Swedish Alphabet

The Swedish alphabet ( sv, Svenska alfabetet) is a basic element of the Latin writing system used for the Swedish language. The 29 letters of this alphabet are the modern 26-letter basic Latin alphabet (A through Z) plus Å, Ä, and Ö, in that order. It contains 20 consonants and 9 vowels (a e i o u y å ä ö). The Latin alphabet was brought to Sweden along with the Christianization of the population, although runes continued in use throughout the first centuries of Christianity, even for ecclesiastic purposes, despite their traditional relation to the Old Norse religion. The runes underwent partial "latinization" in the Middle Ages, when the Latin alphabet was completely accepted as the Swedish script system, but runes still occurred, especially in the countryside, until the 18th century, and were used decoratively until mid 19th century. Popular literacy is thought to have been higher (nearly universal) with the simplified Younger Futhark runes, than in the first centuries of use of the Latin alphabet.

Letters

The pronunciation of the ''names'' of the letters (that does not necessarily coincide with the sound it represents) is as follows:

Å, Ä and Ö

In addition to the basic twenty-six letters, A–Z, the Swedish alphabet includes Å, Ä, and Ö at the end. They are distinct letters in Swedish and are sorted after Z as shown above. They do not mark grammatical change, as the umlaut can in German orthography, or separate syllables, as does the diaeresis, so it is not strictly correct to call them ''umlauts''.

Uncommon letters

The letter Q is rare. Q was common in ordinary words before 1889, when its replacement by K was allowed. Since 1900, only the forms with K are listed in dictionaries. Some proper names kept their Q despite the change to common words: Qvist, Quist, Husqvarna, Quenby, Quinby, Quintus, Quirin and Quirinus. Other uses include some loanwords that retained Q, including '' queer'', ''quisling'', ''squash'', and ''quilting''; student terms such as '' gasque''; and foreign geographic names like ''Qatar''.

The letter W is rare. Before the 19th century, W was interchangeable with V (W was used in Fraktur, V in Antiqua). Official orthographic standards since 1801 use only V for common words. Many family names kept their W despite the change to common words. Foreign words and names bring in uses of W, particularly combinations with ''webb'' for (World Wide) Web. Swedish sorting traditionally and officially treated V and W as equivalent, so that users would not have to guess whether the word, or name, they were seeking was spelled with a V or a W. The two letters were often combined in the collating sequence as if they were all V or all W, until 2006 when the 13th edition of ''Svenska Akademiens ordlista'' (The Swedish Academy's Orthographic Dictionary) declared a change. W was given its own section in the dictionary, and the W = V sorting rule was deprecated. This means Swedish books printed before 2006 would group W with V in the index, and most Swedish software published before 2006 would treat the two as variations of a single character when sorting text.

The letter Z is rare, used in names and a few loanwords such as ''zon'' (zone). Z was historically pronounced /ts/. By 1700, this had merged with /s/. As a result, Z was replaced by S in 1700. Z was instead used in loanwords for historical /z/. Z is the second least used letter in Swedish, before Q.

Foreign letters

Though not in the official alphabet, ''á'' is a Swedish (old-fashioned) letter. In native Swedish personal names, ü and è and others are also used.

The umlauted ü is recognised but is only used in names of German origin, and in German loanwords such as . It is otherwise treated as a variant of y and is called a German y. In Swedish, y is a vowel and is pronounced as such (/y:/ as in ). In a few unchanged English loanwords, the y is used for the consonant /j/ as in English.

The characters à (which is used only in a few rare non-integrated loanwords such as ''à'', from French) and é (used in some integrated loanwords like ''idé'' and ''armé'', and in some surnames such as ''Rosén'' or ''Löfvén'') are regarded simply as variants of a and e, respectively.

For foreign names, ç, ë, í, õ, and many others might be used, but are usually converted to c, e, i, o, etc.

Swedish newspapers and magazines have a tendency only to use letters available on the keyboard. à, ë, í, etc. are available on Swedish keyboards with a little effort, but usually not æ and ø (used in Danish and Norwegian), so they are usually substituted by ae or ä, and ö. The news agency TT follows this usage because some newspapers have no technical support for æ and ø, although there is a recommendation to use æ and ø. The letter Æ was used in earlier Swedish script systems, when there was in general more similarity between the Scandinavian languages.

