Learn Swedish:
PERSONAL PRONOUNS
Swedish
The Swedish language is a North Germanic language and the official language of Sweden. A descendant of Old Norse and close relative to Norwegian and Danish, it currently has the largest number of speakers among the North Germanic languages. Some typical features of Swedish include a standard word order where verb comes second (as in most Germanic languages), two grammatical genders (common and neuter, using the articles en and ett). no changes in verb form according to pronouns, adjectives inflected dependent on gender, number and definiteness, and what some might perceive as a distinct 'sing songy tone. Swedish is also notable for its distinct sj-sound. As in most other languages, Swedish words belong to one of nine word categories: nouns, counting words, verbs, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, conjunctions, prepositions and interjections.
Swedish is not only spoken in Sweden. Finland has a Swedish-speaking population of just under 300,000 people. This group has Swedish as its native tongue. Following an educational reform in the 1970s, both Swedish and Finnish became compulsory school subjects in Finland, which means that Finns who have Finnish as their mother tongue are still required to study Swedish at school. There are also many Americans with Swedish heritage. Many of their ancestors went to the United States during the Swedish emigration in the 19th and early 20th centuries, when about 1.3 million Swedes left Sweden (at that time around 20% of the Swedish population) due to population growth, shortages of good farm lands, crop failure and famine. The region of Småland, where conditions at the time were particularly bleak, became the heartland of the emigration wave. Many of the emigrants settled in Minnesota, Illinois, lowa and Wisconsin, with Minnesota now being the state with most inhabitants of Swedish descent (9.6% of the population as of the 2005 US Census). This Swedish mass emigration has been portrayed in the four-novel suite Utvandrarna The Emigrants by Vilhelm Moberg, considered to be one of the best pieces of Swedish literature. Two films based on the series were released in the 70s, and the books were also the basis of Kristina från Duvemåla - a 1995 musical by former ABBA members Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus,
PERSONAL PRONOUNS
Personal pronouns are words that replace a person or a noun. One group of personal
pronouns, called subject pronouns, is used to show who or what is performing the action of
a verb. In Swedish they are:
Singular
jag /
du. you (singular)
hon she
han he
hen he/she (gender ä)
den it (en words)
det. it (ett-words)
man. one (general you)
Plural
vi we
ni. you (plural)
de. they (pronounced 'dom)