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99-547: Old Swedish ( Modern Swedish : fornsvenska ) is the name for two distinct stages of the Swedish language that were spoken in the Middle Ages : Early Old Swedish ( Klassisk fornsvenska ), spoken from about 1225 until about 1375, and Late Old Swedish ( Yngre fornsvenska ), spoken from about 1375 until about 1526. Old Swedish developed from Old East Norse , the eastern dialect of Old Norse . The earliest forms of
198-445: A common gender with the definite suffix -en and the definite article den , in contrast with the neuter gender equivalents -et and det . The verb system was also more complex: it included subjunctive and imperative moods and verbs were conjugated according to person as well as number . By the 16th century, the case and gender systems of the colloquial spoken language and the profane literature had been largely reduced to
297-477: A guttural or "French R" pronunciation in the South Swedish dialects ; consequently, these dialects lack retroflex consonants . Swedish is a stress-timed language, where the time intervals between stressed syllables are equal. However, when casually spoken, it tends to be syllable-timed . Any stressed syllable carries one of two tones , which gives Swedish much of its characteristic sound. Prosody
396-545: A vowel shift , so that in the 16th century the language resembled modern Swedish more than before. The printing of the New Testament in Swedish in 1526 marked the starting point for modern Swedish. In this period Old Swedish had taken in a large amount of new vocabulary primarily from Latin, Low German and Dutch. When the country became part of the Kalmar Union in 1397, many Danish scribes brought Danicisms into
495-537: A change from tauþr into tuþr . Moreover, the øy diphthong changed into a long, close ø , as in the Old Norse word for "island". By the end of the period, these innovations had affected most of the Runic Swedish-speaking area as well, with the exception of the dialects spoken north and east of Mälardalen where the diphthongs still exist in remote areas. Old Swedish (Swedish: fornsvenska )
594-528: A conversation. Due to the close relation between the Scandinavian languages, a considerable proportion of speakers of Danish and especially Norwegian are able to understand Swedish. There is considerable migration between the Nordic countries , but owing to the similarity between the cultures and languages (with the exception of Finnish ), expatriates generally assimilate quickly and do not stand out as
693-479: A few dialects well into the 20th century. Other major changes include the loss of a separate inflectional system for masculine and feminine nouns, pronouns and adjectives in the course of the 15th century, leaving only two genders in the standard Swedish language, although three genders are still common in many of the dialects. The old dative forms of the personal pronouns became the object forms ( honom , henne , dem ; him, her, them) and -s became more common as
792-684: A genitive (some dialects retain distinct dative forms). There were also three grammatical genders (masculine, feminine and neuter), still retained in many dialects today, but now reduced to two in the standard language, where the masculine and feminine have merged. These features of Old Swedish are still found in modern Icelandic and Faroese ; the noun declensions are almost identical. Noun declensions fell under two categories: weak and strong. The weak masculine, feminine and neuter nouns had their own declensions and at least three groups of strong masculine nouns, three groups of strong feminine nouns and one group of strong neuter nouns can be identified. Below
891-692: A group. According to the 2000 United States Census , some 67,000 people over the age of five were reported as Swedish speakers, though without any information on the degree of language proficiency. Similarly, there were 16,915 reported Swedish speakers in Canada from the 2001 census. Although there are no certain numbers, some 40,000 Swedes are estimated to live in the London area in the United Kingdom. Outside Sweden and Finland, there are about 40,000 active learners enrolled in Swedish language courses. In
990-459: A hereditary kingdom in a real union with Denmark. Norway continued to remain a part of the realm of Denmark–Norway under the Oldenburg dynasty for nearly three centuries, until it was transferred to Sweden in 1814. The ensuing union between Sweden and Norway lasted until 1905, when prince Carl of Denmark , a grandson of both the incumbent king of Denmark and the late king of Sweden ,
1089-548: A large army. Subsequently, Christian II was crowned King of Sweden, and supporters of Sten Sture were executed en masse in the Stockholm Bloodbath . After the Stockholm Bloodbath, Gustav Vasa (whose father, Erik Johansson , was executed) travelled to Dalarna , where he organized a rebellion against Christian II. Vasa made an alliance with Lübeck and successfully conquered most of Sweden. He
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#17327757946531188-629: A large proportion of the remaining 100,000 in the Scandinavian countries, France, Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Canada and Australia. Over three million people speak Swedish as a second language, with about 2,410,000 of those in Finland. According to a survey by the European Commission , 44% of respondents from Finland who did not have Swedish as a native language considered themselves to be proficient enough in Swedish to hold
