24 Facts About Swedish language

Swedish is a North Germanic language spoken natively by at least 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and in parts of Finland, where it has equal legal standing with Finnish with the exception of Aland, which is unilingually Swedish.

Swedish language was long spoken in parts of Estonia, although the current status of the Estonian Swedish language speakers is almost extinct.

Swedish is an Indo-European language belonging to the North Germanic branch of the Germanic languages.

Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish are thus from a linguistic perspective more accurately described as a dialect continuum of Scandinavian, and some of the dialects, such as those on the border between Norway and Sweden, especially parts of Bohuslan, Dalsland, western Varmland, western Dalarna, Harjedalen, Jamtland, and Scania, could be described as intermediate dialects of the national standard languages.

Swedish language pronunciations vary greatly from one region to another, a legacy of the vast geographic distances and historical isolation.

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Old Swedish language is divided into aldre fornsvenska and yngre fornsvenska, "older" and "younger" Old Swedish language.

Early Old Swedish was markedly different from the modern language in that it had a more complex case structure and retained the original Germanic three-gender system.

The Finland Swedish language minority is concentrated in the coastal areas and archipelagos of southern and western Finland.

In some of these areas, Swedish is the predominant language; in 19 municipalities, 16 of which are located in Aland, Swedish is the sole official language.

In Finland as a whole, Swedish is one of the two "national" languages, with the same official status as Finnish at the state level and an official language in some municipalities.

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.

However, most Swedish language-speaking people fled to Sweden before the end of World War II, that is, before the invasion of Estonia by the Soviet army in 1944.

Swedish language dialects have either 17 or 18 vowel phonemes, 9 long and 9 short.

Swedish language morphology is similar to English; that is, words have comparatively few inflections.

Swedish language has two genders and is generally seen to have two grammatical cases – nominative and genitive – although it is debated if the genitive in Swedish language should be seen as a genitive case or just the nominative plus the so-called genitive s, then seen as a clitic.

Swedish language is notable for the voiceless dorso-palatal velar fricative, a highly variable consonant phoneme.

Swedish language used to have a genitive that was placed at the end of the head of a noun phrase.

In modern Swedish language, it has become an enclitic -s, which attaches to the end of the noun phrase, rather than the noun itself.

In formal written Swedish language, it used to be considered correct to place the genitive -s after the head of the noun phrase, though this is today considered dated, and different grammatical constructions are often used.

Vocabulary of Swedish language is mainly Germanic, either through common Germanic heritage or through loans from German, Middle Low German, and to some extent, English.

Traditional definition of a Swedish dialect has been a local variant that has not been heavily influenced by the standard language and that can trace a separate development all the way back to Old Norse.

The idea that only rural variants of Swedish language should be considered "genuine" is not generally accepted by modern scholars.

Standard Swedish is the language used by virtually all Swedes and most Swedish-speaking Finns.

Rinkeby Swedish language is a common name among linguists for varieties of Swedish language spoken by young people of foreign heritage in certain suburbs and urban districts in the major cities of Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmo.