Swedish speaking countries

Swedish is primarily spoken in Sweden and parts of Finland, where it is one of the two official languages alongside Finnish. Outside of Northern Europe, there are also Swedish emigrant communities with smaller populations in the USA, Canada and Australia.

Historical development of the language

Swedish belongs to the North Germanic language family, which is part of the larger Indo-European language family. It developed from Old Norse, the common language of the Scandinavian peoples, which was spoken around 200 AD. With the Christianization of Scandinavia from the 9th century onwards, the Nordic languages, including Swedish, began to differentiate.

The Old Swedish spoken from the 13th to the 16th century marks the beginning of Swedish written culture, influenced by the introduction of Christianity and the associated Latin script. The first legal texts and Bible translations were written during this period. The Reformation in the 16th century and the appointment of Swedish as the official language in 1526 promoted the development of New Swedish, which emerged from the 17th century onwards. This phase was characterized by linguistic standardization in the course of the establishment of a centralized state and Sweden's expansion as a great power.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, Swedish continued to develop under the influence of the Enlightenment and later Romanticism, which enriched the language with neologisms and an adaptation to changing social conditions.