1287-425: A more abstract sense, such as that set of fish; while fisken means "the fish". In certain cases, the definite form indicates possession, e. g., jag måste tvätta hår et ("I must wash my hair"). Adjectives are inflected in two declensions – indefinite and definite – and they must match the noun they modify in gender and number. The indefinite neuter and plural forms of an adjective are usually created by adding
1386-435: A noun. They can double as demonstrative pronouns or demonstrative determiners when used with adverbs such as här ("here") or där ("there") to form den/det här (can also be "denna/detta") ("this"), de här (can also be "dessa") ("these"), den/det där ("that"), and de där ("those"). For example, den där fisken means "that fish" and refers to a specific fish; den fisken is less definite and means "that fish" in
1485-523: A rebellion led Karl to become king of Sweden again. When Karl died in 1470, Christian tried to become king of Sweden again, but was defeated by Sten Sture the Elder in the 1471 battle of Brunkeberg outside Stockholm. After the death of Karl, Sweden was mostly ruled by a series of "protectors of the realm" ( riksföreståndare ), with the Danish kings attempting to assert control. First of these protectors
1584-689: A special branch of the Research Institute for the Languages of Finland has official status as the regulatory body for Swedish in Finland. Among its highest priorities is to maintain intelligibility with the language spoken in Sweden. It has published Finlandssvensk ordbok , a dictionary about the differences between Swedish in Finland and Sweden. From the 13th to 20th century, there were Swedish-speaking communities in Estonia , particularly on
1683-503: A strong unified state, and the Swedish and Danish nobility, which did not. The Union lost territory when Orkney and Shetland were pledged by Christian I , in his capacity as King of Norway, as security against the payment of the dowry of his daughter Margaret , betrothed to James III of Scotland in 1468. The money was never paid, so in 1472 the islands were annexed by the Kingdom of Scotland . Diverging interests (especially
1782-442: A suffix ( -t or -a ) to the common form of the adjective, e. g., en grön stol (a green chair), ett grönt hus (a green house), and gröna stolar ("green chairs"). The definite form of an adjective is identical to the indefinite plural form, e. g., den gröna stolen ("the green chair"), det gröna huset ("the green house"), and de gröna stolarna ("the green chairs"). Swedish pronouns are similar to those of English. Besides
1881-413: A village, Gammalsvenskby ("Old Swedish Village"). A few elderly people in the village still speak a Swedish dialect and observe the holidays of the Swedish calendar, although their dialect is most likely facing extinction. From 1918 to 1940, when Estonia was independent, the small Swedish community was well treated. Municipalities with a Swedish majority, mainly found along the coast, used Swedish as
1980-488: Is an overview of the noun declension system: The noun declension system Some noun paradigms of the words fisker (fish), sun (son), siang (bed), skip (ship), biti (bit) and vika (week): By the year 1500 the number of cases in Old Swedish had been reduced from four ( nominative , genitive , dative and accusative ) to two (nominative and genitive). The dative case, however, lived on in
2079-481: Is generally seen as adding specific Central Swedish features to the new Bible. Though it might seem as if the Bible translation set a very powerful precedent for orthographic standards, spelling actually became more inconsistent during the remainder of the century. It was not until the 17th century that spelling began to be discussed, around the time when the first grammars were written. Capitalization during this time
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#17327757946532178-538: Is marked primarily through suffixes (endings), complemented with separate definite and indefinite articles . The prosody features both stress and in most dialects tonal qualities. The language has a comparatively large vowel inventory. Swedish is also notable for the voiceless dorso-palatal velar fricative , a highly variable consonant phoneme . Swedish nouns and adjectives are declined in genders as well as number . Nouns are of common gender ( en form) or neuter gender ( ett form). The gender determines
2277-414: Is not known when exactly Elfdalian began to diverge from Swedish. Early Old Swedish was markedly different from modern Swedish in that it had a more complex case structure and had not yet experienced a reduction of the gender system and thus had three genders. Nouns, adjectives, pronouns and certain numerals were inflected in four cases: nominative , genitive , dative and accusative . The writing of
2376-568: Is often one of the most noticeable differences between dialects. The standard word order is, as in most Germanic languages , V2 , which means that the finite verb (V) appears in the second position (2) of a declarative main clause . Swedish morphology is similar to English; that is, words have comparatively few inflections . Swedish has two genders and is generally seen to have two grammatical cases – nominative and genitive (except for pronouns that, as in English, also are inflected in
