The name
Swenglish is a
portmanteau term of the names of the two languages and is first recorded from 1938, making it one of the oldest names for a hybrid form of English. Other colloquial
portmanteau words for Swenglish include (chronologically):
Swinglish (from 1957),
Swedlish (1995) and
Sweglish (1996).
Pronunciation Swedish is characterised by a strong
word stress and
phrase prosody that differs from that of English. Accent 1 is a low-high-low contour and accent 2 is a high-low-high-low contour, with the second peak in the second syllable. Swedish lacks many common English
phonemes. These are sometimes replaced by similar-sounding Swedish phonemes, or other English phonemes that are easier to pronounce. For example, when using the nearest Swedish vowels for the English words
beer and
bear, a native Swedish speaker might pronounce both as . In general, Swenglish will sound very articulated, due to Swedish vowels being more strongly articulated and not as often reduced to
schwas. Swedish also lacks some consonant phonemes common in English, such as voiceless dental fricative , which is typically realized as labiodental or a voiceless dental stop , leading to
three being pronounced as "free" or "
tree". Other missing consonants include voiced dental fricative , which is typically realized as a voiced dental stop ), voiced alveolar fricative , which is typically realized voicelessly and voiced palato-alveolar fricative , which is realized voicelessly , somewhat more back , or as a voiced palatal approximant or fricative . There are examples of Swenglish being used in Sweden as a means of
brand management. The Swedish telecommunications company
Tele2 has long aired commercials with a black sheep called
Frank. The pun of the commercials, extolling inexpensive service, is based on the English word
cheap, which usually is pronounced as "sheep" by Swedes—hence
Frank.
Vocabulary and grammar As with most non-native speech, native Swedish speakers may pick the wrong word when speaking English based on what sounds right in their own language. While Swedish and English share many words, both from their Germanic origins, and from later French and Latin influence, there are several Swedish-English
false friends, such as
nacke (similar to English "neck") meaning 'nape, back of the neck', and
eventuellt (similar to "eventually") meaning 'possibly'. Some
loanwords have a more specific meaning in Swedish than the original English, such as
keyboard meaning only '
electronic keyboard,
synthesizer'. Compare the list of
Swedish-English false friends on Swedish Wikipedia. Many Swedish compounds and expressions translate directly into English, but many others do not, even if the translations can be understood. For instance, the Swedish
ta med means 'bring', but is often translated as the literal "take with".
Controversies In June 2010,
BP's Swedish chairman
Carl-Henric Svanberg famously caused a PR uproar after the
Deepwater Horizon oil spill by referring to the
common people as "the small people". This was influenced by the Swedish expression
småfolket. In December 2019, climate activist
Greta Thunberg was criticised by some right-wing commentators after saying said politicians should be put "against the wall", a term which in English can be interpreted as
execution by firing squad. She later apologised, saying "...that's Swenglish: 'att ställa någon mot väggen' (to put someone against the wall) means to hold someone accountable", and that she is against violence.
Svengelska The
Swedish language term
svengelska refers not to Swenglish, but to spoken or written Swedish filled with an inordinate amount of English syntax and words, with the latter sometimes respelled according to the norms of Swedish phonetics, or
calqued into Swedish. English has become the
lingua franca in many Swedish workplaces. Swedish speakers often modify English business-specific terms with Swedish endings, such as
peaken, ('the peak' [of the season]),
spotrater 'spot rates', and
cancellera 'cancel'. ==See also==