1. Gender: Nouns consis t of two genders:
- utrum (non-neuter - feminine/masculine/reale) - neutrum (neuter)
- The split is 80% non-neuter/20% neuter with various exceptions. There are no complete rules for gender of nouns but the gender has to be learnt for each word.
2. Articles:
Indefinite:
non-neuter - en bil (a car)
neuter - ett hus (a house)
There are two types of definite articles:
- Preceeding def. article: den, det, de - den stora bilen (the big car); det stora huset (the big house); de stora bilarna (the big cars)
- Following def. article singular after vowel: flicka/flickan (girl/the girl); äpple/äpplet (apple/the apple)
- Singular after consonant: bil/bilen (car/the car); hus/huset (house/the house)
3. Plural: flickor/flickorna (girls/the girls); pojkar/pojkarna (boys/the boys); skor/skorna (shoes/the shoes); äpplen/äpplena (apples/the apples); hus/husen (houses/the houses); lärare/lärarna (teachers/the teachers)
4. Double consonants: M and n are doubled between vowels: ett hem/hemmet (a home/the home); en vän/vännen (a friend/the friend)
5. Foreign characters: Q/W/Z only appear in names and borrowed words from other languages.
Ü only appears in German names (generally not mentioned when saying the alphabet).
Accents only appear in names and words stemming from other languages, i.e. French - idé.
6. Capitalisation: Only names/places/institutions are spelled with capitals, otherwise lower case.
Section Two - Punctuation
Swedish rules are similar to English with some exceptions:
1. Quotation marks: Quotation marks are: "I'm so tired," he said, "I just want to go home" = "Jag är så trött", sa han. "Jag vill bara gå hem."
2. Semi-colons: A Semi-colon is used instead of a full stop if sentences are closely linked/related: Han kommer varje dag; hon bara varannan. (He comes every day; she only comes every other day.)
3. Colons: A Colon comes before quotation; explanation or counting out and numerical:
Talaren sade: Länge leve brudparet! (The speaker said: Long live the bride and groom!)
Pris: 13:75 (*price)/1 krona 1:-
37:e (37th)
map scales - 1:20 000
Karl XII:s död (Karl the 12th's death)
4. Apostrophes: Names ending -s, -z and -x have no genitive ending. For clarification apostrophe can be used: Lars bil/Lars' bil; Dickens roman/Dickens' roman
5. Bullet points: Bullet points all end in commas, bar the last one, which has a full stop.
Section Three - Measurements
1. Measurements:
To measure distance, either km or Swedish miles (mil) are used (a Swedish mile = 10 km)
Decimals written with a comma, i.e. 0,3
Space between numbers from one thousand, i.e. 1 000
Dates: 990517 or 17.05.(19)99 (official/commercially); day-to-day 17/5-99.
Section Four - Hyphenation
To split joined words like bil-skola, the rule that a maximum of two consonants can be next to each other is lifted, i.e. dammoln would become damm-moln
In non-linked words, the consonant goes to the second part: bi-lar, rum -met; the exception is where the sj-sound occurs. This sound cannot be split: marschera, männi-ska, but if spelt with ssj: rys-sja, mis-sion
ck and x go with the first part: myck-et, ex-ercis
Exceptions exist for the above for clarification and divisions are permitted according to syllable: bi-lar/bil-ar; fö-delse/föd-else
Section Five - Miscellaneous Peculiarities
"Dear Sir/Madam" has no equivalent address; only where there is the name of the person addressed. Generally the person's first name will be used as opposed to the formal Mr/Mrs/Ms (Herr/Fru) and start 'Käre (man)/Kära (woman)...'
Section Six - Geographic Distribution
Swedish is the most widely spoken of the Scandinavian languages which constitute a branch of the Germanic languages, in turn a part of the Indo- European family. There are approximately 9 million speakers of Swedish. In addition to the 8 million people of Sweden, about 300,000 speakers live on the south western and southern coasts of Finland.
Swedish is closely related to Norwegian and Danish. Historically it is closer to Danish, but the years of Swedish hegemony over Norway (1814-1905) brought the two languages closer together. A Swedish person today has more difficulty understanding Danish than Norwegian. During the Middle Ages Swedish borrowed many words from German, while the 18th century witnessed a large infusion of words from the French. In the 19th and 20th centuries English has become by far the largest source of foreign borrowings.
Swedish is spoken/used in the following countries:
Finland, Sweden.
Language Family
Family: Indo-European
Subgroup: Germanic
Branch: Northern (Scandinavian)
Source: http://www.worldlanguage.com/Languages/Swedish - Copyright © Kenneth Katzner, The Languages of the World, Published by Routledge.
Section Seven - Character Set
[ ] = Alt key codes
