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About the language

Vill du tala svenska?

Swedish is a Scandinavian language like Danish and Norwegian, and is also very similar to English and German. The Swedish alphabet is like the English one, but it has three extra letters – å, ä, and ö.

Swedes love to use English words. Here are some English words and their Swedish equivalent. Have a go at matching them – it shouldn’t be too hard!

English: Email, job, exercise, booking, website
Swedish: Jobb, websajt, mejl, motion, bokning

But it’s not always as easy as it looks! Now for something a little more difficult!

Matching Exercise

Want to speak a bit of Swedish?

Here are a few words to get you started.

We’ve divided some of them into two groups: things you’d say to friends, and slightly more formal expressions.

English Swedish
  Informal Formal
Hi! click to hear the pronunciation Tjena! click to hear the pronunciation Hej!
How are you? click to hear the pronunciation Hur är läget? click to hear the pronunciation Hur mår du?
I’m fine, thanks click to hear the pronunciation Bra, tack!
Thank you click to hear the pronunciation Tackar! click to hear the pronunciation Tack så mycket
What’s your name? click to hear the pronunciation Vad heter du?
My name is … click to hear the pronunciation Jag heter …
Bye! click to hear the pronunciation Vi ses! click to hear the pronunciation Hej då!

Here’s a list of numbers one to ten, as well. You can see how similar they are to English:

Read them while you listen. click to hear the pronunciation

Swedish English
Ett One
Två  Two
Tre   Three
Fyra Four
Fem Five
Sex Six
Sju Seven
Åtta Eight
Nio Nine
Tio Ten

The days, too, are pretty much the same. Read them while you listen. click to hear the pronunciation

Swedish English
Måndag Monday
Tisdag Tuesday
Onsdag Wednesday
Torsdag Thursday
Fredag Friday
Lördag Saturday
Söndag Sunday

Lördag, the Swedish word for Saturday, means ‘washing day’ in old Swedish, as Saturday was the day which people used to wash themselves after the working week and before church on Sunday!

Swedish is spoken not only in Sweden

You might not know this, but Swedish is actually the second official language of Finland. In fact…

  • 5.6% of Finland’s population speak Swedish as their mother tongue
  • Most Swedish speakers live near the West coast or the capital of Finland, Helsinki (Helsingfors in Swedish)
  • In Helsinki and some other parts of Finland all the traffic signs are in both Finnish and Swedish
  • Every Finn learns Swedish at school
  • The island of Åland, a Finnish province, is situated in the Baltic between Finland and Sweden – people only speak Swedish there
  • A student of Swedish can also choose to go and spend time studying in Finland, at Åbo Akademi, Finland’s Swedish university

Swedish also opens doors to the whole of Scandinavia. Learning Swedish gives you easy access to learning both Danish and Norwegian, which are very close to Swedish. In terms of working life, many Nordic conferences use Swedish as the common language.

Famous Swedish speaking Finns include Tove Jansson (the creator of the Moomin characters), Edith Södergran (poet) and Bo Carpelan (writer).

Source: finland.fi/Public, 30/11/08.