Swedish

About Swedish

Swedish is the official language of Sweden and one of the two official languages of Finland, with about 9 million native speakers. Swedish, Norwegian and Danish are close enough that their speakers can often understand each other, especially in writing.

Swedes address almost everyone as du, including strangers and older people. The formal ni is rarely used today and can even sound odd. The letters å, ä and ö are separate letters at the end of the alphabet. Swedish has a sing-song melody, and two words spelled the same way can differ only in pitch.

FamilyIndo-European, North Germanic
Native speakersabout 9.2 million (2012)
Second-language speakersabout 3.1 million (2012)
Official inSweden, Finland
ScriptLatin alphabet, 29 letters
Codessv (ISO 639-1), swe (ISO 639-3)

Speaker numbers: Ethnologue (2012), via Wikidata. Retrieved 26 September 2026.

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