Sweden is home to many global brands and businesses like Spotify, IKEA, Skanska, Scania AB, Assa Abloy, H&M, Ericsson, and many online casino games. However, it is relatively unknown in global affairs. All of these brands are from the Scandinavian country. Due to the relatively low profile of Sweden, there tends to be a lot of questions about the North European country. Is Sweden a good country to stay in? Is Sweden rich? Is English spoken in Sweden? What is the population of Sweden? How many people speak Swedish? This last question seems very common among curious travelers and tourists.
What is the history of the Swedish language?
Swedish is a core part of the many Indo-European dialects that originated from old Norse. Old Norse was prominently spoken by Germanic inhabitants at the time of the popular Viking Era. It was Viking merchants that had made the language spread throughout Europe. They are even credited to have taken the language as far as Russia where it is still being spoken today.
The old Norse gave birth to the collection of all the North Germanic languages in about the 14th or 15th century. Before this time, the Norwegians, Danes, Icelanders, and Swedes spoke one language. Even until this day, Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish all share similar cadences and elements depending on what dialect you are speaking.
However, while there seem to be a lot of variances in the North Germanic languages that gave birth to Swedish, there was a major move by the Swedish government to form a distinctive Swedish dialect. This was the Swedish spelling language reform that was organized by the government of the country in 1906. This reform made an intelligible effort to standardize the language that is spoken by the people of the country.
How many Swedish people speak the language?
In Sweden, there are almost 9.2 million people who speak the official language of Swedish. This is because it is their mother tongue. Also, almost everybody in the country speaks Swedish as the official language.
In Sweden, 9.9 million people are living the country based on a 2016 report. Also, other minority languages are spoken in Sweden. These are Yiddish, Romani Chib, Finnish, Meankielli, and Sami.
How many non-Swedish citizens speak Swedish?
Swedish is among the North Germanic languages spoken all around Europe. And of all the different variants of the North Germanic languages currently spoken, Swedish has more speakers than any other variants. Swedish is an official language in Finland where nearly 300,000 people speak the language. This is about 5.4% of the total population in Finland. Among the Swedish speakers in Finland, about 25,000 of these people are in the Aland Islands. The Aland Islands is an autonomous province of Finland that also speaks Swedish as an official language.
Also, If you are looking for another non-Swedish settlement that speaks the language, you can find them in the northwestern part of Estonia. Currently, while there seems to be no official estimate, it was believed that there were 8,000 Swedish speakers in Estonia. However, these Estonian Swedish speakers were all chased back to Sweden during the second world war. However, to this day, there are presently about 1,000 of these Swedish-speaking people in Estonia.
Then across the pond in North America, you can find roughly 80,000 people who speak Swedish. They can be found in the USA while about 17,000 Swedish speakers reside in Canada.
What countries speak Sweden?
There are roughly about 10.2 million speakers of Swedish all over the world. Swedish is the official language in its home country of Sweden. It is also spoken widely in Finland where it is one of the two official national languages that have been adopted by the country.
Estonia used to be a part of the empire of Sweden but this all changed with the second world war. This reduced the number of Swedish speakers in Latvia and Estonia. However, a lot of people who spoke Sweden in that area had been chased away back to Sweden because of both Nazi and Soviet interests in the area. But in 2007, the minority Swedes in Estonia had enacted their cultural governance.
Towards eastern Europe, you can also find a small amount of minority Swedish speakers in Ukraine. These minority speakers of the language can be traced back to the settlers that were forcefully ejected out of Estonia in about the 18th century. Almost at the time of the resettlement, Ukraine had been claimed by the Russian coalition.
Also, there are significant clusters of Swedish speakers who are fully settled in other Scandinavian countries like Norway and Denmark. There are Swedish speakers in the United Kingdom, Spain, Australia, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, France, and Germany.
English-speaking people and Swedish
English is a language that is spoken widely in Sweden. This is because both English and Swedish languages share common elements. Also, Swedish as a language is very easy for English speakers to understand. It is currently among the easiest languages that any native English speaker can learn. Swedish is the gateway to knowing how to speak and understand other languages spoken in Scandinavia.
