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130-562: The Moderate Party ( Swedish : Moderata samlingspartiet [mʊdɛˈrɑ̌ːta ˈsâmːlɪŋspaˌʈiːɛt] , lit. ' Moderate Coalition Party ' , M ), commonly referred to as the Moderates ( Swedish : Moderaterna [mʊdɛˈrɑ̌ːtɛɳa] ), is a liberal-conservative political party in Sweden . The party generally supports tax cuts , the free market , civil liberties and economic liberalism . Globally, it
260-591: A classical liberal view on economic issues, mainly under the influence of the liberal economist Gustav Cassel , but the economic downturn following the Great Depression frustrated the possible liberal transition of their economic policy. Before that occurred the party gained its greatest success yet with 29.4% in the general election of 1928, often called the Cossack Election , on a clearly anti-socialist programme. The government later formed by
390-606: A coalition government . Party leader Fredrik Reinfeldt took office as Prime Minister of Sweden on 6 October 2006 along with his cabinet . In the 2010 general election , the Moderate Party performed their best results, since the introduction of universal suffrage in 1919, with 30.1% of the votes. However, the minor parties in the Alliance performed relatively poorly, and the Reinfeldt cabinet continued in office as
520-445: 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
650-477: 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
780-601: A minority government . He is the longest-serving non– Social Democrat Prime Minister since Erik Gustaf Boström who left office in 1900. In the 2014 European elections , the Moderate Party came in third place nationally with 13.6% of the vote, returning three MEPs. In the 2014 general election , the Red-Green coalition outpolled Reinfeldt's incumbent Alliance coalition, prompting its resignation. The Social Democrat Stefan Löfven became Prime Minister on 3 October 2014. The Moderate Party performed reasonably well also in
910-518: A unicameral assembly with 350 seats. The following general election to the unicameral Riksdag in 1973 gave the Government the support of only 175 members, while the opposition could mobilize an equal force of 175 members. In a number of cases a tied vote ensued, and the final decision had to be determined by lot. To avoid any recurrence of this unstable situation, the number of seats in the Riksdag
1040-472: A vote of no confidence against any single cabinet minister ( Swedish : statsråd ), thus forcing a resignation. To succeed, a vote of no confidence must be supported by an absolute majority (175 members) or it has failed. If a vote of no confidence is cast against the Prime Minister this means the entire government is rejected. A losing government has one week to call for a general election or else
1170-542: A "green-right" party. The party campaigned for changing currency to the euro in the 2003 referendum . As of 2013, the party was still in favor of the euro, but it expressed that the issue of a membership of the Economic and Monetary Union of the European Union and the eurozone would not be relevant until the member states have met certain strict requirements set up by the party in regard to budget deficits. In
1300-687: A Prime Minister without casting any "yes" votes. After being elected the Prime Minister appoints the cabinet ministers and announces them to the Riksdag. The new Government takes office at a special council held at the Royal Palace before the Monarch , at which the Speaker of the Riksdag formally announces to the Monarch that the Riksdag has elected a new Prime Minister and that the Prime Minister has chosen his cabinet ministers. The Riksdag can cast
1430-714: A bastion of right-wing opposition, and in 1938 it was renamed the National Organization of the Right (Swedish: Högerns riksorganisation [ˈhøːɡɛɳʂ ˈrɪ̂ksɔrɡanɪsaˌɧuːn] ), a name that would stay until 1952. Outside Sweden, the party was typically called the Conservative Party . After the Second World War, the party gradually lost support and the Liberals rose to become
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#17327725560091560-537: 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 )
1690-528: 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
1820-747: 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
1950-629: 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
2080-837: A majority representation of female MPs as of 2022: the Left Party (17 of 24, 70.8%), the Green Party (12 of 18, 66.7%), the Liberals (9 of 16, 56.3%), the Center Party (13 of 24, 54.2%), and the Social Democratic Party (55 of 107, 51.4%). The party with the lowest share of female MPs is the Sweden Democrats (18 of 73, 24.7%). Members of the Riksdag are full-time legislators with a salary of SEK 71,500 (around $ 6,300) per month. According to