2475-638: Is one of the official languages of the European Union , and one of the working languages of the Nordic Council . 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. The Swedish Language Council ( Språkrådet )
2574-475: Is termed nusvenska (lit., "Now-Swedish") in linguistics, and started in the last decades of the 19th century. It saw a democratization of the language with a less formal written form that approached the spoken one. The growth of a public school system also led to the evolution of so-called boksvenska (literally, "book Swedish"), especially among the working classes, where spelling to some extent influenced pronunciation, particularly in official contexts. With
2673-507: Is the national language that evolved from the Central Swedish dialects in the 19th century, and was well established by the beginning of the 20th century. While distinct regional varieties and rural dialects still exist, the written language is uniform and standardized . Swedish is the most widely spoken second language in Finland where its status is co- official language . Swedish was long spoken in parts of Estonia , although
2772-527: Is the predominant language; in 19 municipalities , 16 of which are located in Åland , Swedish is the sole official language. Åland county is an autonomous region of Finland. According to a rough estimation, as of 2010 there were up to 300,000 Swedish-speakers living outside Sweden and Finland. The largest populations were in the United States (up to 100,000), the UK, Spain and Germany (c. 30,000 each) and
2871-455: Is the regulator of Swedish in Sweden but does not attempt to enforce control of the language, as for instance the Académie française does for French . However, many organizations and agencies require the use of the council's publication Svenska skrivregler in official contexts, with it otherwise being regarded as a de facto orthographic standard. Among the many organizations that make up
2970-407: Is the sole official language of Åland (an autonomous province under the sovereignty of Finland), where the vast majority of the 26,000 inhabitants speak Swedish as a first language. In Finland as a whole, Swedish is one of the two "national" languages, with the same official status as Finnish (spoken by the majority) at the state level and an official language in some municipalities . Swedish
3069-631: Is the term used for the medieval Swedish language. The start date is usually set to 1225 since this is the year that Västgötalagen ("the Västgöta Law") is believed to have been compiled for the first time. It is among the most important documents of the period written in Latin script and the oldest Swedish law codes . Old Swedish is divided into äldre fornsvenska (1225–1375) and yngre fornsvenska (1375–1526), "older" and "younger" Old Swedish. Important outside influences during this time came with
Old Swedish - Misplaced Pages Continue
3168-407: Is the word vindöga (window). Many words related to seafaring were borrowed from Dutch. It is speculated that the influence of Low German was so strong that it helped break down the inflectional system of Old Swedish. In contrast to the stable Early Old Swedish, Late Old Swedish ( yngre fornsvenska ; 1375–1526) experienced many changes, including a simplification of the grammatical system and
3267-465: The Gustav Vasa Bible , a translation deemed so successful and influential that, with revisions incorporated in successive editions, it remained the most common Bible translation until 1917. The main translators were Laurentius Andreæ and the brothers Laurentius and Olaus Petri . The Vasa Bible is often considered to be a reasonable compromise between old and new; while not adhering to
3366-619: The Codex Bureanus , a collection of Old Swedish manuscripts from the mid-14th century. Translation: Swedish language Swedish ( endonym : svenska [ˈsvɛ̂nːska] ) is a North Germanic language from the Indo-European language family , spoken predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland . It has at least 10 million native speakers, making it the fourth most spoken Germanic language , and
3465-562: The Danish-Hanseatic War (1361-1370) that allowed the League to become even more powerful. On the personal level, the union was achieved by Queen Margaret I of Denmark (1353–1412). She was a daughter of King Valdemar IV of Denmark and had married King Haakon VI of Norway and Sweden, who was the son of King Magnus IV of Sweden , Norway and Scania . Margaret succeeded in having her and Haakon's son Olaf recognized as heir to
3564-576: The Faroe Islands , and the Northern Isles of Orkney and Shetland ). The union was not quite continuous; there were several short interruptions. Legally, the countries remained separate sovereign states . However, their domestic and foreign policies were directed by a common monarch. Gustav Vasa 's election as King of Sweden on 6 June 1523, and his triumphant entry into Stockholm eleven days later, marked Sweden's final secession from
3663-467: The French vous (see T-V distinction ). Ni wound up being used as a slightly less familiar form of du , the singular second person pronoun, used to address people of lower social status. With the liberalization and radicalization of Swedish society in the 1950s and 1960s, these class distinctions became less important, and du became the standard, even in formal and official contexts. Though
