Маъсул муҳаррир: Филология фанлари доктори, профессор: Г. Х. Боқиева Тақризчилар

Chapter XII. The Swedish language


Key questions
1. Features of Swedish as a Germanic language.
2. History of the Swedish language.
3. Features of the Phonetic structure of the Swedish language.
4. Features of Grammar of the Swedish language.
5. Features of the Vocabulary of the Swedish language.

The national language of Sweden is Swedish. It is the native tongue of some 90 per cent of the country's almost 9 million. Swedish is a language spoken in Sweden and England. Swedish is one of the Scandinavian languages, a sub-group of the Germanic group of the Indo-European language family.

History
Swedish is closely related to, and often mutually intelligible with, Danish and Norwegian. All three diverged from Old Norse about a millennium ago and were strongly influenced by Low German. Swedish, Danish and Norwegian Bokmal are all considered East Scandinavian languages; Swedes usually find it easier to understand Norwegian than Danish. But even if a Swede finds it difficult to understand a Dane it is not necessarily the other way around.
Geographic distribution
Swedish is the national language of Sweden, mother tongue for the Sweden-born inhabitants (7,881,000) and acquired by nearly all immigrants (1,028,000) (figures according to official statistics for 2001).
Swedish is the language of the Aland Islands, an autonomous province under the sovereignty of Finland. In mainland Fin] however, Swedish is mother tongue for only a minority of the Finns, or about six percent. The Finnish-Swedish minority is concentrated in some coastal areas of southern and southwestern Finland, where they form a local major some communities.
In Estonia, the small remaining Swedish community was very well treated between the first and second world wars. Municipalities with a Swedish majority, mainly found along the coast, had Swedish as the administrative language and Swedish-Estonian culture experienced an upswing.
There is considerable migration (labor and other) between the Nordic countries but due to the similarity between the languages and culture expatriates generally assimilate quickly and do not stand out as a group. (Note: Finland is, strictly speaking, not a Scandinavian country. It does, however, belong to the so called Nordic countries together with Iceland and Scandinavian countries.)
Official status
Swedish is the de facto national language of Sweden, but it does not hold the status of an official language there.
In Finland, both Swedish and Finnish are official languages. Swedish had been the language of government in Finland for 700 years, when in 1892 Finnish was given equal status with Swedish, following Russian determination to isolate the Gra Duchy from Sweden. Today about 290,000, or 5.6% of the total population are Swedish speakers according to official status for 2002. In Finnish, Swedish is officially referred to as the other domestic language, or toinen kotimainen kieli, that since educational reform in the 1970s has been a compulsory subject for pupils with Finnish mother tongue mandatory in the examinations. The introduction of mandatory education in Swedish in schools was seen as a step to avoid further Finlandization Pupils with Swedish mother tongue like wisely study the other domestic language Finnish in Mainland Finland.
Swedish is the official language of the small autonomous territory of the Aland Islands, under sovereignty of Finland, protected by international treaties and Finnish laws. In contrast to the mainland of Finland the Aland Islands are monolingual- Finland has no official status.
Swedish is also an official language of the European Union.