2210-581: A meeting in December 2019 with Jimmie Åkesson , leader of the Sweden Democrats , and said that he would cooperate with them in parliament. The anti-immigration party had previously been subject to a cordon sanitaire by all other parties, with Kristersson himself ruling out dialogue with them ahead of the 2018 elections. According to Ann-Cathrine Jungar of Södertörn University , this put Sweden in line with several other European countries in which
2340-616: A member of the party, which lasted three years. The party returned to government under leader and Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt , after the 2006 and 2010 general elections. In 2010, the party was the leading member of the Alliance , a centre-right coalition, along with the Centre Party (C), the Christian Democrats (KD) and the Liberal People's Party (L), and obtained its best result ever (30.1%), despite
2470-425: 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
2600-572: A much more liberal social outlook, which was seen as a key factor in the foundation of the Christian Democratic Gathering in 1964, a socially conservative party. Bohman proved a successful leader, and helped lead the non-socialist opposition to victory in the 1976 election. The Moderate Party joined the government under Thorbjörn Fälldin , with Gösta Bohman as Minister of Economy. The non-socialist parties managed to remain in power until 1982 in different constellations, but
2730-574: A new Swedish Model" at the Moderate Party Congress on 5 April 2019 and also that the party would be phasing out the New Moderates name. The party also presented its new logo, the old M logo which was used between 1972 and 2006 was adopted again. The change in logo was seen by analysts as a way to show that the party breaks with Reinfeldt's policies. Ulf Kristersson has also been critical of multiculturalism . Kristersson held
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#17327725560092860-435: 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
2990-616: A parliament in the modern sense until parliamentary principles were established in the political system in Sweden, in 1917. On 22 June 1866, the Riksdag decided to reconstitute itself as a bicameral legislature, consisting of Första kammaren or the First Chamber, with 155 members and Andra kammaren or the Second Chamber with 233 members. The First Chamber was indirectly elected by county and city councillors, while
3120-636: 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
3250-442: 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
3380-452: A survey investigation by the sociologist Jenny Hansson, Members of the Riksdag have an average work week of 66 hours, including side responsibilities. Hansson's investigation further reports that the average member sleeps 6.5 hours per night. The presidium consists of a speaker and three deputy speakers . They are elected for a 4-year term . The Speaker is not allowed to vote, but the three deputies are allowed to vote. The speaker of
3510-413: 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
3640-795: Is a full member of the International Democracy Union and the European People's Party . The party was founded in 1904 as the General Electoral League ( Allmänna valmansförbundet [ˈâlːmɛnːa ˈvɑ̂ːlmansfœrˌbɵndɛt] ) by a group of conservatives in the Riksdag , the Swedish parliament. The party was later known as The Right ( Högern [ˈhø̌ːɡɛɳ] ; 1938–1952) and Right Party ( Högerpartiet [ˈhø̂ːɡɛrpaˌʈiːɛt] ; 1952–1969). During this time,
3770-555: Is a mix of liberalism and conservatism , and corresponds to what is called liberal conservatism . As is common in European centre-right and conservative parties, the term liberalism in Sweden refers to the traditional meaning of classical liberalism rather than progressivism or social liberalism in countries such as the United States. The party supports free markets and personal freedom and has historically been
3900-722: Is co- official language . Swedish was long spoken in parts of Estonia , although 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
4030-481: 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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4160-538: 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
4290-568: 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
4420-638: 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 )
4550-431: Is organised on national, county and municipal level. Currently the party has around 600 local party associations and 26 county or city associations Each county or city association sends delegates to the party congress , which is held every third year. The 200 congress delegates elect a party chairman , two deputy party chairmen, and members of the party board. The party board appoints a party secretary . In February 2022,
4680-475: 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
4810-456: Is the parliament and the supreme decision-making body of the Kingdom of Sweden . Since 1971, the Riksdag has been a unicameral parliament with 349 members ( riksdagsledamöter ), elected proportionally and serving, since 1994, fixed four-year terms. The 2022 Swedish general election is the most recent general election . The constitutional mandates of the Riksdag are enumerated in