3762-547: The Swedish nobility 's dissatisfaction with the dominant role played by Denmark and Holstein ) gave rise to a conflict that hampered the union in several intervals starting in the 1430s. The Engelbrekt rebellion , which started in 1434, led to the overthrow of King Erik (in Denmark and Sweden in 1439, as well as Norway in 1442). The aristocracy sided with the rebels. King Erik's foreign policy, in particular his conflict with
3861-518: The United States , particularly during the 19th and early 20th centuries, there was a significant Swedish-speaking immigrant population. This was notably true in states like Minnesota , where many Swedish immigrants settled. By 1940, approximately 6% of Minnesota's population spoke Swedish. Although the use of Swedish has significantly declined, it is not uncommon to find older generations and communities that still retain some use and knowledge of
3960-534: The West Scandinavian languages , consisting of Faroese , Icelandic , and Norwegian . However, more recent analyses divide the North Germanic languages into two groups: Insular Scandinavian (Faroese and Icelandic), and Continental Scandinavian (Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish), based on mutual intelligibility due to heavy influence of East Scandinavian (particularly Danish) on Norwegian during
4059-468: The Westro- and North Bothnian tongues in northern Sweden. The most defining difference between Old Swedish and modern Swedish was the more complex grammatical system of the former. In Old Swedish nouns, adjectives, pronouns and certain numerals were inflected in four cases ( nominative , genitive , dative and accusative ), whereas modern standard Swedish has reduced the case system to a common form and
Old Swedish - Misplaced Pages Continue
4158-578: The Westrogothic law marked the beginning of Early Old Swedish ( klassisk fornsvenska or äldre fornsvenska ; 1225–1375), which had developed from Old East Norse. It was the first Swedish language document written in the Latin alphabet , and its oldest fragments have been dated to around the year 1225. Old Swedish was relatively stable during this period. The phonological and grammatical systems inherited from Old Norse were relatively well preserved and did not experience any major changes. Most of
4257-581: The nationalist ideas that emerged during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the languages have separate orthographies , dictionaries, grammars, and regulatory bodies. Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish are thus from a linguistic perspective more accurately described as a dialect continuum of Scandinavian (North Germanic), and some of the dialects, such as those on the border between Norway and Sweden, especially parts of Bohuslän , Dalsland , western Värmland , western Dalarna , Härjedalen , Jämtland , and Scania , could be described as intermediate dialects of
4356-410: The object form) – although it is debated if the genitive in Swedish should be seen as a genitive case or just the nominative plus the so-called genitive s , then seen as a clitic . Swedish has two grammatical numbers – plural and singular . Adjectives have discrete comparative and superlative forms and are also inflected according to gender, number and definiteness . The definiteness of nouns
4455-650: The phonemes /i/ and /j/ (e.g. siæl (soul), själ in modern Swedish). The graphemes ⟨u⟩ , ⟨v⟩ , and ⟨w⟩ were used interchangeably with the phonemes /w/ ~ /v/ and /u/ (e.g. vtan (without), utan in modern Swedish), and ⟨w⟩ could also sometimes stand for the consonant-vowel combinations /vu/ and /uv/ : dwa ( duva or dove). Certain abbreviations were used in writing, such as mꝫ for meþ (modern med , with). The letter combinations ⟨aa⟩ , ⟨ae⟩ and ⟨oe⟩ were often written so that one of
4554-399: The 1950s, when their use was removed from all official recommendations. A very significant change in Swedish occurred in the late 1960s, with the so-called du-reformen . Previously, the proper way to address people of the same or higher social status had been by title and surname. The use of herr ("Mr." or "Sir"), fru ("Mrs." or "Ma'am") or fröken ("Miss") was considered
4653-485: The 8th century, the common Germanic language of Scandinavia, Proto-Norse , evolved into Old Norse. This language underwent more changes that did not spread to all of Scandinavia, which resulted in the appearance of two similar dialects: Old West Norse (Norway, the Faroe Islands and Iceland) and Old East Norse (Denmark and Sweden). The dialects of Old East Norse spoken in Sweden are called Runic Swedish , while
4752-475: The Hanseatic League, necessitated greater taxation and complicated exports of iron, which in turn may have precipitated the rebellion. Discontent with the nature of King Erik's regime has also been cited as a motivating factor for the rebellion. King Erik also lacked a standing army and had limited tax revenues. The death of Christopher of Bavaria (who had no heirs) in 1448 ended a period in which
4851-649: The Kalmar Union. Formally, the Danish king acknowledged Sweden's independence in 1524 at the Treaty of Malmö . The union was the work of Scandinavian aristocracy who sought to counter the influence of the Hanseatic League , a northern German trade league centered around the Baltic and North Seas. Denmark in particular was in a power struggle with the League and had recently suffered a humiliating defeat in
