How many people speak Swedish as a native language?
Swedish has at least 10 million native speakers, making it the fourth most spoken Germanic language in the world and the most widely spoken language in the Nordic countries.
Questions about Swedish language
Short answers, pulled from the story.
When did Swedish become an official language in Sweden?
Swedish became the official main language of Sweden on the 1st of July 2009, when a language law enacted by the Riksdag entered into force. A previous bill to establish official status failed in 2005 by a vote of 145 to 147.
What is the Gustav Vasa Bible and why is it important to Swedish?
The Gustav Vasa Bible is the full Swedish Bible translation completed in 1541, following a New Testament published in 1526. It remained the most common Swedish Bible translation until 1917 and established the vowels å, ä, and ö as fixtures of Swedish orthography.
What was the du reform in Swedish and when did it happen?
The du-reformen was a social shift in which du, the informal second-person singular pronoun, replaced formal title-and-surname address as the standard way to speak to anyone in Swedish society. It was not a government decree but a change in social attitudes, completing itself in just a few years from the late 1960s to the early 1970s.
Is Swedish spoken in Finland and what is its status there?
Swedish is one of Finland's two national languages alongside Finnish, with the same official status at the state level. In 2007, approximately 290,000 people, around 5.5 percent of Finland's population, were native Swedish speakers. Swedish is the sole official language of Åland, an autonomous county of Finland.
What is Rinkeby Swedish?
Rinkeby Swedish is a variety of Swedish spoken by young people of foreign heritage in immigrant suburbs of Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmö, named after Rinkeby, a suburb of northern Stockholm. It shares features across cities in ways that cross geographic dialect boundaries, leading linguists to classify it as a sociolect. A survey by linguist Ulla-Britt Kotsinas found that only 1.8 percent of foreign learners could correctly identify the native language of a Rinkeby Swedish speaker whose parents were both Swedish.