4940-464: 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
5070-455: 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
5200-407: 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
5330-631: 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
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5460-661: Is typically only used for Sweden's legislature and certain related institutions. In addition to Sweden's parliament, it is also used for the Parliament of Finland and the Estonian Riigikogu , as well as the historical German Reichstag and the Danish Rigsdagen . In Swedish use, riksdagen is usually not capitalised. Riksdag derives from the genitive of rike , referring to royal power, and dag , meaning diet or conference;
5590-465: 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
5720-569: The Instrument of Government ( Regeringsformen ), and its internal workings are specified in greater detail in the Riksdag Act ( Riksdagsordningen ). The seat of the Riksdag is at Parliament House ( Riksdagshuset ), on the island of Helgeandsholmen in central Stockholm , in Gamla stan , the old town of Stockholm. The Riksdag has its institutional roots in the feudal Riksdag of
5850-679: The East Scandinavian languages , together with Danish , separating it from 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
5980-467: 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
6110-474: The Social Democrats . In the 2006 general election , the Moderate Party enjoyed its best result since 1928 with 26.2% of the votes. The Moderate Party had formed the Alliance for Sweden , a political and electoral alliance , along with the Centre Party , the Liberal People's Party and the Christian Democrats prior to this election. After the election, the Alliance for Sweden was able to form
6240-518: 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
6370-408: The defence policy crisis in 1914 (which overturned the parliamentary Liberal government), the party sided with King Gustaf V but stopped short of accepting a right-wing government by royal appointment, instead opting for an independent-conservative "war cabinet" under Hjalmar Hammarskjöld which was eventually overturned in favour of a Liberal-Social Democratic majority coalition government and thus
6500-672: The expected migrant waves . The party supports border controls and tougher rules for immigrants, including temporary residence permits, stricter requirements for family reunification and cuts in welfare benefits. Swedish values was a recurring subject in Anna Kindberg Batra's speech at the Almedalen Week in 2016, and she said that immigrants should make efforts to learn the Swedish language and take part of Swedish societal orientation, or risk getting reduced benefits and harder to get permanent residence permits. Since 2015,
6630-529: The fourth most spoken Germanic language , and 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
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#17327725560096760-581: 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
6890-410: 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
7020-399: 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
7150-422: The 2014 election, making Reinfeldt its most successful leader with three of their four best election results since 1932. Anna Kinberg Batra was elected to succeed Reinfeldt as party leader on 10 January 2015. Ulf Kristersson succeeded Kinberg-Batra on 1 October 2017. The Moderate Party made its worst election result since 2002 in the 2018 general election . Ulf Kristersson announced that the party would "create
7280-614: The 2018 election in which neither bloc won a majority of seats, the Social Democrats and Green Party formed a government with support from the Liberals and Centre Party, breaking the center-right Alliance. In March 2019, the Christian Democrats and Moderate Party signaled a willingness to talk with the Sweden Democrats. All 349 members of the Riksdag are elected in the general elections held every four years. All Swedish citizens who turn 18 years old no later than on
7410-481: The 2024 EU elections, the Moderate Party proposed making abortion constitutionally protected in Europe. After Fredrik Reinfeldt became leader, the party slowly moved further towards the political centre and also adopted pragmatic views. The party abandoned several of its old key features such as a proportional income tax and increased military spending. Criticism of the labour laws, its former characteristic which
7540-485: 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
7670-526: The Estates , traditionally thought to have first assembled in Arboga in 1435. In 1866, following reforms of the 1809 Instrument of Government , that body was transformed into a bicameral legislature with an upper chamber ( första kammaren ) and a lower chamber ( andra kammaren ). The Swedish word riksdag , in definite form riksdagen , is a general term for " parliament " or "assembly", but it