4950-471: The Modern Swedish period were the gradual assimilation of several different consonant clusters into the fricative [ʃ] and later into [ɧ] . There was also the gradual softening of [ɡ] and [k] into [j] and the fricative [ɕ] before front vowels . The velar fricative [ɣ] was also transformed into the corresponding plosive [ɡ] . The period that includes Swedish as it is spoken today
5049-601: The Swedish Language Council, the Swedish Academy (established 1786) is arguably the most influential. Its primary instruments are the spelling dictionary Svenska Akademiens ordlista ( SAOL , currently in its 14th edition) and the dictionary Svenska Akademiens Ordbok , in addition to various books on grammar, spelling and manuals of style. Although the dictionaries have a prescriptive element, they mainly describe current usage. In Finland,
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#17327757946535148-404: The Swedish and Danish languages , spoken between the years 800 and 1100, were dialects of Old East Norse and are referred to as Runic Swedish and Runic Danish because at the time all texts were written in the runic alphabet . The differences were only minute, however, and the dialects truly began to diverge around the 12th century, becoming Old Swedish and Old Danish in the 13th century. It
5247-502: The administrative language and Swedish-Estonian culture saw an upswing. However, most Swedish-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. Only a handful of speakers remain. Swedish dialects have either 17 or 18 vowel phonemes , 9 long and 9 short. As in the other Germanic languages, including English, most long vowels are phonetically paired with one of
5346-470: The beginning of modern Swedish words came from the Low German be- , ge- and vor- . Some words were replaced with new ones: the native word for window, vindøgha , was replaced with fönster , eldhus (kitchen) was replaced with kök and gælda (to pay) with betala . Some of these words still exist in Modern Swedish but are often considered archaic or dialectal; one example
5445-504: The colloquial spoken language of its day, it was not overly conservative in its use of archaic forms. It was a major step towards a more consistent Swedish orthography . It established the use of the vowels "å", "ä", and "ö", and the spelling "ck" in place of "kk", distinguishing it clearly from the Danish Bible, perhaps intentionally, given the ongoing rivalry between the countries. All three translators came from central Sweden, which
5544-728: The current status of the Estonian Swedish speakers is almost extinct. It is also used in the Swedish diaspora , most notably in Oslo , Norway, with more than 50,000 Swedish residents. Swedish is an Indo-European language belonging to the North Germanic branch of the Germanic languages . In the established classification, it belongs to the East Scandinavian languages , together with Danish , separating it from
5643-403: The declension of the adjectives . For example, the word fisk ("fish") is a noun of common gender ( en fisk ) and can have the following forms: The definite singular form of a noun is created by adding a suffix ( -en , -n , -et or -t ), depending on its gender and if the noun ends in a vowel or not. The definite articles den , det , and de are used for variations to the definitiveness of
5742-541: The dialects of Denmark are referred to as Runic Danish . The dialects are described as "runic" because the main body of text appears in the runic alphabet . Unlike Proto-Norse, which was written with the Elder Futhark alphabet, Old Norse was written with the Younger Futhark alphabet, which had only 16 letters. Because the number of runes was limited, some runes were used for a range of phonemes , such as
5841-402: The ending for the genitive singular. Adjectives and certain numerals were inflected according to the gender and case the noun they modified was in. Below is a table of the inflection of weak adjectives. Verbs in Old Swedish were conjugated according to person and number. There were four weak verb conjugations and six groups of strong verbs . The difference between weak and strong verbs is in
5940-545: The firm establishment of the Christian church and various monastic orders, introducing many Greek and Latin loanwords. With the rise of Hanseatic power in the late 13th and early 14th century, Middle Low German became very influential. The Hanseatic league provided Swedish commerce and administration with a large number of Low German -speaking immigrants. Many became quite influential members of Swedish medieval society, and brought terms from their native languages into
6039-567: The first among its type in the Nordic countries overall. Swedish, like the other Nordic languages , is a descendant of Old Norse , the common language of the Germanic peoples living in Scandinavia during the Viking Age . It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish , although the degree of mutual intelligibility is dependent on the dialect and accent of the speaker. Standard Swedish , spoken by most Swedes ,
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#17327757946536138-424: The following way: ēn ( twēr , þrīr , etc.) ok tiughu , ēn ok þrǣtighi , etc. This is an extract from the Westrogothic law ( Västgötalagen ), which is the oldest continuous text written in the Swedish language, and was compiled during the early 13th century. The text marks the beginning of Old Swedish. Modern Swedish : English : This text about Eric IX (ca. 1120–1160) can be found in
