Languages in Sweden are official official and others

The Kingdom of Sweden occupies the southern and eastern parts of the Scandinavian Peninsula, with about 10.5 million people living in the state. The majority of the population in the country are Swedish-speaking Swedes.

Immigration policy of the state in the XX century. It has led to the fact that society has become multinational and multilingual, and now not only Swedish is used in Sweden, but also other languages.

State

In ancient times, the inhabitants of the Scandinavian Peninsula, the current states of Sweden, Norway and Denmark, spoke a common Old Norse language. Therefore, linguists include Swedish in the family of Indo-European languages and refer to the North Germanic group.

The Old Norse language was used until the IX-XI centuries. From the 9th century to the 13th century, the Swedes used runic writing, more than 3,000 monuments with inscriptions made in runes on metal, horn, wood or stone have been preserved. Most of the runic inscriptions were found on the island of Gotland. At this time, the stress system in the Swedish language was being formed.

Differences in the ancient language of Scandinavia among different peoples began to appear at a time when trade between the Vikings and Slavic, Germanic tribes intensified. At this time, the language of the inhabitants of the central regions of Sweden gradually began to differ from Norwegian and Danish.

From the XIII century to the XVI century, the ancient Swedish language was formed in the country. The Latin alphabet is used as writing, which was fixed during the Christianization of the country.

The first official document written in Latin in the Old Swedish language was the code of Visigothic laws, prepared by order of the head of the Eskil district. The document dates back to 1250. The Code of Laws is written in the style of spoken language and has preserved the simplicity and ease of oral speech.

Later, the ancient Swedish written language was formed under the influence of Low German and Latin secular and spiritual works. Christianization introduced Greek, Latin, and Old English loanwords into the Swedish language.

In the 14th century, the Danish language had a great influence on the Swedish dialects that were forming in the regions. From Low German, words from the field of crafts, trade, and government come to Swedish.

In the XVI century, Sweden separated from Denmark and the national Swedish language began to form. Religious reform was important: the Swedish language replaced Latin during worship services.

However, it was only by the 19th century, when the Kingdom lost a number of its territories, that an original spoken Swedish language was finally formed. The national literary language in Sweden appeared even later, already in the XX century.

Currently, 95% of the inhabitants, i.e. about 10 million people, speak Swedish, which is recognized as their native language. However, many Swedes use dialects in their everyday life, of which there are over 100 in Sweden. Dialects differ in pronunciation and grammar, while the number of speakers of a particular dialect may be only a dozen people.

There are 6 groups of hundreds of rural dialects. Dialect variants of the Swedish language are used in the south of the country and the island of Gotland, in Finland. The dialect of Stockholm has been adopted as the literary norm of Swedish.

The language in Sweden is not difficult to learn for someone who knows English well: languages have a lot in common in structure. In addition, most Swedes use a simple version of the Swedish spoken language in their daily lives, which is characterized by simple vocabulary and the absence of complex phrases.

Although the Swedish language has been used in worship services and in the business address of officials since the 16th century, it has not had an official status for many years. Only in 2009. The Riksdag has adopted a Provision according to which Swedish is recognized as the main language in the country. Swedish is also one of the official languages in Finland, and it is the only one spoken by residents of the Finnish province of the Aland Islands.

Regional

Regional variants of the Swedish language are inherent in different geographical areas and are used in such locations:

• provinces;
• cities;
• settlements;
• parishes.

It is believed that dialects independently developed from the Old Norse language in geographically isolated locations. Having avoided the influence of the Stockholm dialect, which was accepted as a literary norm, the dialects retained archaic grammatical and phonetic features. Because of this, dialect speech is often incomprehensible to those Swedes who are not native speakers. Locals often refer to regional languages as “village languages”.

The language in Sweden varies by region as follows:

Since Finland was part of the Kingdom before the beginning of the 20th century, some Swedes speak Finnish Swedish, which has some differences.

National minorities

In 2000, Sweden adopted a provision according to which the following were officially recognized as national minorities:

• Sami;
• tournedalians;
• Swedish Finns;
• gypsies;
• jews.

At the same time, Romani-Chib, Finnish, Yiddish, Meyankieli and Sami languages received official status as languages of national minorities. These languages are not dialects, but are recognized as full-fledged linguistic norms. Another condition under which languages have received status is that they have been used by the inhabitants of Sweden for at least 100 years in a row.

Languages in the State of Sweden, which are recognized as languages of national minorities, are used in the historical regions of residence of the Turnedals, Finns and Samams. The Sami are concentrated in the north-east of the country, the places of compact residence of the Turks are in the north.

Swedish Finns live near the Finnish border and in central Sweden, Jews and Gypsies are found all over the country.

Although there are no exact statistics, it is assumed that 5% of the Swedish population speaks the languages of national minorities:

• Up to 50 thousand people know the language of the Meyankieli Turks.;
• The Roma language is spoken by up to 100 thousand inhabitants;
• The Sami language is familiar to 35 thousand Swedes;
• More than 25 thousand people speak Yiddish.

Historically, the largest national minority in Sweden is the Finns, who, according to various estimates, live from 400 to 600 thousand people. However, officially Finnish is not the language of the national minority.

Immigrants

Since the 1980s, Sweden has had an immigration policy aimed at increasing the birth rate and the number of able-bodied people. By 2020, a quarter of all Swedish residents were immigrants. More than 150 thousand people arrive in the Scandinavian country every year.

Most of the immigrants come from the following countries:

• Iraq (13.5 thousand people);
• Somalia (10.3 thousand);
• India (over 8 thousand people);
• Poland and Syria (4 thousand people each).
• up to 3.3 thousand people from Pakistan;
• 3 thousand are from Iran.

Migrants from Thailand, China, Afghanistan, Turkey and Romania move to Sweden every year. The language in Sweden, the most popular among immigrants, is Arabic, which is spoken by up to 200 thousand people. Arabic became the second most popular language after Swedish, replacing Finnish in this status.

Arabic is spoken not only by visitors, but also by native Swedes who want to learn how to communicate with migrants. In 2020, the administration of the province of Skåne allocated 50 thousand crowns to train employees of municipal libraries in the Arabic language. Those who have moved to Sweden also speak Somali, Persian and Thai.

Conversational

In the Scandinavian country, the locals mostly speak Swedish or Arabic. But tourists can easily get information or ask questions: most Swedes know English perfectly well. Swedes speak English almost as their native language, have good pronunciation and fluency.

A foreign language is taught in Swedish schools from the elementary grades, while most of the teaching time is devoted to practical classes in groups of 4-6 students.

Films broadcast on television and in cinemas are not translated from English, as a last resort, subtitles may be shown. Therefore, the Swedes understand spoken English well.

The country’s universities offer over 700 master’s degree programs in English. The programs cover all areas – medicine, business, engineering, humanities.

Although statistics are not collected in Sweden in principle, it is believed that 95% of the population can communicate in English. English-speaking staff are available in all hotels and restaurants in Sweden.

Traffic patterns and signs of attractions are duplicated in English. All guides speak spoken English, in which they conduct programs.

Swedish youth have developed their own dialect of Swenglish, which uses Swedish and English forms and words. Some Swedish politicians even propose to fix English as the second official language.

French, German, and Spanish are also taught in Swedish schools. Norwegian and Danish languages have been allocated a place in the curricula.

In Sweden, almost all residents speak Swedish. Outside the Kingdom, there are at least 2.5 million Swedish speakers in Canada, the USA, Denmark and Finland. However, tourists should not worry – in Sweden, many people know English well and are able to communicate in it with visitors.

Video about the language in Sweden

What is the simplicity of the Swedish language:

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