Differences between Swedish and English

Swedish (Svenska,) is a kind of North Germanic language (also known as Scandinavian), which is mainly used in Sweden and Finland (especially the island of Oran), with more than 9 million users. It is a common language with two other Scandinavian languages-Danish and Norwegian. Like other North Germanic languages, Swedish comes from Cournot. Cournot was a common language during the Viking period.

The adult literacy rate in Sweden is as high as 99%. Standard Swedish is the official language of Sweden, which originated from the central Swedish dialect in the19th century and was fixed in the early 20th century. The spoken and written Swedish is unified and standardized. Nowadays, other language varieties evolved from ancient dialects in some remote areas still exist, and some dialects are very different from standard Swedish in grammar and vocabulary, so they can no longer be called the same language. These dialects are only used in very remote areas, and the number of people who use them is very small, and their social mobility is very low. Although there is no indication that these languages will become extinct language, many scholars have carefully studied these dialects, and the local government has also encouraged people to use these dialects. Since the last century, the number of people using these dialects has gradually decreased.

The standard word order in Swedish is the subject-predicate-object structure, and sometimes the word order is changed to emphasize certain words. The word formation of Swedish is similar to that of English, with relatively few changes in word form; There are two parts of speech and no grammatical case (previous studies thought that there were two cases, the nominative case and the possessive case); There is a difference between singular and plural. Adjectives vary according to the part of speech, quantity and limited category. The limited category of nouns is represented by different suffixes, and there are definite articles and indefinite articles in front of them. Prosodic features are embodied in stress and tone. Swedish has many vowels. Swedish is also famous for its clear fricative sounds of hard palate and soft palate, which is a complex consonant phoneme.

Classification of language families

Swedish belongs to the North Germanic branch of the Germanic family of Indo-European languages, and belongs to the Eastern Scandinavian language with Danish. Scandinavian, by contrast, consists of Faroese, Icelandic and Norwegian. Recent research and analysis suggest that the branches of North Germanic language should be divided into Scandinavian and Scandinavian continental languages, and Norwegian should be divided into Danish and Swedish. The main reason is that Norwegian has been deeply influenced by Eastern Scandinavian (especially Danish) for nearly 65,438+0,000 years, but the difference between Norwegian and Faroe and Icelandic is getting bigger and bigger.

According to the basic standards of many common languages, Scandinavian Continental is widely regarded as several dialects in Scandinavia, and there is little difference between them. However, due to the centuries-long conflict between Denmark and Sweden, including a series of wars in 16 and 17 centuries, and the emergence of nationalism in the end of 19 and the beginning of the 20th century, these languages have developed independently in spelling, dictionaries, grammar and management institutions. From the linguistic point of view, Danish, Norwegian and Swedish are more like Scandinavian dialect continuum, and some of them, such as the border between Norway and Sweden (especially the western provinces of West Jotland, Wemland, Dalana and Yemtland), use an intermediate language between the two countries' standard languages.

history

In the 9th century, Old Norwegian began to be divided into Old Norwegian (Norway and Iceland) and Old Norwegian (Sweden and Denmark). /kloc-in the 0/2nd century, dialects of Danish and Swedish began to divide, and in the 0/3rd century, ancient Danish and Swedish began to form. In the Middle Ages, all these languages were influenced by Middle Low German. Although the development of language has never been strictly restricted, the classification method described in this paper has been widely accepted and used by Swedish linguists.

The Scandinavian language of Guscan.

Main project: Cournot language

In the 8th century, the Germanic language family in Scandinavia experienced some changes and evolved into the Cournot language family. Some new changes have taken place in this language, but it has not spread all over Scandinavia, thus forming two similar languages, Old Norwegian (Norway and Iceland) and Old Scandinavian (Sweden and Denmark).

The sub-dialect of Old East Norwegian is called Old Norwegian Swedish in Sweden and Old Norwegian Danish in Denmark. /kloc-Before the 0/2nd century, the dialects of the two countries were basically the same, except for an ancient Nordic Danish vowel (see below). The main reason why these dialects are called ancient Norse scripts is that these languages are written in ancient Norse letters.

From 1 100, the dialect of Danish is different from that of Sweden. Due to the unbalanced language reform in various parts of Denmark, a series of small dialects have emerged, with homophone lines distributed from Xilan Island in the south to Nordland, Dongboteng and southeastern Finland in the north.

Lieutenant General diphthongs in Danish in Old Norwegian? I "is a monosyllable of" é ",such as" st? The transformation of "inn" into "sténn" (meaning stone) is also a major difference between Danish and other ancient Norwegian languages. In addition, "au" is converted into a long open tone "?" , such as "dauer" becomes "d? Uh "(meaning death). Besides, diphthongs "? Y "becomes a long closed tone" . These innovations have influenced most of the Swedish-speaking areas in ancient Nordic countries except Meralen in northern and eastern Sweden.

