Most Swedes born after World War II do speak or understand English - many of them very well, actually - and you will probably be able to have a memorable and enjoyable stay in Sweden without any deeper knowledge of Swedish. But you will find that just a few words of Swedish will work as a wonderful door-key to the Swedes, who have a reputation of being rather reserved to strangers. Addressing someone in his or her native language is a matter of respect, a way of showing that you play by their rules, so to speak.

To learn a language means to learn to understand the culture where it is spoken and the people who speak it. In a way, to learn a language opens up a new world.

Swedes, Norwegians, and Danes usually do not have any difficulties in communicating with each other. Even though Danish is slightly more closely related to Swedish than Norwegian, its "hot-potato-in-the-mouth" pronunciation is the main obstacle when Danes and Swedes speak with each other, whereas Norwegian in that respect is very similar to Swedish.

All in all, the differences between the languages are not very big - most Swedes would probably even find it difficult to tell whether a text was written in Norwegian or Danish. Since Swedish also is the second official language of Finland, a basic knowledge of Swedish will thus enable you to understand and make yourself understood in several countries.

Learning Swedish is facilitated by the fact that over the centuries it has borrowed thousands of words from Low German, French, and English; some very common words in English have in turn been borrowed from the Vikings. This means that many words will be familiar to you from the very beginning.

The purpose of this introduction to Swedish is to enable you to start reading and practising Swedish on your own, with the help of a good dictionary. The course presents a brief outline of Swedish grammar, with the emphasis on the spoken, everyday language, and includes 186 speech samples (Wave files in PCM format). The words selected are, with few exceptions, among the most frequent in the Swedish language. No previous knowledge of grammar is required.

It is advisable to browse through the rules for pronunciation in Chapter 9 before each chapter. Otherwise you might end up sounding disquietingly like the Swedish Chef in the Muppet Show.

The compendium consists of approximately 40 pages and contains all the chapters above, with the exception of Chapter 8.

The Lexin interactive Swedish-English/English-Swedish dictionary, by courtesy of Skolverket (Swedish National Agency for Education).

Write a word in Swedish and press the button Search. To change to the English-Swedish dictionary, select option "Look up an English word". You may use the characters }, {, and |, instead of the Swedish letters �, �, �.

About the author

Copyright Urban Sikeborg,
Stockholm 1997-1998