Swenglish is a colloquial term referring to the
English language
English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the ...
heavily influenced by
Swedish
Swedish or ' may refer to:
Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically:
* Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland
** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...
in terms of
vocabulary
A vocabulary is a set of familiar words within a person's language. A vocabulary, usually developed with age, serves as a useful and fundamental tool for communication and acquiring knowledge. Acquiring an extensive vocabulary is one of the la ...
,
grammar
In linguistics, the grammar of a natural language is its set of structural constraints on speakers' or writers' composition of clauses, phrases, and words. The term can also refer to the study of such constraints, a field that includes domain ...
, or
pronunciation
Pronunciation is the way in which a word or a language is spoken. This may refer to generally agreed-upon sequences of sounds used in speaking a given word or language in a specific dialect ("correct pronunciation") or simply the way a particular ...
.
English heavily influenced by Swedish
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 word
A portmanteau word, or portmanteau (, ) is a blend of words[word stress
In linguistics, and particularly phonology, stress or accent is the relative emphasis or prominence given to a certain syllable in a word or to a certain word in a phrase or sentence. That emphasis is typically caused by such properties as i ...](_blank)
and
phrase
In syntax and grammar, a phrase is a group of words or singular word acting as a grammatical unit. For instance, the English expression "the very happy squirrel" is a noun phrase which contains the adjective phrase "very happy". Phrases can consi ...
prosody that differs from that of English.
There are words that are similar in meaning and pronunciation, that have different stress patterns. For example, verbs that end with ''-era'' in Swedish are often French loanwords, where the French word ends with a stressed ''-er''. The Swedish word gets its stress point at the same place, but this is not true in English. A native Swedish speaker might mispronounce ''generate'' as by following the pattern of the Swedish .
Swedish is a
pitch accent
A pitch-accent language, when spoken, has word accents in which one syllable in a word or morpheme is more prominent than the others, but the accentuated syllable is indicated by a contrasting pitch ( linguistic tone) rather than by loudness ...
language.
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.
This can give Swenglish speakers a "singing" quality to their speech. Particularly when exaggerating their Swedish accent in English, speakers add an extra cadence to their words that most native English speakers lack.
Swedish lacks many common English
phonemes
In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language.
For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-west ...
. 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
Beer is one of the oldest and the most widely consumed type of alcoholic drink in the world, and the third most popular drink overall after water and tea. It is produced by the brewing and fermentation of starches, mainly derived from ce ...
'' 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
3 is a number, numeral, and glyph.
3, three, or III may also refer to:
* AD 3, the third year of the AD era
* 3 BC, the third year before the AD era
* March, the third month
Books
* '' Three of Them'' (Russian: ', literally, "three"), a 1901 ...
'' being pronounced as "free" or "
tree
In botany, a tree is a perennial plant with an elongated stem, or trunk, usually supporting branches and leaves. In some usages, the definition of a tree may be narrower, including only woody plants with secondary growth, plants that are ...
". 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
In marketing, brand management begins with an analysis on how a brand is currently perceived in the market, proceeds to planning how the brand should be perceived if it is to achieve its objectives and continues with ensuring that the brand is pe ...
. The Swedish telecommunications company
Tele2
Tele2 AB is a Swedish telecommunications operator headquartered in the Kista Science City, Stockholm, Sweden. It is a major telephone operator in Sweden, Russia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Tele2 also has a 25% share in T-Mobile Netherland ...
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
In linguistics, a false friend is either of two words in different languages that look or sound similar, but differ significantly in meaning. Examples include English ''embarrassed'' and Spanish ''embarazada'' 'pregnant'; English ''parents'' ...
, such as ''nacke'' (similar to English "neck") meaning ’nape, back of the neck’, and ''eventuellt'' (similar to "eventually") meaning ’possibly’. Some
loanword
A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because t ...
s have a more specific meaning in Swedish than the original English, such as ''keyboard'' meaning only ’
electronic keyboard
An electronic keyboard, portable keyboard, or digital keyboard is an electronic musical instrument, an electronic derivative of keyboard instruments. Electronic keyboards include synthesizers, digital pianos, stage pianos, electronic organs ...
,
synthesizer’. Compare the list of
Swedish-English false friends on Swedish Wikipedia.
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’
f the season, ''spotrater'' (‘spot rates’), and ''cancellera'' (‘cancel’).
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
Carl-Henric Svanberg (born 29 May 1952), is a Swedish businessman and current Chairman of Volvo. He was Chairman of BP for eight years, from 2010 to 2018.
Life and career
Svanberg holds a master's degree in applied physics from the Linköping ...
famously caused a PR uproar after the
Deepwater Horizon oil spill
The ''Deepwater Horizon'' oil spill (also referred to as the "BP oil spill") was an industrial disaster that began on 20 April 2010 off of the coast of the United States in the Gulf of Mexico on the BP-operated Macondo Prospect, considere ...
by referring to the
common people
A commoner, also known as the ''common man'', ''commoners'', the ''common people'' or the ''masses'', was in earlier use an ordinary person in a community or nation who did not have any significant social status, especially a member of neither ...
as "the small people", drawing upon the Swedish phrase ''den lilla människan''.
In December 2019, climate activist
Greta Thunberg
Greta Tintin Eleonora Ernman Thunberg (; born 3 January 2003) is a Swedish environmental activist who is known for challenging world leaders to take immediate action for climate change mitigation.
Thunberg's activism began when she persuaded ...
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
Execution by firing squad, in the past sometimes called fusillading (from the French ''fusil'', rifle), is a method of capital punishment, particularly common in the military and in times of war. Some reasons for its use are that firearms are u ...
. 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
calque
In linguistics, a calque () or loan translation is a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal word-for-word or root-for-root translation. When used as a verb, "to calque" means to borrow a word or phrase from another language w ...
d into Swedish.
See also
*
Non-native pronunciations of English
Non-native pronunciations of English result from the common linguistic phenomenon in which non-native users of any language tend to carry the intonation, phonological processes and pronunciation rules from their first language or first languages ...
*
Svorsk
*
Språkförsvaret
Notes
Further reading
*
External links
The Local: Swenglish: the definitive guide and top ten Lists some common mistakes of Swedish speakers of English.
{{Interlanguage varieties
Macaronic forms of English
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...