Ancient Swedish

From 1225, the Swedish language in the Middle Ages was called Fornsvenska. Of all the most important documents written in Latin letters in that period, Tranfa (V? stg？ Talagen) is one of the oldest documents, and the year recorded in the found fragments is 1250. With the establishment of Catholicism and the promulgation of various religious laws and regulations, Swedish has introduced many Greek and Latin loanwords. 1end of the 3rd century1beginning of the 4th century, the expansion of Hanseatic League not only produced economic, military and political influences, but also began to affect the development of Swedish with the arrival of a large number of German immigrants. In addition to a large number of words related to war, trade and administration, grammatical prefixes and even conjunctions have been introduced into Swedish. Almost all naval terms are borrowed from German.

Compared with modern languages, Swedish in the early Middle Ages has a more complicated case and a less part-of-speech system. Nouns, adjectives, pronouns and some numerals have four kinds of cases, besides modern subjects, there are genitive cases, dative cases and accusative cases. The part-of-speech system is similar to modern German, which is divided into male, female and neutral. Most male and female nouns were later classified as universal. The eastern and western systems are also very complicated, including subjunctive mood and imperative mood, and the usage of verbs is related to people and quantity. /kloc-In the 6th century, the grammatical case and part-of-speech system in modern Swedish spoken language and popular literature were simplified to two genders. Until the18th century, some works of prose and other genres followed the original morphological changes and remained in some dialects until the beginning of the 20th century.

In the Nordic countries, some changes have taken place in the Latin alphabet. According to different regions, "ae" is spelled "?" In some languages, or "a" ao is "ao" and "oe" is "oe", which later evolved into three different letters-,? And then what? .

Modern Swedish

With the appearance of the printing press and the promotion of the religious reform in Europe, modern Swedish (Nysvenska) began to develop. When the new king Gustav Vasa came to power, he ordered the Bible to be translated into Swedish. The New Testament was published in 1526, and the complete translation of the Swedish Bible was published in 154 1 year, which is usually called "Gustav Vasa Bible". The translation of this version is very successful, and it is constantly reprinted. This is the most common Bible translation until 19 17. The main translators are Laurentis Andre, Laurentis Petrelli and horace Petrelli.

Vassar Bible is generally regarded as a moderate synthesis of ancient Swedish and new Swedish. It did not use all the common spoken languages at that time, nor did it completely abandon the old terms. This is an important step in the development of orthography in Swedish. The vowel "?" It's an introduction 、"?" And "?" At the same time, the spelling "ck" replaces "kk", which is obviously different from the Danish Bible, which may also be caused by the ongoing war between the two countries. All three translators are from central Sweden, so the new version of the Bible has added some features of central Sweden.

Although the translation of the Bible has made a good start for the standard naming of orthography, spelling has become more uncertain in the rest of this century. /kloc-At the beginning of the 9th century, the discussion about spelling was controversial. It was not until the second half of19th century that orthography reached the generally accepted standard.

At that time, capital letters were not standardized. Influenced by German, nouns are capitalized and other capitalization is rare. Because the Bible is printed in bold or black, capital letters are not obvious. This font was used until the middle of18th century, and then it was gradually replaced by Latin font (usually bold in western languages).

In the development of modern Swedish, some major changes have taken place in pronunciation, and some different consonant groups have gradually become gingival-clearing fricatives/? /and/? /; At the same time /g/ and /k/ gradually rub the sound to /j/ and clean the gums/? /Softening, voiced soft palate fricative/? /Start changing to the corresponding voiced soft palate /g/.

Contemporary Swedish

/kloc-At the end of 0/9th century, with the development of industrialization and urbanization in Sweden, Sweden also entered a new period. Linguistic terms refer to the Swedish language used in this period, which is called Nusvenska until now. Many writers, scholars, politicians and other public figures have a great influence on the language of the new country, among which August Strindberg (1849-19 12) has the greatest influence.

In the 20th century, a standard and universal national language was formed and used by all Swedes. 1906, after the spelling reform, orthography finally stabilized, except for some minor differences, the format was basically unified. Compared with Swedish today, it is only the plural form of verbs and some syntactic differences (mainly written language). The plural form of verbs was not abandoned until 1950.