7800-545: The German word Reichstag and the Danish Rigsdag are cognate . The Oxford English Dictionary traces English use of the term "Riksdag" in reference to the Swedish assembly back to 1855. The roots of the modern Riksdag can be found in a 1435 meeting in the city of Arboga ; however, only three of the estates were probably present: the nobility , the clergy and the burghers . This informal organization
7930-423: The Moderate Party, Liberals, Centre Party, and Christian Democrats—governed Sweden from 2006 through most of 2014 (after 2010 through a minority government ). The Red-Greens combination disbanded on 26 October 2010 but continued to be considered the main opposition until the 2014 election, following which the Social Democrats and the Green Party formed a government with support from the Left Party. In 2019, after
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#17327725560098060-442: The Moderate Party, announced that Sweden will renounce " feminist foreign policy ", implemented by the previous left-wing government. In 2024, new laws proposed by the Kristersson Cabinet to combat Sweden's criminality crisis took in effect including harder penalties against weapons offences, breach of the permit obligation for explosive goods, arms smuggling and smuggling of explosive goods. Other laws gave increased opportunities to
8190-401: The Moderate Party. In 1970, Gösta Bohman was elected leader of the Moderate Party. During his leadership the party continued its gradual movement from nationalist traditionalist conservatism towards internationalist liberal conservatism , calling for Swedish membership in the EEC since the 1960s and in practice adopting most policies affiliated with classical liberalism . It also adopted
8320-407: 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
8450-424: The Riksdag nominates a Prime Minister ( Swedish : statsminister , literally minister of state) after holding talks with leaders of the various party groups in the Riksdag. The nomination is then put to a vote. The nomination is rejected (meaning the Speaker must find a new nominee) only if an absolute majority of the members (175 members) vote "no"; otherwise, it is confirmed. This means the Riksdag can consent to
8580-404: The Second Chamber was directly elected by universal suffrage. This reform was a result of great discontent with the old Estates, which, following the changes brought by the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution , was no longer able to provide representation for large segments of the population. By an amendment to the 1809 Instrument of Government , the general election of 1970 was the first to
8710-411: The Second World War. It was a grand coalition including all major parties, only excluding the Communist Party and the pro-Nazi Socialist Party , both parties being members of the parliament at this time. In 1934, the Social Democrats formed a new government, and except for the World War II era, would stay in power until 1976. From having been a ruling party, the General Electoral League turned into
8840-460: 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,
8970-449: 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
9100-427: The breakthrough of parliamentary rule, albeit reluctantly embraced by the right. Arvid Lindman (often called "The Admiral") became influential in the party and served two terms as Prime Minister of Sweden , before and after the enactment of universal suffrage . In 1907, he proposed universal male suffrage to the parliament and in 1912 he was formally elected leader. But the party voted against universal suffrage and
9230-463: The centre-right and nationalist-right parties cooperate. In October 2022, the Tidö Agreement was formed, which led to the formation of the Kristersson Cabinet as Sweden's government. On 18 October 2022, Ulf Kristersson became the new Prime Minister of Sweden. The Moderates formed a centre-right coalition with the Christian Democrats and the Liberals, backed by the Sweden Democrats. Soon after his appointment as foreign minister, Tobias Billström of
9360-417: The coalition not being able to obtain majority. The current chairman of the party, Ulf Kristersson , was elected at a special party congress on 1 October 2017, following Anna Kinberg Batra 's sudden resignation. Kinberg Batra had replaced Reinfeldt, Prime Minister from 2006 to 2014. Under Reinfeldt's leadership, the party moved more towards the centre . Under Kristersson's leadership, the party moved back to
9490-504: 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
9620-430: The day of the election and have at one point been registered residents are eligible to vote. To stand for election, a candidate must be eligible to vote and be nominated by a political party. A minimum of 4% of the national vote is required for a party to enter the Riksdag, alternatively 12% or more within a constituency. Substitutes for each deputy are elected at the same time as each election, so by-elections are rare. In
9750-403: 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