6237-430: The industrialization and urbanization of Sweden well under way by the last decades of the 19th century, a new breed of authors made their mark on Swedish literature . Many scholars, politicians and other public figures had a great influence on the emerging national language, among them prolific authors like the poet Gustaf Fröding , Nobel laureate Selma Lagerlöf and radical writer and playwright August Strindberg . It
6336-614: The islands (e. g., Hiiumaa , Vormsi , Ruhnu ; in Swedish, known as Dagö , Ormsö , Runö , respectively) along the coast of the Baltic , communities that today have all disappeared. The Swedish-speaking minority was represented in parliament , and entitled to use their native language in parliamentary debates. After the loss of Estonia to the Russian Empire in the early 18th century, around 1,000 Estonian Swedish speakers were forced to march to southern Ukraine , where they founded
6435-484: The language, particularly in rural communities like Lindström and Scandia . Swedish is the official main language of Sweden. Swedish is also one of two official languages of Finland. In Sweden, it has long been used in local and state government, and most of the educational system, but remained only a de facto primary language with no official status in law until 2009. A bill was proposed in 2005 that would have made Swedish an official language, but failed to pass by
6534-490: The last millennium and divergence from both Faroese and Icelandic. By many general criteria of mutual intelligibility, the Continental Scandinavian languages could very well be considered dialects of a common Scandinavian language. However, because of several hundred years of sometimes quite intense rivalry between Denmark and Sweden, including a long series of wars from the 16th to 18th centuries, and
6633-502: The letters stood above the other as a smaller letter, ⟨aͣ⟩ , ⟨aͤ⟩ and ⟨oͤ⟩ , which led to the development of the modern letters ⟨å⟩ , ⟨ä⟩ , and ⟨ö⟩ . The root syllable length in Old Swedish could be short ( VC ), long ( VːC , VCː ) or overlong ( VːCː ). During the Late Old Swedish period the short root syllables ( VC ) were lengthened and
6732-577: The narrowest possible margin (145–147) due to a pairing-off failure. A proposal for a broader language law, designating Swedish as the main language of the country and bolstering the status of the minority languages, was submitted by an expert committee to the Swedish Ministry of Culture in March 2008. It was subsequently enacted by the Riksdag , and entered into effect on 1 July 2009. Swedish
6831-421: The national standard languages. Swedish pronunciations also vary greatly from one region to another, a legacy of the vast geographic distances and historical isolation. Even so, the vocabulary is standardized to a level that make dialects within Sweden virtually fully mutually intelligible. East Germanic languages West Germanic languages Icelandic Faroese Norwegian Danish Swedish In
6930-424: The north. An early change that separated Runic Danish from the other dialects of Old East Norse was the change of the diphthong æi to the monophthong é , as in stæinn to sténn "stone". This is reflected in runic inscriptions where the older read stain and the later stin . There was also a change of au as in dauðr into a long open ø as in døðr "dead". This change is shown in runic inscriptions as
7029-441: The only acceptable way to begin conversation with strangers of unknown occupation, academic title or military rank. The fact that the listener should preferably be referred to in the third person tended to further complicate spoken communication between members of society. In the early 20th century, an unsuccessful attempt was made to replace the insistence on titles with ni —the standard second person plural pronoun)—analogous to
7128-402: The original Germanic three- gender system. Nouns , adjectives , pronouns and certain numerals were inflected in four cases; besides the extant nominative , there were also the genitive (later possessive ), dative and accusative . The gender system resembled that of modern German , having masculine, feminine and neuter genders. The masculine and feminine genders were later merged into
7227-512: The overlong root syllables ( VːCː ) were shortened, so modern Swedish only has the combinations VːC and VCː . Unlike in modern Swedish, a short vowel in Old Swedish did not entail a long consonant. There were eight vowels in Early Old Swedish: /iː, yː, uː, oː, eː, aː, øː, ɛː/ . A vowel shift ( stora vokaldansen ) occurred during the Late Old Swedish period, which had the following effects: The consonant sounds were largely
7326-480: The reform was not an act of any centralized political decree, but rather the result of sweeping change in social attitudes, it was completed in just a few years, from the late 1960s to early 1970s. The use of ni as a polite form of address is sometimes encountered today in both the written and spoken language, particularly among older speakers. Swedish is the sole official national language of Sweden , and one of two in Finland (alongside Finnish ). As of 2006, it
7425-413: The rune for the vowel u , which was also used for the vowels o , ø and y , and the rune for i , also used for e . From 1200 onwards, the dialects in Denmark began to diverge from those of Sweden. The innovations spread unevenly from Denmark, creating a series of minor dialectal boundaries, or isoglosses , ranging from Zealand in the south to Norrland , Österbotten and northwestern Finland in
