to be rising as several municipalities in eastern Finland sought to increase the role of the language at local schools. At the time, Swedish was spoken by 5.42% of the population as their mother tongue, with Russian spoken by 1.01% and the Sami languages spoken by 0.03%.
Languages of Sweden
Today there are about 470,000 Finnish-speakers in Sweden. Finnish, a Uralic language, has long been spoken in Sweden (the same holds true for Swedish in Finland, "see Finland-Swedes, Åland"), as Finland was part of the Swedish kingdom for centuries. Ethnic Finns (mainly first and second generation immigrants) constitute up to 5% of the population of Sweden. A high concentration of Finnish-speakers (some 16,000) resides in Norrbotten.
Swedish Sign Language
Swedish sign language first came into use in 1800. It does not stem from any other languages. In fact, this self-created language went on to influence Finnish sign language and Portuguese sign language. 1809 marks the year of the first deaf school in Sweden. It was not until 1981 that Swedish Sign Language was recognized as a national language of Sweden.
Svealand Swedish
Svealand Swedish (in Swedish: "Sveamål)" is one of the six major groupings of Swedish dialects, clearly distinguished from Finland-Swedish, and the Swedish spoken in Svealand.
Finland Swedish
An often repeated "fact" is that the municipality with the highest proportion of Swedish speakers in the world, Larsmo (93% ), is located in Finland. Korsnäs has also held this title and is often cited as such. However, as there are no official statistics on the mother tongue of inhabitants of Sweden, this is hard or impossible to verify. In addition bilingualism is very common for immigrants in Sweden, so the term "Swedish-speaking" may be diffuse in that sense.
Swedish language
Swedish is one of the official languages of the European Union, and one of the working languages of the Nordic Council. Under the Nordic Language Convention, citizens of the Nordic 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.
Estonian Swedish
Estonian Swedish (, ) describes the eastern dialects of Swedish that were spoken in the formerly Swedish-populated areas of Estonia (locally known as "Aiboland") on the islands of Ormsö (Vormsi), Ösel (Saaremaa), Dagö (Hiiumaa) and Runö (Ruhnu), and the peninsula (former island) of Nuckö (Noarootsi), by the local Estonian Swedes.
Demographics of Sweden
The Swedish language is by far the dominating language in Sweden, and is used by the government administration.
Swedish Chef
Swedes generally have a negative impression of the Swedish Chef stemming from the fact that, to Swedes, his gibberish speech sounds very little like Swedish. To Swedes, the sing-song quality of the character's mock language is suggestive of Norwegian, not Swedish. Despite both languages being closely related and mutually intelligible, the melodies are different between different dialects of Swedish and Norwegian. Outside of Sweden, Swedes are often asked about the Swedish Chef, causing many to become tired of the question. In the German-dubbed version of "The Muppet Show", the Chef is not a Swede, but a Dane.
Scanian dialect
Swedish and Danish are considered to have been the same dialect, Old East Norse, up until the 12th century. However, some scholars speculate that there might have been certain dialect differences within the Nordic language area as early as the Proto-Nordic period. The term Swedish is not mentioned specifically in any source until the first half of the 14th century, and no standard spoken language had developed in either Sweden or Denmark before 1500, although some scholars argue that there may have been tendencies towards a more formal "courteous" language among the aristocracy.
Swedish-speaking population of Finland
Being a small minority usually leads to functional bilingualism. Swedish-speaking Finns are more fluent in Finnish than Finnish-speakers are in Swedish due to the practical matter of living in a predominantly Finnish-speaking country. In big cities with a significant Swedish-speaking population such as Helsinki and Turku, most of them are fluent in both Swedish and Finnish. Although in some municipalities Swedish is the only official language, Finnish is the dominant language in most towns and at most employers in Finland. In areas with a Finnish-speaking majority, Finnish is most often used when interacting with strangers and known Finnish speakers. However, 50% of all Swedish speakers live in areas in which Swedish is the majority language and in which they can use Swedish in all or most contexts (see demographics below).
Swedish language
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) and "Old East Norse" (Denmark and Sweden). The dialects of Old East Norse spoken in Sweden are called "Runic Swedish", while the dialects of Denmark are referred to as "Runic Danish". The dialects are described as "runic" because the main body of text appears in the runic alphabet. Unlike Proto-Norse, which was written with the Elder Futhark alphabet, Old Norse was written with the Younger Futhark alphabet, which had only 16 letters. Because the number of runes was limited, some runes were used for a range of phonemes, such as the rune for the vowel "u", which was also used for the vowels "o", "ø" and "y", and the rune for "i", also used for "e".
Norwegian and Swedish Travellers
The Travellers in Sweden and Norway speak a form of the Romani language referred to as Scandoromani. Many words of the Nordic Romani origin have survived in the Scandinavian languages, both in common speech and slang. Examples:Romani Travellers in Sweden and Norway have founded organisations for preserving their culture and lobbying for their collective rights. One example is Föreningen Resandefolkets Riksorganisation, based in Malmö, Sweden.
Norsemen
On occasions Finland is also mentioned as a "Scandinavian country". The Finnish language is not Germanic or even Indo-European, but Finland was for around six centuries a part of Sweden (late 12th century to 1809), and around 6% of the Finnish population still use Swedish as their first language. In the Åland islands Swedish is by far the dominant language, seeing as how the population there are ethnic Swedes but belonging administratively to Finland since 1917. Elsewhere in Finland the share of Swedish-speaking people has been dropping ever since Finland gained independence in 1917, after the Russian Revolution. Iceland, Greenland, and the Faroe Islands are also geographically separate from the Scandinavian peninsula. The term "Nordic countries" is therefore used to encompass the Scandinavian countries, Iceland, Greenland, the Faroes and Finland.
Scandinavia
Finnish speakers constitute a language minority in Sweden and Norway. There are also languages derived from Finnish, having evolved separately, known as Meänkieli in Sweden and Kven in Norway.
Languages of Sweden
Estonian was the language of the majority in Swedish Estonia but the province, like Finland hosted a Swedish-speaking minority and also a more significant minority of Germans.