9880-405: The deviations from proportional national distribution that may arise when allocating the fixed constituency seats. There is a constraint in the system that means that only a party that has received at least four per cent of the votes in the whole country participates in the distribution of seats. However, a party that has received at least twelve per cent of the votes in a constituency participates in
10010-508: The dialect and accent of the speaker. Standard Swedish , spoken by most Swedes , 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
10140-541: 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
10270-434: The election of 1979 again made the Moderate Party become the second most popular after the Social Democrats, a position it has held since then. Gösta Bohman was in 1981 replaced by Ulf Adelsohn . In 1986, Carl Bildt was elected leader of the party. A son-in-law of Bohman, he managed to lead the party to an election victory in 1991 . The Moderate Party led a center-right coalition between 1991 and 1994, with Bildt serving as
10400-443: The essential force for privatisation , deregulation, lowering tax rates, and a reduction of the public-sector growth rate. Other issues emphasized by the party are such as actions against violent crime and sex crime, increasing and promoting the value of working, and quality in the educational system . The party supports same-sex marriage in Sweden and Sweden's membership in the European Union . The Moderate Party considers itself as
10530-410: The event of a snap election , the newly elected members merely serve the remainder of the four-year term. The electoral system in Sweden is proportional . Of the 349 seats in the unicameral Riksdag, 310 are fixed constituency seats allocated to 29 multi-member constituencies in relation to the number of people entitled to vote in each constituency. The remaining 39 adjustment seats are used to correct
10660-545: 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
10790-418: The first conservative Prime Minister since Arvid Lindman . The cabinet of Carl Bildt did much to reform the Swedish government: they cut taxes, cut public spending , introduced voucher schools, made it possible for counties to privatize health care, liberalised markets for telecommunications and energy, and privatised former publicly owned companies (further deregulations and privatisations were carried out by
10920-488: The following Social Democratic Cabinet of Göran Persson ). The negotiations for membership with the European Union were also finalized. The party gained votes in 1994, but the governing coalition lost its majority. While Bildt stayed on as the Moderate Party leader, failing to unite with the Greens , the non-socialist parties failed to return to government after the election in 1998 as well. Bo Lundgren replaced him and led
11050-430: 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
11180-614: 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
11310-484: 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
11440-556: The largest youth league in Sweden in terms of membership), the core of the old one (in spite of some districts, such as Young Swedes- Gothenburg joining the new one) set up its own party—the National League of Sweden —which fought elections as an openly pro-Nazi party and temporarily gained parliamentary representation in the shape of three rightist MPs . The party participated in the third cabinet of Per Albin Hansson during
11570-490: 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
11700-459: The leader of the Social Democrats, Per Albin Hansson , expressed his "honest thanks over the battle lines". From the beginning of the 20th century, social democracy and the labour movement rose to replace liberalism as the major political force for radical reforms. The Moderate Party intensified its opposition to socialism during the leadership of Lindman—the importance of continuance and strengthening national business were cornerstones. But at
11830-523: 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
11960-421: 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
12090-412: The new party. His leadership was marked by a consolidation of the Swedish right, and by transforming the party into a modern, effective, political movement. Lindman was a very pragmatic politician, but without losing his principles. He was a formidable negotiator and peace broker. For this, he was widely respected, even by his fiercest political opponents and when he resigned and left the parliament in 1935,
12220-424: 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
12350-441: 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
12480-567: The opposition. By 1968, the dominance of the Social Democratic Party and 24 years of trailing the liberal People's Party among the opposition bloc had pushed the party to the edge of political relevance. Seeking to shed its conservative image, in 1969, the party changed its name to the Moderate Coalition Party (Swedish: Moderata samlingspartiet , generally just referred to as Moderaterna ) or just