From 65438 to 0960, Swedish changed obviously and was called "du-reformen". In the past, the correct address for a person with the same or higher social status was to add a title before his surname. Use "sir", "fru" or "fr?" Only when a stranger doesn't know his occupation, title or rank for the first time. Ken "(Miss). This will become more complicated when it is introduced to a third party in the club conversation. At the beginning of the 20th century, people tried to use "you" instead of titles, similar to "you" and "du" in French (singular form in the second person) used to address people below themselves, and "you" (plural form in the second person) used to address unfamiliar people. In the 1960s and 1970s, with the liberalization and radicalization of Swedish society, the differences between social classes were not as great as before, and Du became the standard, which was used in informal and formal occasions. This reform is not a political decree, but a change in social attitudes. By the end of 1960s and the beginning of 1970s, the reform was completed.

service condition

Swedish is the official language of Sweden and the mother tongue of about 8 million native residents in the country. Most of Sweden's 6.5438 million immigrants are familiar with Swedish. 5.5% of the population in Finland uses Swedish as their mother tongue. These Finnish Swedes live in coastal areas and islands in southern and western Finland. In these areas, Swedish is the main language, and Swedish is the only official language. Immigration is very common in Nordic countries. Because the languages and cultures of these countries are very similar, the newly naturalized people are assimilated rather than isolated. According to American household registration statistics, there are about 67,000 people who speak Swedish, while there are relatively few people who speak Swedish in other countries. For example, some Swedish descendants such as Brazil and Argentina have kept their own languages and names. Outside Sweden, about 40,000 people learn Swedish.

government post

Although there is no clear legal provision, Swedish is actually the official language of Sweden and is officially recommended by the state and local governments. In 2006, the Swedish Parliament proposed to use Swedish as the official language, but it failed due to some procedural errors.

Swedish is the official language of Oran, the autonomous province of Finland. Of the 26,000 residents in this area, 95% speak Swedish as their mother tongue. Swedish and Finnish are the official languages in Finland. Swedish is also one of the official languages of the European Union and one of the working languages of the Nordic Council. According to the Nordic Language Treaty, which came into effect on March 1987, citizens of Nordic countries who use Swedish do not have to pay any interpretation or translation fees when communicating with government agencies of other Nordic countries.

Manage settings

Swedish Language Council (Spr? kr？ Det) is the official Swedish language management organization in Sweden, but it does not control the development of the language. Unlike the French Academy, it mainly revises French and formulates language rules. However, many organizations and institutions require that official documents should follow Svenska skrivregler, which has become the de facto standard of Swedish orthography. Among the many member organizations of the Swedish Language and Writing Committee, the Swedish Academy, founded in 1786, has a great influence, and has compiled and published various grammars, such as the Swedish Academy's NSORD LISA (abbreviated as SAOL, published in version 13) and the Swedish Academy's Ordbok (Swedish Academy Dictionary).

Finnish Language Institute is the official Swedish language management institution in Finland, and its most important task is to maintain interoperability with Swedish. The Institute published Finlandssvensk ordbok (Finnish Swedish Dictionary), a book introducing the differences between Swedish used in Finland and Sweden.

believe

Swedish has 29 letters: 26 Latin letters plus? ' / ?' 、? ' / ?' And then what? ' / ?' . These three letters come after [z]. "The letter w' only appears in proper nouns (such as names, places and loanwords), so it is often not considered as an independent letter, which is why some scholars believe that Swedish has only 28 letters.

Old Norwegian and Swedish originally used the Nordic alphabet. It was gradually replaced by Latin letters in the Middle Ages.

phonetic feature

Item: Swedish pronunciation

There are many vowels in Swedish, * * * has 9 vowels and 17 vowel phonemes, which is more than the average vowel phonemes of other major languages in the world. Swedish * * * has 18 consonant phonemes, in which hard and soft jaws are fricative/? /and /r/ are pronounced differently in different regions.

Swedish has no standard pronunciation. In different dialects, vowels and some consonants (especially some vowels related to the letter R) are quite different in different dialects. The three main dialects are: central standard Swedish, Finnish Swedish and southern standard Swedish. The rhythm of Swedish differs greatly among the dominant dialects.

vocabulary

Most Swedish words come from Germanic languages, such as "mus" (mouse), "kung" (king) and "G? S "(goose). A large number of religious and scientific words came from Latin and Greek, and were borrowed from French and later English.

/kloc-in the 0/8th century, a large number of French words were introduced into Swedish. These words are transliterated into the Swedish spelling system, so the pronunciation is very close to that of French. Most of these words are easy to distinguish because of their obvious "French accent", which is usually on the last syllable, such as "niv?" (level, French "niveau"), "f? t？ Lj "(armchair, French for" fauteuil ") and" aff? R "(shop, meaning" affair "in French) and so on. It is also common to borrow words from other Germanic languages, first from low German, the common language of Lufthansa Alliance, and later from standard German. Some Swedish compounds are also inherited from German compounds. For example, "bomull" comes from German "Baumwolle", which means cotton. It is a combination of tree and wool. Finnish Swedish has many terms, especially legal and government terms, which are copied from Finnish.

