Free Swedish Course

Description

With this free 16-lesson video course you will learn to speak Swedish

Swedish (Swedish: About this sound svenska (?· i)) is a Germanic language of northern Europe, spoken by between 9 and 14 million people. Most of its speakers live in Sweden, Finland and the Åland Islands (self-governing), where it is the official language. Swedish is a Nordic language, as are Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic, and Faroese. The Nordic languages are a subgroup of the Germanic languages, which are part of the language family known as Indo-European languages. Swedish, like all other Nordic languages, is descended from Old Norse, spoken in Scandinavia during the Viking Age. Swedish is largely understandable to a Norwegian and a Dane.

Standard Swedish (rikssvenska) is the national language that evolved from the dialects of central Sweden during the 19th century and was fully established in the early 20th century. Although there are still several rural dialects today, the spoken and written language is uniform and standard with more than 99% of the adult population literate. Some of the genuine dialects differ considerably from standard Swedish in grammar and vocabulary and are not always mutually understandable with Swedish (e.g. the language of North Dalarna). These dialects are confined to rural areas with little social mobility. While not in danger of disappearing, the populations that speak these dialects are shrinking despite efforts by regional authorities to preserve their use.

Swedish is distinguished by its prosody, which differs considerably between varieties. This includes both accent and tone qualities. The existence of two linguistic tones is a phenomenon shared with the standard Norwegian language, but not with Danish. The language has nine vowel sounds that are distinguished by their length and qualities, forming 17 vowel phonemes. Swedish is also notable for the existence of a voiceless velar velar dorsopalatal phoneme, a sound found in many dialects, including the most prestigious forms of the standard language. Although similar to other sounds with different lip qualities, so far it has not been located in other languages; It partially resembles a simultaneous pronunciation of an English sh-and a Spanish J-. In the written language, this sound is represented by combinations such as sk-, skj, stj-, sj- and others.