7524-561: The same as in modern Swedish, with the notable exceptions of / ð / and / θ / , which do not exist in modern Swedish (although the former is preserved in Elfdalian and to some extent also the latter). The Modern Swedish tje-sound ([ɕ]) and sje-sound ([ɧ]) were probably [t͡ʃ] and [ʃ] , respectively, similar to their values in modern Finland Swedish . A similar change can be seen from Old Spanish [t͡s/d͡z] and [ʃ/ʒ] to Modern Spanish [s/θ] and [x] . The Proto-Germanic phoneme / w /
7623-444: The short /e/ (transcribed ⟨ ɛ ⟩ in the chart below). There are 18 consonant phonemes, two of which, / ɧ / and /r/ , vary considerably in pronunciation depending on the dialect and social status of the speaker. In many dialects, sequences of /r/ (pronounced alveolarly) with a dental consonant result in retroflex consonants ; alveolarity of the pronunciation of /r/ is a precondition for this retroflexion. /r/ has
7722-428: The short vowels, and the pairs are such that the two vowels are of similar quality , but with the short vowel being slightly lower and slightly centralized. In contrast to e.g. Danish, which has only tense vowels, the short vowels are slightly more lax, but the tense vs. lax contrast is not nearly as pronounced as in English, German or Dutch. In many dialects, the short vowel sound pronounced [ɛ] or [æ] has merged with
7821-510: The subject in a clause, a trait that is restricted to North Germanic languages: Kalmar Union Chronological history The Kalmar Union was a personal union in Scandinavia , agreed at Kalmar in Sweden as designed by Queen Margaret of Denmark. From 1397 to 1523, it joined under a single monarch the three kingdoms of Denmark , Sweden (then including much of present-day Finland ), and Norway , together with Norway's overseas colonies (then including Iceland , Greenland ,
7920-729: The texts from the Early Old Swedish period were written in Latin , as it was the language of knowledge and the Church . However, Old Swedish was used as a literary language as well, and laws especially were written in it; of the 28 surviving manuscripts from this period, 24 contain law texts. Much of the knowledge of Old Swedish comes from these law texts. In addition to laws, some religious and poetic texts were also written in Old Swedish. The Catholic Church and its various monastic orders introduced many new Greek and Latin loanwords into Old Swedish. Latin especially had an influence on
8019-429: The three Scandinavian kingdoms were uninterruptedly united for a lengthy period. Karl Knutsson Bonde ruled as king of Sweden (1448–1457, 1464–1465 and 1467–1470) and Norway (1449-1450). Christian of Oldenburg was king of Denmark (1448–1481), Norway (1450–1481) and Sweden (1457–1464). Karl and Christian fought over control of Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, leading Christian to seize Sweden from him from 1457 to 1464 before
8118-520: The throne of Denmark. In 1376, Olaf inherited the crown of Denmark from his maternal grandfather as King Olaf II, with his mother as guardian; when Haakon VI died in 1380, Olaf also inherited the crown of Norway. Margaret became regent of Denmark and Norway when Olaf died in 1387, leaving her without an heir. She adopted her great-nephew Eric of Pomerania the same year. The following year, 1388, Swedish nobles called upon her help against King Albert . After Margaret defeated Albert in 1389, her heir Eric
8217-534: The two cases and two genders of modern Swedish. A transitional change of the Latin script in the Nordic countries was to spell the letter combination "ae" as æ – and sometimes as a' – though it varied between persons and regions. The combination "ao" was similarly rendered a , and "oe" became o . These three were later to evolve into the separate letters ä , å and ö . The first time the new letters were used in print
8316-517: The two natural genders han and hon ("he" and "she"), there are also the two grammatical genders den and det , usually termed common and neuter . In recent years, a gender-neutral pronoun hen has been introduced, particularly in literary Swedish. Unlike the nouns, pronouns have an additional object form, derived from the old dative form. Hon , for example, has the following nominative, possessive, and object forms: Swedish also uses third-person possessive reflexive pronouns that refer to
8415-477: The use of mor din (mother yours) has been common. Below is a table of the Old Swedish personal pronouns : The Old Swedish cardinal numbers are as follows. Numbers from one to four decline in the nominative, genitive, dative and accusative cases and in all three genders (masculine, feminine and neuter); here the nominative forms are given. Numbers above four are indeclinable. The higher numbers are as follows. The numbers 21–29, 31–39, and so on are formed in
8514-439: The vocabulary. Besides a great number of loanwords for such areas as warfare, trade and administration, general grammatical suffixes and even conjunctions were imported. The League also brought a certain measure of influence from Danish (at the time Swedish and Danish were much more similar than today). Early Old Swedish was markedly different from the modern language in that it had a more complex case structure and also retained
8613-406: The way the past tense ( preterite ) is formed: strong verbs form it with a vowel shift in the root of the verb, while weak verbs form it with a dental suffix (þ, d or t). The verbs in the table below are bīta (bite), biūþa (offer), wærþa (become), stiæla (steal), mæta (measure) and fara (go). Weak verbs are grouped into four classes: Inside the conjugation classes
