Old Norse In the 8th century, the common Germanic language of Scandinavia,
Proto-Norse, evolved into Old Norse. This language underwent more changes that did not spread to all of Scandinavia, which resulted in the appearance of two similar dialects:
Old West Norse (Norway, the Faroe Islands and Iceland) and
Old East Norse (Denmark and Sweden). The dialects of Old East Norse spoken in Sweden are called
Runic Swedish, while the dialects of Denmark are referred to as
Runic Danish. The dialects are described as "runic" because the main body of text appears in the
runic alphabet. Unlike Proto-Norse, which was written with the
Elder Futhark alphabet, Old Norse was written with the
Younger Futhark alphabet, which had only 16 letters. Because the number of runes was limited, some runes were used for a range of
phonemes, such as the rune for the vowel
u, which was also used for the vowels
o,
ø and
y, and the rune for
i, also used for
e. From 1200 onwards, the dialects in Denmark began to diverge from those of Sweden. The innovations spread unevenly from Denmark, creating a series of minor dialectal boundaries, or
isoglosses, ranging from
Zealand in the south to
Norrland,
Österbotten and northwestern
Finland in the north.
Old Swedish of
Västergötland, from . It is one of the earliest texts in Swedish written in the
Latin script. Old Swedish (Swedish: ) is the term used for the
medieval Swedish language. The start date is usually set to 1225 since this is the year that ("the Västgöta Law") is believed to have been compiled for the first time. It is among the most important documents of the period written in
Latin script and the oldest Swedish
law codes. Old Swedish is divided into (1225–1375) and (1375–1526), "older" and "younger" Old Swedish. Important outside influences during this time came with the firm establishment of the
Christian church and various
monastic orders, introducing many
Greek and
Latin loanwords. With the rise of
Hanseatic power in the late 13th and early 14th century,
Middle Low German became very influential. The Hanseatic league provided Swedish commerce and administration with a large number of
Low German-speaking immigrants. Many became quite influential members of Swedish medieval society, and brought terms from their native languages into the vocabulary. Besides a great number of loanwords for such areas as warfare, trade and administration, general grammatical suffixes and even conjunctions were imported. The League also brought a certain measure of influence from Danish (at the time Swedish and Danish were much more similar than today). Early Old Swedish was markedly different from the modern language in that it had a more complex
case structure and also retained the original Germanic three-
gender system.
Nouns,
adjectives,
pronouns and certain
numerals were inflected in four cases; besides the extant
nominative, there were also the
genitive (later
possessive),
dative and
accusative. The gender system resembled that of modern
German, having masculine, feminine and neuter genders. The masculine and feminine genders were later merged into a
common gender with the
definite suffix and the
definite article , in contrast with the neuter gender equivalents and . The verb system was also more complex: it included
subjunctive and
imperative moods and verbs were conjugated according to
person as well as
number. By the 16th century, the case and gender systems of the colloquial spoken language and the profane literature had been largely reduced to the two cases and two genders of modern Swedish. A transitional change of the Latin script in the Nordic countries was to spell the letter combination "ae" as æ – and sometimes as a' – though it varied between persons and regions. The combination "ao" was similarly rendered ao, and "oe" became oe. These three were later to evolve into the separate letters
ä,
å and
ö. The first time the new letters were used in print was in
Aff dyäffwlsens frästilse ("By the Devil's temptation") published by
Johan Gerson in 1495.
Modern Swedish 's Bible from 1541, using
Fraktur. The title translated to English reads: "The Bible / That is / The Holy Scripture / in Swedish. Printed in
Uppsala. 1541". Modern Swedish (Swedish:
nysvenska) begins with the advent of the
printing press and the European
Reformation. After assuming power, the new monarch
Gustav Vasa ordered a Swedish translation of the
Bible. The
New Testament was published in 1526, followed by a full
Bible translation in 1541, usually referred to as the
Gustav Vasa Bible, a translation deemed so successful and influential that, with revisions incorporated in successive editions, it remained the most common Bible translation until 1917. The main translators were
Laurentius Andreæ and the brothers
Laurentius and
Olaus Petri. The Vasa Bible is often considered to be a reasonable compromise between old and new; while not adhering to the colloquial spoken language of its day, it was not overly conservative in its use of archaic forms. It was a major step towards a more consistent
Swedish orthography. It established the use of the vowels "å", "ä", and "ö", and the spelling "ck" in place of "kk", distinguishing it clearly from the Danish Bible, perhaps intentionally, given the ongoing rivalry between the countries. All three translators came from central Sweden, which is generally seen as adding specific Central Swedish features to the new Bible. Though it might seem as if the Bible translation set a very powerful precedent for orthographic standards, spelling actually became more inconsistent during the remainder of the century. It was not until the 17th century that spelling began to be discussed, around the time when the first grammars were written.
Capitalization during this time was not standardized. It depended on the authors and their background. Those influenced by
German capitalized all nouns, while others capitalized more sparsely. It is also not always apparent which letters are capitalized owing to the Gothic or
blackletter typeface that was used to print the Bible. This typeface was in use until the mid-18th century, when it was gradually replaced with a Latin typeface (often
Antiqua). Some important changes in sound during the Modern Swedish period were the gradual assimilation of several different consonant clusters into the
fricative and later into . There was also the gradual softening of and into and the
fricative before
front vowels. The
velar fricative was also transformed into the corresponding
plosive . , one of the most influential writers in modern Swedish literature
Contemporary Swedish The period that includes Swedish as it is spoken today is termed (lit., "Now-Swedish") in linguistics, and started in the last decades of the 19th century. It saw a democratization of the language with a less formal written form that approached the spoken one. The growth of a state school system also led to the evolution of so-called (literally, "Book Swedish"), especially among the working classes, where spelling to some extent influenced pronunciation, particularly in official contexts. With the industrialization and urbanization of Sweden well under way by the last decades of the 19th century, a new breed of authors made their mark on
Swedish literature. Many scholars, politicians and other public figures had a great influence on the emerging national language, among them prolific authors like the poet
Gustaf Fröding, Nobel laureate
Selma Lagerlöf and radical writer and playwright
August Strindberg. In Finland,
Finland-Swedish literature emerged as a separate branch. It was during the 20th century that a common, standardized national language became available to all Swedes. The orthography finally stabilized and became almost completely uniform, with some minor deviations, by the time of the spelling reform of 1906. With the exception of plural forms of verbs and a slightly different syntax, particularly in the written language, the language was the same as the Swedish of today. The plural verb forms appeared decreasingly in formal writing into the 1950s, when their use was removed from all official recommendations. A very significant change in Swedish occurred in the late 1960s with the so-called . Previously the proper way to address people of the same or higher social status had been by title and surname. The use of ("Mr" or "Sir"), ("Mrs" or "Ma'am") or ("Miss") was considered the only acceptable way to begin conversation with strangers of unknown occupation, academic title or military rank. The fact that the listener should preferably be referred to in the third person tended to further complicate spoken communication between members of society. In the early 20th century an unsuccessful attempt was made to replace the insistence on titles with —the standard
second person plural pronoun)—analogous to the
French (see
T-V distinction). wound up being used as a slightly less familiar form of , the second person singular pronoun, used to address people of lower social status. With the liberalization and radicalization of Swedish society in the 1950s and 1960s, these class distinctions became less important and became the standard, even in formal and official contexts. Though the reform was not an act of any centralized political decree but rather the result of sweeping change in social attitudes, it was completed in just a few years, from the late 1960s to early 1970s. The use of as a polite form of address is sometimes encountered today in both the written and spoken language, particularly among older speakers. ==Geographic distribution==