Swedish language

Swedish Language

The Swedish language (Svenska [`svɛnska]) is a Germanic language, spoken in Sweden and by ethnic Swedes in Finland, where it is also an official language. It is related to Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic, and Faeroese. It is remarkable that the structure of Modern Swedish is much different from the one in the ancient times. The systems of declension and conjugation have gone through a tough process of simplification, which nowadays makes Swedish easy to learn in comparison with Icelandic or German, for example. Having borrowed a relatively large amount of words from other European languages, Swedish has, however, saved most old lexemes, which makes it very similar to other Scandinavian languages.

History

The history of Swedish names 5 main periods of the language’s life: Runic Swedish (800-1225), Classic Old Swedish (1225-1375), Old Swedish (1375-1526), New Swedish (1526-1732), Modern Swedish (since 1732). The modern Swedish language is normalized by the Stockholm dialect, which now leads the norm. The dominating role of the Stockholm dialect was defined in the 18th century. Most other regional variants are now considered as erroneous. It would be worth saying that the modern norm introduced by Stockholm was also exposed to great influence of Danish, which resulted in admitting even those simplifications that are not typical for spoken Swedish. For example, the difference between the Masculine and the Feminine genders is still present in most spoken forms of Swedish, but it was radically eliminated from the literary norm. The result of inconstant evolution of the Swedish language now has its results in the great variety of dialects which are sometimes hard to understand by other dialects’ speakers.