Swedish is spoken in Sweden and parts of Finland with a total number of native speakers estimated at around 9 million. In Finland it holds equal legal status with Finnish. It is part of the North Germanic language group and very close to Danish and Norwegian – the three are mutually intelligible to a large degree.
The closest most of us come to speaking Swedish is clearly our long pilgrimage of sacrifice to Ikea. Apparently there is actually a loose naming system for Ikea’s products – the founder of Ikea was dyslexic and wanted to name things in a way that was easy to remember – hence many products are named after places in Nordic countries. Even the name of the company is loosely based on locations: Ingvar Kamprad (the founders name) Elmtaryd (the farm where he grew up), Agunnaryd (the town where he grew up).
Interestingly the creator of the hit game “Minecraft” is Swedish and the name of the company behind it (Mojang) means “gadget” in Swedish.
Language Length
About 10% shorter than English.
Notable Grammar and Differences
Capitalisation: Swedish does not capitalise days, months, languages or nationalities
Quotation marks: Normally straight quotes (” “)
Numbers: The comma is used where English would use the decimal point and vice versa, e.g. 5.5 (English) = 5,5 (Swedish).. but 5,000 (English) is 5.000 (Swedish).
