Demographics of Sweden - Language

Language

The Swedish language is by far the dominating language in Sweden, and is used by the government administration.

The indigenous Uralic languages were repressed well into the 1960s. Since 1999 Sweden has five officially recognized minority languages: Sami, Meänkieli, Standard-Finnish, Romani chib and Yiddish.

The Sami language, spoken by about 7,000 people in Sweden, may be used in government agencies, courts, preschools and nursing homes in the municipalities of Arjeplog, Gällivare, Jokkmokk and Kiruna and its immediate neighbourhood.

Similarly, Finnish and Meänkieli can be used in the municipalities of Gällivare, Haparanda, Kiruna, Pajala and Övertorneå and its immediate neighbourhood. Finnish is also official language, along with Swedish, in the city of Eskilstuna.

During the mid to late 20th century, immigrant communities brought other languages, among others being Danish, Turkish, Serbo-Croatian, Arabic, Neo-Aramaic.

Read more about this topic:  Demographics Of Sweden

Famous quotes containing the word language:

    the communication
    Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.
    —T.S. (Thomas Stearns)

    Strange goings on! Jones did it slowly, deliberately, in the bathroom, with a knife, at midnight. What he did was butter a piece of toast. We are too familiar with the language of action to notice at first an anomaly: the ‘it’ of ‘Jones did it slowly, deliberately,...’ seems to refer to some entity, presumably an action, that is then characterized in a number of ways.
    Donald Davidson (b. 1917)

    It is silly to call fat people “gravitationally challenged”Ma self-righteous fetishism of language which is no more than a symptom of political frustration.
    Terry Eagleton (b. 1943)