12610-402: 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
12740-437: The party again voted against women's right to vote. It was only because the party was in the minority that Sweden was able to grant the right to vote for all, pushed through by the Liberals and the Social Democrats (the left), against the objections of the right. Although not one of the founders of the party and not a prominent ideologist, Lindman and his achievements as a leader are often appreciated as being of great importance to
12870-417: The party did not accept the concept of the market economy but continued the protectionist policy by generous financial aid. The government also began complete regulation of agriculture. Production associations, with the objective to administer the regulations and running monopolies on imports, were also established during the period. All this made for a corporate control of the Swedish economy unsurpassed since
13000-481: The party has taken up its demand for increased military spending, and has supported the re-introduction of mandatory military service , inactivated in Sweden under Fredrik Reinfeldt in 2010. The party is in favour of Swedish membership of NATO and supported Sweden's application for membership. The party expressed a wish that a membership is applied for together with Finland which is what happened in May 2022. The party
13130-527: The party in the disastrous general election of 2002 , much owed to his alleged neoliberal stances, for which Lundgren continued to receive praise from younger members. Former head of the Moderate Youth Fredrik Reinfeldt was elected as the new party leader in 2003. Prior to the 2006 general election , the Moderate Party adjusted its position in the political spectrum, moving towards the centre-right . To reflect these changes,
13260-481: The party saw as, the growing tendencies of state centralization . The party had significant success in the elections during the 1950s and became the largest party of the opposition in 1958. However, the next decade brought changes to the political climate of Sweden. The election of 1968 gave the Social Democrats an absolute majority in the parliament and made the Rightist Party into the smallest party of
13390-399: The party was clearly nationalist and staunchly conservative . The importance of a strong defence was underlined and other societal institutions embraced by the party were the monarchy and the state of law . The party initially held ia protectionist view towards the economy; tariffs were widely supported as well as interventionist economical measures such as agricultural subsidies . In
13520-660: The party was usually called the Conservative Party outside of Sweden. After holding minor posts in centre-right governments, the Moderates eventually became the leading opposition party to the Swedish Social Democratic Party and since then those two parties have dominated Swedish politics. After the 1991 Swedish general election , party leader Carl Bildt formed a minority government, the first administration since 1930 to be headed by
13650-543: The party's reported membership is 49,768 people, the second largest membership count after the Social Democrats . The Moderate Party has the following affiliated groups and organizations: 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
13780-466: The party's unofficial name was altered to The New Moderates (Swedish: De Nya Moderaterna [dɔm ˈnŷːa mʊdɛˈrɑ̌ːtɛɳa] ). This has included focus on proactive measures against unemployment, lower taxes combined with reforms to strengthen the Swedish welfare state . The Moderate Party has since 2006 used the slogan "the Swedish Workers' Party", a slogan formerly synonymous with
13910-483: The police to use covert means of coercion to prevent and investigate serious crime, tougher border controls and extended power to security guards. On 20 February 2024, the Kristersson cabinet sent the largest military support package to Ukraine . During Kristerssons Premiership, Sweden ended longstanding neutrality to become a NATO member on 7 March. Defunct Former The Moderate Party states that its ideology
14040-617: The popularisation of liberalism at the end of the 19th century. The government of Lindman fell in 1930 after the Social Democrats and the Freeminded People's Party had blocked a proposition for a raised customs duty on grain. The 1930s saw the party in conflict over how to relate to the rising threat of National Socialism and Fascism . Its loosely affiliated youth organisation, the National Youth League of Sweden (Swedish: Sveriges Nationella Ungdomsförbund )
14170-431: The procedure of nominating a new Prime Minister starts anew. No party has won a single majority in the Riksdag since 1968. Political parties with similar agendas consequently cooperate on several issues, forming coalition governments or other formalized alliances. Two major blocs existed in parliament until 2019, the socialist / green Red-Greens and the conservative / liberal Alliance . The latter—consisting of