The Swedish population register has traditionally only used the letters a–z, å, ä, ö, ü, é, so immigrants with other Latin letters in their names have had their diacritic marks stripped (and æ/ø converted to ä/ö), although recently more diacritics have been allowed.http://www.ratsit.se has a copy of the national population and tax register and there all diacritics including æ,ç,ñ,ø are stripped except that å,ä,ö,ü,é are kept, except for a few people. There are for example 580 people named Francois and 20 named François.

The difference between the Danish/Norwegian and the Swedish alphabet is that Danish/Norwegian uses the variant Æ instead of Ä, and the variant Ø instead of Ö. Also, the collating order for these three letters is different: Æ, Ø, Å.

Handwritten cursive alphabet

The Swedish traditional handwritten alphabet is the same as the ordinary Latin cursive alphabet, but the letters Ö and Ä are written by connecting the dots with a curved line ~, hence looking like Õ and Ã. In texted handwriting the dots should be clearly separated, but writers frequently replace them with a line: Ō, Ā.

Sound–spelling correspondences

Short vowels are followed by two or more consonants; long vowels are followed by a single consonant, by a vowel or are word-final.

The combinations are pronounced respectively. The phoneme is a very common variation instead of the phoneme (below).

Spellings for the ''sje''-phoneme

Due to several phonetic combinations coalescing over recent centuries, the spelling of the Swedish sje-sound is very eclectic. Some estimates claim that there are over 50 possible different spellings of the sound, though this figure is disputed. Garlén (1988) gives a list of 22 spellings (, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ), but many of them are confined to only a few words, often loanwords, and all of them can correspond to other sounds or sound sequences as well. Some spellings of the sje-sound are as follows:

* in most French loanwords, but in final position often respelled sch. English loanwords with this spelling usually use the ''tje''-sound
* in words mainly from French, for example ''generös'' (generous) and ''gentil'' (generous, posh, stylish)
* mostly in the end of the word in many French loanwords, like ''garage'', ''prestige''
* in for example religiös (religious)
* in French loanwords, for example ''jalusi'' (jalousie window)
* in ''fascinera'' (fascinate)
* in all positions in many German loanwords, like ''schack'' ("chess")
* in all positions in many English loanwords
* in native Swedish words, before both front (e, i, y, ä, ö) and back vowels (a, o, u, å)
* in native Swedish words before the front vowels e, i, y, ä, ö
* in five words only, four of which are enumerated in the phrase ''I bara skjortan han in i .'' (In just ''his shirt'' he ''pushes'' the ''vehicle'' into the ''shed''.) The fifth word is ''skjuva'' (shear). It is also used in an old word ' ( Eurasian magpie) and dialectic derivations of the same
* in three words only: ''västgöte'', ''östgöte'', ''gästgiveri''. These are not common and are often pronounced as . All of them are compound words: väst+göte (person from Västergötland) öst+göte (person from Östergötland) and gäst+giveri (inn)
* occurs only in the words ''digestion, indigestion, kongestion, suggestion'', the place-name ''Kristianstad'', and in the pronunciation of the name ''Christian'' when used about Danish kings
* in five words only, all enumerated in the phrase ''Det är lättare att stjäla en stjälk än att stjälpa en stjärna med stjärten.'' (It is easier to ''steal'' a ''stalk'' than to ''overturn'' a ''star'' with ''your behind''.)
* , , (pronounced ) in many words of Latin origin; in a few of these words, the sje-sound is preceded by a (e.g. ''nation'', ''rationell''), also in some adjective derivations ''(pretentiös, infektiös)''
* for the sequence occurs only in the place-name ''Växjö''

See also

* Swedish orthography
* Swedish phonology
*Swedish Dialect Alphabet
*Danish orthography
*Finnish orthography
*German orthography
*Icelandic orthography
*Norwegian orthography
*Runes (fuþark or futhark)
*Swedish Braille

Notes

References

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{{Swedish language

Latin alphabets
Alphabet