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Learn Swedish

Swedish - svenska - is a North Germanic language descended from Old Norse. It is mostly spoken in Sweden but is also an official language of Finland, which has a minority Swedish-speaking population of about 300,000 people. Swedish is close enough to Norwegian and Danish for speakers to be able to understand each other to a high degree. The vocabulary is mostly Germanic, with influences from French, Latin and Greek. As with its sister languages, Swedish adds its definite article - the - onto the end of its nouns, so ‘tåg’ is ‘train’ but ‘tåget’ is ‘the train’.

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North Germanic

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Fun facts about Swedish

Your maternal grandfather is your morfar, which means 'mother's father', while your paternal grandfather is your farfar, 'father's father'.

Swedish only became the official language of Sweden in 2009.

If someone walks like a cat around hot porridge - gå som katten kring het gröt - they avoid the issue.

Swedish uses the letter 'ä' where Danish and Norwegian use 'æ'.

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