14300-480: 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
14430-502: The right and opened up to the Sweden Democrats (SD) following the 2018 Swedish general election . Having formed in late 2021 an informal right-wing alliance with SD and former Alliance members, KD and L, with Kristersson as the prime ministerial candidate, the right-wing bloc obtained a narrow win in the 2022 Swedish general election . The party was founded on 17 October 1904 in a restaurant called Runan in Stockholm . The intention
14560-468: 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
14690-404: The same time, recent social issues gained significant political attention; by appeasing the working class, the party also hoped to reduce the threat of revolutionary tendencies. During the governments led by Lindman, several reforms for social progress were made, and it was his first government that initiated the public state pension . In the 1920s, the Swedish right slowly started to move towards
14820-477: The second most popular party after the Social Democrats. At the beginning of the 1950s, the party re-emerged after being renamed the Rightist Party ( Swedish : Högerpartiet ); its name outside Sweden remained Conservative Party. Under the leadership of Jarl Hjalmarson (1950–1961) the party became a prominent voice against the rising levels of taxation and a defender of private ownership from, what
14950-444: 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
15080-428: 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
15210-422: The subject in a clause, a trait that is restricted to North Germanic languages: Parliament of Sweden Confidence and supply (73) Opposition (173) The Riksdag ( Swedish: [ˈrɪ̌ksdɑː(ɡ)] , lit. transl. " diet of the realm " ; also Swedish : riksdagen [ˈrɪ̌ksdan] or Sveriges riksdag [ˈsvæ̌rjɛs ˈrɪ̌ksdɑː(ɡ)] )
15340-534: 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
15470-517: 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
15600-439: 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
15730-468: Was neoliberal , was changed towards conserving the Swedish model and a careful embracing of balance on the labour market. With the ascension of Anna Kinberg Batra as party leader, the party adjusted its position in the political spectrum and moved back towards the political right . The party abandoned its previously liberal stance on immigration, notably manifested by Fredrik Reinfeldt's summer speech in 2014 in which he appealed for "open hearts" to meet
15860-484: 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
15990-656: 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
16120-478: Was modified in 1527 by the first modern Swedish king, Gustav I Vasa , to include representatives from all the four social estates : the nobility , the clergy, the burghers (property-owning commoners in the towns such as merchants etc.), and the yeomanry ( freehold farmers). This form of Ständestaat representation lasted until 1866, when representation by estate was abolished and the modern bicameral parliament established. Effectively, however, it did not become
16250-523: 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
16380-502: Was openly pro-Nazi and set up uniformed "fighting groups" to combat political enemies on the streets. The mother party did not like this development, with Lindman clearly stating that pro-Nazi views were not to be accepted in the party, and in 1933 the National Youth League was separated from the party. While the party set up a new youth league, which came to be called Moderate Youth League or The Young Swedes (currently
16510-485: Was reduced to 349, from 1976 onwards. The Riksdag performs the normal functions of a legislature in a parliamentary democracy . It enacts laws, amends the constitution and appoints a government. In most parliamentary democracies, the head of state commissions a politician to form a government. Under the new Instrument of Government (one of the four fundamental laws of the Constitution) enacted in 1974, that task
16640-491: Was removed from the Monarch of Sweden and given to the Speaker of the Riksdag. To make changes to the Constitution under the new Instrument of Government, amendments must be approved twice, in two successive electoral periods with a regular general election held in between. There are 15 parliamentary committees in the Riksdag. As of September 2022, 163 members, or 46.7% of the 349 members are women. Five parties have
16770-537: 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
16900-476: Was to start a campaign organization in support of the group of Conservatives which had emerged in the Riksdag . During the 19th century conservatives had organised themselves in the Riksdag but there was no party to support them. The Swedish right was also threatened by the rise of the Swedish Social Democratic Party (founded in 1889) and the Liberals (1902). The party was called the General Electoral League (Swedish: Allmänna valmansförbundet ). At first,
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