Like many other Germanic languages, Swedish neologisms are usually composed of old words. Swedish neologisms are freely combined, such as "solnedg? Ng stands for sunset, which is composed of "sol" (sun), "ned" (bottom) and "g? Ng "(path). However, just like German and Danish, very long words, such as "produktionstyrningsystem sprogramvarupdating" (meaning "software upgrade of production control system") are allowed, but indecent. Combination nouns retain their originality. Adding "-a" after nouns can produce new verbs, such as "disk" changing to "diska" and "bil" changing to "bila".

grammar

Nouns, adjectives and verbs in Swedish are inflectional. Regular word order: declarative sentences are usually S-V-O (subject-verb-addressee) and interrogative sentences are V-S-O (verb-subject-addressee).

noun

Grammatically speaking, nouns can be divided into two kinds of "sex": common and neutral. Some ancient expressions and ritual expressions still retain the gender distinction of common nouns in ancient Swedish. Most nouns are universal, but the gender of nouns has no rules to follow, so we should remember them.

In Swedish, definite articles are connected with suffixes, and indefinite articles are placed before words. Articles vary according to the gender of nouns.

Nouns can be divided into five categories: -o', -a', -e',-and invariant nouns.

When all nouns ending in' are plural, add-'to indicate' it's your turn to do'. For example, girls: flick' (singular); Flicko' (plural)

Most common nouns do not end in' add -a',' -e' or'-'.When they are plural (which one should be remembered).

Add-'to all neutral nouns ending in vowels, such as Apple:? Ppl' (singular); ? Pple' (plural).

The singular and plural numbers of all neutral nouns ending in consonants remain unchanged, such as children: bar'.

The plural deformation of some common nouns is irregular.

verb

There are four types of verbs. The endings of most verbs change regularly: prototype is-',present tense is-',past tense is -d', -t' or -dd'. Person and singular and plural usually do not affect verbs. In addition to regular changes, there are many commonly used verbs that change irregularly.

Common dialog box

Hello! hey

Goodbye! Hej d？ '

Thank you, Teke.

Thank you very much, Teck? Mccat

I'm sorry! f？ rl？ t

It doesn't matter! f？ Everyone is.

Yes Yes

No, Nigel.

footnote

See the Resources section for a detailed title of the book.

reference data

Wang Xiaolin (199 1 year), Swedish Grammar, Foreign Language Education and Research Press, ISBN 7-5600-062 1-3.

Yang Chi (1993), Svensk, Foreign Language Education and Research Press, ISBN 7-5600-0605-7.

Bergman, g? Sta( 1984)，Kortfattad svensk spr？ Khistoria (concise Swedish history), ISBN 91-518-1747-0.

Bohlander, Maria (2002), Funktionell svensk grammatik (Practical Swedish Grammar), ISBN 9 1-47-05054-3.

David Crystal (1999), Encyclopedia of Penguin Language, ISBN 0-14-0516-3.

Dahl, what's up? Stern submachine gun (2000), spring? Let's go in. Ngfald (single gene and multilingual), ISBN 91-44-01158-x.

Engstrand, Olle(2004), Fonetikens grunder, ISBN 9 1-44-04238-8.

Elert，Claes-Christian(2000)，Allm？ N och svensk fonetik (general Swedish phonetics), ISBN 91-kloc-0/-300939-7.

Garré n, Claes (1988), Svenskans fonologi (Swedish Phonology), ISBN 91-44-28151-X.

International Phonetic Association (1999), Manual of International Phonetic Association, ISBN 0-521-63751-1.

Cortesi Nas, Ulla-Britt (1994), Ungdomsspr? K "(young language), ISBN 9 1-7382-790-8.

Peterson, Gertrude (1996+0996), Swanska Spring? What did sjuhundra do? R "(700-year history of Sweden), ISBN 91-44-48221-3.

Svensson Lars( 1974), Nordisk Paleografi, ISBN 978-9144053912.

Industrial Daily (Swedish Business Daily), 3 May 2005.

be externally connected

Swedish alphabet and pronunciation

NHK Swedish broadcasting company

Ethnologue information about Swedish

Swiss-English dictionary

Swedish-Latin Dictionary (English)

Elementary Swedish online course

Swedish 10 1 A website for learning Swedish online.

Common conversations in Swedish

Summary of Swedish learning information in the small forest