Swedish (Svenska)

Swedish is a North Germanic language with around 9 million speakers in Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Norway, Canada and the USA. It is closely related to Norwegian and Danish and is mutually intelligible with them to a large extent, particularly in it's written form.

One of the earliest uses of Swedish as a literary language was "Gustav Vasa's Bible", translated and published in 1540-1 under the patronage of King Gustav Vasa.

Finland was ruled by Sweden from the 12th century until 1809 and during that period, Swedish was the main language of government and education there. Today Finnish and Swedish have equal status as official languages in Finland.

Swedish alphabet
A a	B b	C c	D d	E e	F f	G g	H h	I i	J j	K k	L l	M m	N n
a	be	se	de	e	eff	ge	hå	i	ji	kå	ell	em	en
O o	P p	R r	S s	T t	U u	V v	W w	X x	Y y	Z z	Å å	Ä ä	Ö ö
o	pe	ärr	ess	te	u	ve	dubbel -ve	eks	y	säta	å	ä	ö

The letter Q (ku) is not used in modern Swedish: it was eliminated in the 1906 spelling reform. K is now used instead, except in proper names. Z only appears in foreign loanwords.

Pronunciation

Swedish pronunciation

Notes on the pronuncition of Swedish

Notes

A detailed guide to Swedish pronunciation (with audio) can be found at:
http://web.hhs.se/isa/swedish/chap9.htm

Sample text in Swedish

Alla människor är födda fria och lika i värde och rättigheter. De är utrustade med förnuft och samvete och bör handla gentemot varandra i en anda av broderskap.

Hear a recording of this text by Anders

Translation

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
(Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights)

Longer sample text (Tower of Babel)

Useful phrases in Swedish

Swedish language courses, dictionaries, etc.

Links

Information about the Swedish language
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_language

Online Swedish lessons
http://www.personal.psu.edu/adr10/swedish.html
http://www2.hhs.se/isa/swedish/
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/1290/
http://www.filter.ac.uk/database/insightrecord.php?id=41
http://www.ielanguages.com/swedish.html

Online Swedish dictionaries
http://www-lexikon.nada.kth.se/skolverket/swe-eng.shtml
http://www.nordskol.org/ordbog/

Swedish Electronic talking dictionaries
http://www.ectaco.com

Sveriges Radio - Radio Sweden
http://www.sr.se

Svenska dagstidningar online / Online Swedish newspapers
http://www.kb.se/TS/Tsonline.htm

Project Runeberg - a volunteer effort to create free electronic editions of classic Nordic (Scandinavian) literature: http://runeberg.org

Related languages

Afrikaans, Alsatian, Cimbrian, Danish, Dutch, English, Faroese, Frisian, German, Icelandic, Luxembourgish, Norwegian, Old English, Old Norse, Scots, Swedish

Other languages written with the Latin alphabet