The Language Council of Sweden () is the primary regulatory body for the advancement and cultivation of the Swedish language. The council is a department of the Swedish government's Institute for Language and Folklore (). The

council A council is a group of people who come together to consult, deliberate, or make decisions. A council may function as a legislature, especially at a town, city or county/shire level, but most legislative bodies at the state/provincial or natio ...

asserts control over the language through the publication of various books with recommendations in spelling and grammar as well as books on

linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

intended for a general audience, the sales of which are used to fund its operation. The council also works with four of the five official minority languages in Sweden: Finnish, Meänkieli,

Yiddish Yiddish, historically Judeo-German, is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated in 9th-century Central Europe, and provided the nascent Ashkenazi community with a vernacular based on High German fused with ...

, and Romani ( Sámi excluded) alongside the Swedish Sign Language. Between 1965 and 2007, the council published the quarterly journal ''Språkvård'' (lit. "Language care"). The journal published articles about the use and development of the Swedish language, Q&As about spelling and grammar as well as guidelines for the use of Swedish in various contexts.

History

The Language Council of Sweden has its roots in the attempt to assert control over the official language use among the

Nordic countries The Nordic countries (also known as the Nordics or ''Norden''; ) are a geographical and cultural region in Northern Europe, as well as the Arctic Ocean, Arctic and Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic oceans. It includes the sovereign states of Denm ...

. The first ideas of a joint Nordic project surfaced in the 1930s and resulted in a Danish organization for Nordic language cultivation being founded in 1941. The idea of an all-Nordic cooperation was thwarted by the fact that all Nordic countries with the exception of Sweden were embroiled in the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

. On 3 March 1944 a group of 16 organizations held the first constituent assembly for what was then called ''Nämnden för svensk språkvård'' ("The Committee for Swedish Language Cultivation"). To counter difficulties in its finances, the council was reorganized in 1973 and assumed the name ''Svenska språknämnden'' ("The Swedish Language Committee"). The government also assured the future of the council by guaranteeing the financing of four permanent staff members; a figure which later grew and was no longer limited to a certain number of members, but by the actual needs of the council. Since the government assumed the responsibility for the financing, it also has the right to appoint the chairman and the head of the secretariat. The council assumed its current name (''Språkrådet''; "The Language Council") in 2006, as it became a department of the state agency the Institute for Language and Folklore. ''Ogooglebar'' (from o-

prefix A prefix is an affix which is placed before the stem of a word. Particularly in the study of languages, a prefix is also called a preformative, because it alters the form of the word to which it is affixed. Prefixes, like other affixes, can b ...

(negative prefix) + googlebar (google + -bar

suffix In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns and adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can ca ...

( -able))) is a word, in Swedish, that the Language Council of Sweden has been forced to remove from its top 10 list of new words by a claim of brand protection from

Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...

. The word is translated as (and also when translated literally means) '' ungoogleable''. The council expressed its "displeasure with Google's attempts to control the language".

References

* Bergman, Gösta (1984), Kortfattad svensk språkhistoria, Prisma Magnum (in Swedish) (4th ed.), Stockholm: Prisma, , OCLC 13259382 * Bolander, Maria (2002), Funktionell svensk grammatik (in Swedish), Stockholm: Liber, , OCLC 67138445 * Crystal, David (1999), The Penguin dictionary of language (2nd ed.), London: Penguin Books, , OCLC 59441560 * Dahl, Östen (2000), Språkets enhet och mångfald (in Swedish), Lund: Studentlitteratur, , OCLC 61100963 * Dahl, Östen; Edlund, Lars-Erik, eds. (2010), Sveriges nationalatlas. Språken i Sverige (in Swedish), Stockholm: Kungl. Vitterhets historie och antikvitets akademien, * Elert, Claes-Christian (2000), Allmän och svensk fonetik (in Swedish) (8th ed.), Stockholm: Norstedts Akademiska Förlag, * Engstrand, Olle (1999), "Swedish", Handbook of the International Phonetic Association: A Guide to the usage of the International Phonetic Alphabet., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 140–142, , OCLC 40305532

External links

Language Council of Sweden

Recent books published by the council
{{Swedish language Organizations established in 1973 Swedish language Language regulators Language policy in Sweden 1973 establishments in Sweden

History

See also

References

External links