8712-445: The weak verbs are also categorised into further three classes: Word order was less restricted in Old Swedish than modern Swedish due to complex verbal morphology. Both referential and nonreferential subjects could be left out as verbal structures already conveyed the necessary information, in much the same way as in languages such as Spanish and Latin . In nominal phrases the genitive attribute could stand both before and after
8811-661: The word it modified, i.e. one could say his house or house his . The same was true for pronouns and adjectives ( that house or house that ; green pasture or pasture green ). During the Late Old Swedish period the usage of the genitive attribute became increasingly more restricted, and it nearly always came to be placed before the word it modified, so in modern Swedish one would usually only say hans hus (his house), or in some dialects or manners of emphasis, huset hans , but almost never hus hans . However, this too has lived on in some dialects, like in Västgötska , where
8910-515: The written language. Old Swedish used some letters that are no longer found in modern Swedish: ⟨ æ ⟩ and ⟨ ø ⟩ were used for modern ⟨ ä ⟩ and ⟨ ö ⟩ respectively, and ⟨ þ ⟩ could stand for both / ð / ( th as in that) and / θ / ( th as in thing). In the latter part of the 14th century ⟨þ⟩ was replaced with ⟨th⟩ and ⟨dh⟩ . The grapheme ⟨i⟩ could stand for both
9009-437: The written language. The Middle Low German language also influenced Old Swedish due to the economic and political power of the Hanseatic League during the 13th and 14th centuries. Accordingly, loanwords relating to warfare, trade, crafts and bureaucracy entered the Swedish language directly from Low German, along with some grammatical suffixes and conjunctions. The prefixes be- , ge- and för- that can be found in
9108-474: Was Sten Sture, who kept Sweden under his control until 1497 when the Swedish nobility deposed him. A peasant rebellion led Sture to become regent of Sweden again in 1501. After his death, Sweden was ruled by Svante Nilsson (1504–1512) and then Svante's son Sten Sture the Younger (1512–1520). Sten Sture the Younger was killed in the 1520 Battle of Bogesund when the Danish king Christian II invaded Sweden with
9207-484: Was during the 20th century that a common, standardized national language became available to all Swedes. The orthography finally stabilized and became almost completely uniform, with some minor deviations, by the time of the spelling reform of 1906. With the exception of plural forms of verbs and a slightly different syntax, particularly in the written language, the language was the same as the Swedish of today. The plural verb forms appeared decreasingly in formal writing into
9306-679: Was elected King of Sweden in 1523, effectively ending the Kalmar Union. After the Northern Seven Years' War , the Treaty of Stettin (1570) saw Frederick II renounce all claims to Sweden. One of the last structures of the Union remained until 1536/1537 when the Danish Privy Council , in the aftermath of the Count's Feud , unilaterally declared Norway to be a Danish province . This did not happen. Instead, Norway became
9405-656: Was in Aff dyäffwlsens frästilse ("By the Devil's temptation") published by Johan Gerson in 1495. Modern Swedish (Swedish: nysvenska ) begins with the advent of the printing press and the European Reformation . After assuming power, the new monarch Gustav Vasa ordered a Swedish translation of the Bible . The New Testament was published in 1526, followed by a full Bible translation in 1541, usually referred to as
9504-523: Was not standardized. It depended on the authors and their background. Those influenced by German capitalized all nouns, while others capitalized more sparsely. It is also not always apparent which letters are capitalized owing to the Gothic or blackletter typeface that was used to print the Bible. This typeface was in use until the mid-18th century, when it was gradually replaced with a Latin typeface (often Antiqua ). Some important changes in sound during
9603-508: Was preserved in initial sounds in Old Swedish (w-) and did survive in rural Swedish dialects in the provinces of Skåne , Halland , Västergötland and south of Bohuslän into the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. It is still preserved in the Dalecarlian dialects in the province of Dalarna , Sweden. The / w / -phoneme did also occur after consonants (kw-, tw- etc.) in Old Swedish and did so into modern times in said dialects, as well as in
9702-503: Was proclaimed King of Norway. Eric was subsequently elected King of Denmark and Sweden in 1396 under the banner of the House of Griffin . His coronation was held in Kalmar on 17 June 1397. One main impetus for its formation was to block German expansion northward into the Baltic region . The main reason for its failure to survive was the perpetual struggle between the monarch, who wanted
9801-537: Was the sole native language of 83% of Swedish residents. In 2007, around 5.5% (c. 290,000) of the population of Finland were native speakers of Swedish, partially due to a decline following the Russian annexation of Finland after the Finnish War 1808–1809. The Fenno-Swedish - speaking minority is concentrated in the coastal areas and archipelagos of southern and western Finland. In some of these areas, Swedish
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