The
Swedish language
Welcome to sueco.es, the website about the Swedish language
On this page you will find information about the Swedish language: number of speakers, countries where it is spoken, main dialects, the Swedish alphabet, difficulties in learning Swedish for non-native speakers and curiosities and linguistic resources about this language.
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Swedish language information
Where does the Swedish language come from?
The Swedish language has a very localised geographic scope and niche of speakers; this language has official status in Sweden, is of Germanic origin and presents highly peculiar features within the Nordic languages.
Swedish belongs to the Indo-European language family, originating from the Nordic branch of the Germanic language family; Old Norse was the language spoken in Scandinavia during the Viking Age (from 789 to 1100 AD).
The language codes are ISO 639-1 sv, ISO 639-2 swe and ISO 639-3 swe.
How many dialects are there in Swedish?
Up to six dialects of the Swedish language can be counted:
- Gotländska: spoken on the island of Gotland, located in the Baltic Sea, east of the Scandinavian peninsula.
- Götamål: spoken in Götaland, a region of southern Sweden.
- Norrländska mål: spoken in Norrland, the northern half of the country.
- Östsvenska mål: spoken in both Finland and Estonia.
- Skånska mål: spoken in the province of Skåne, the southern part of the country, east of Copenhagen.
- Sveamål: spoken in Svealand, the inland region around Lake Siljan.
The Swedish alphabet is based entirely on the Latin alphabet from the Middle Ages, and incorporates three more letters at the end: Å-å , Ä-ä and Ö-ö, resulting in a total of 29 letters.
How many letters does the Swedish alphabet have?
The Swedish alphabet is based entirely on the Latin alphabet. This has been the case since the Middle Ages and this alphabet also incorporates three more letters at the end: Å-å , Ä-ä and Ö-ö, resulting in a total of 29 letters.
During the Viking period the writing system of the Swedish language, like the rest of the Nordic languages, was based on runes: it would be an almost impossible mission to try to study Swedish without this evolution towards the Western alphabet!
How difficult is it to learn Swedish?
One of the major differences between Swedish and European languages such as Spanish is, in turn, a major handicap for anyone wishing to learn Swedish: it is a tonal language, like some Indo-Aryan languages, and this makes phonetics extremely complicated for a Spanish speaker.
In terms of grammar, the Swedish language lacks masculine and feminine forms: there are only the common and neuter; nouns have an almost arbitrary gender that must be memorised in each case; there are several ways of determining plurals; and it is riddled with irregular constructions.
In which countries is Swedish spoken?
The Swedish language, apart from being the official language of Sweden, is the co-official language of Finland (together with Finnish) and, surprisingly enough, it is also co-official in the European Union and the Nordic Council.
The list of countries where Swedish is spoken is very short; apart from the aforementioned Sweden and Finland, it is also spoken on the small island of Hiiumaa, which belongs to Estonia.
In total, some 14 million native Swedish speakers can be counted, relegating Swedish to the 89th most spoken language in the world.
