Swedish language

Swedish () is a language mostly spoken in Sweden and in parts of Finland, typically along the southern and western coasts and on the Åland Islands. More than nine million people speak Swedish. It is similar to two of the other Scandinavian languages, Norwegian and Danish, and a person who understands one of these languages can understand the others. Other Scandinavian languages, such as Icelandic and Faroese, are less closely related and cannot be understood by Swedish speakers. Standard Swedish is spoken and written throughout Sweden, but there are some local dialects with differences in grammar and vocabulary in small towns and rural areas.  

Swedish began as a dialect of Old Norse, which was a language that everyone in Scandinavia understood during the Viking Age. Around the 12th century Swedish began to slowly become different from the other dialects.  These dialects later became what we today call Norwegian, Icelandic, Faroese and Danish. Swedish is a Germanic language with some similarities to English because of the Vikings that invaded England in the 10th Century. It is even more similar to German and Dutch, partly because of the Hanseatic League of the Middle Ages, when Sweden traded very openly with Germany.

There are three characters in the Swedish language that are not used in English. These are å, ä and ö.  The letter å is a vowel sound between [a] and [o], similar to the English word awe.  The letter ä is a vowel sound similar to [ɛ], like in the English word bed.  The letter ö is a vowel sound between [o] and [ɛ], pronounced [øː] like the u in the English word burn.  These characters are also used in the Finnish language, while Norwegian and Danish languages replace ä and ö with similar characters æ and ø.   

Swedish also has some important differences in grammar. Definite articles are suffixed onto the end of their nouns, so ett hus (a house) becomes huset (the house). Also unlike English, Swedish uses two grammatical genders called Common and Neuter. Nouns of the Common gender are sometimes called "en words", and many words for living (or once-living) things are "en words". Nouns of the Neuter gender are sometimes called "ett words".

 Example of some words in Swedish 

SwedishEnglish  Ett/En  One  Två  Two  Tre  Three  Fyra  Four  Fem  Five  Sex  Six Sju  Seven  Åtta  Eight Nio   Nine  Tio   Ten  Ja  Yes  Nej  No  Jag  I  Du  You  Mig  Me  Han  He  Hon  She  Vi  We  De/dem  They/them Jag är  I am  Sverige  Sweden  Hus  House  Hem  Home  Väg  Way  Björnar  Bears  Hjälp  Help 

 Basic Swedish Expressions 

   Good day/Hello    How are you?    Very good, thank you    Thank you    Thank you very much    Good morning     Good evening    Goodbye

References

 Other websites 

Swedish Dictionary  from Webster's Dictionary 
An introduction to Swedish 
Lexin Swedish-English dictionary

Category:North Germanic languages
Category:Languages of Sweden
Category:Languages of Finland