Learn Swedish for Travel, Work and Study

Swedish adds å, ä and ö to the Latin alphabet and spells its words more honestly than English does, though not perfectly. Vowels are long or short and the difference matters: “glas” is glass and “glass” is ice cream. Two features mark the sound. One is the pitch: most words of two or more syllables carry one of two melodies, and a handful of pairs are told apart by it alone. The other is the “sj”-sound, a hushing made far back in the mouth with rounded lips, spelled a dozen ways — “sju”, seven, “stjärna”, star, “skjorta”, shirt — and unlike anything in English. “K” and “g” before soft vowels turn into “sh” and “y”, so Kiruna begins like “sheer”.

The grammar is light. Nouns are either “en” or “ett” words — the two genders — and “the” is a tail on the noun rather than a word before it, so “ett hus” is a house and “huset” the house; plurals come in a few patterns that must be learned with the noun. Verbs do not change with the person: “jag är, du är, han är”. Adjectives take a handful of endings, and whatever opens a main clause, the verb comes straight after it — “Imorgon åker jag”, tomorrow go I — a rule English speakers break daily for their first year. There is no subjunctive to speak of and no case but a possessive “-s”.

Swedish has no polite “you” in daily life. A reform a couple of generations ago swept away titles and the formal address, and “du” has been used ever since with everyone — the boss, the doctor, the minister, the stranger on the train. First names are universal. Politeness has moved into tone and ritual: “tack” does the work of please as well as thank you, and Swedes say it constantly; “hej” is for every arrival and “hej då” for every departure; and the small word “jaha” — “I see, right” — carries a whole conversation of agreement. Interrupting is rare and silence is comfortable.

Standard Swedish is the Swedish of Stockholm and the television news, understood everywhere; the regional accents are real and audible — the rolling Scanian of the south, the clipped speech of the far north, the lilting Finland-Swedish of Helsinki and the Åland islands, where Swedish is an official language — but a learner who has the standard follows them all after a few weeks of exposure. Swedish and Norwegian are mutually intelligible with goodwill; Danish is readable and, spoken, a challenge even for Swedes.

Swedish belongs to the quickest group of all for English speakers — some 600 classroom hours to professional working proficiency on the US Foreign Service Institute's scale, the same as Dutch and Norwegian. Reading arrives almost at once, because the vocabulary is largely cousin-words and the grammar does not get in the way; speaking follows within months; the two slow tasks are the sound — the “sj” and the melody, which take practice and a little nerve — and listening to Swedes talking to each other at speed, with the endings swallowed. Learners who do the state's free course and talk daily are usually holding their own in a Swedish workplace within a year.

No visitor needs Swedish: English is spoken fluently by nearly everyone, signage is bilingual where it matters and Stockholm runs happily in English. Residents meet Swedish in the letters from the tax agency and the municipality, at the preschool gate, in the housing association's meetings and with the neighbours. Technology companies, the universities' research groups and many international firms work in English; the public sector, healthcare, schools, the law and nearly every job that meets Swedish customers expect Swedish, and the job market opens by a level with each SFI course passed. Bachelor's degrees are taught in Swedish; master's programmes are very often in English.

• Fika: Coffee and something sweet, taken with other people, once or twice a day, at work and at home; a noun and a verb, and the most important institution a newcomer can be invited to.
• Lagom: Just enough, not too much, exactly right — the quality Swedes prize in portions, opinions and houses, and the word they tell you has no translation.
• Yes, on the in-breath: In the north especially, Swedes say yes by inhaling sharply — a little “shoop” — rather than by speaking. It is real, it is common and it startles every visitor.
• Glass is ice cream: “Glass”, with the long s, is ice cream; “glas”, with the long a, is a glass. Vowel length decides which you have ordered.
• The sound nobody else has: The “sj”-sound — in “sju”, “sjuksköterska”, “själ” — is written at least ten ways and exists in no other language. Swedes test foreigners with “sju sjösjuka sjömän”, seven seasick sailors.
• Hej, and hej hej: One “hej” is hello; two is friendlier; “hej då” is goodbye; and the whole country, from the king to the bus driver, uses them.
• Ombudsman, smorgasbord, moped: All three are Swedish words English adopted — the last a Swedish coinage from motor and pedal.

Swedish levels follow the CEFR, and the Swedish system measures them in three ways. The first is SFI, Swedish for immigrants, the free course every municipality must offer adult newcomers: it runs in four courses, A to D, from the alphabet to roughly B1, and a pass in course D is the grade employers and the authorities recognise. The second is Tisus, the test of Swedish for university studies, set by Stockholm University and sat in Sweden and abroad: a pass in its three parts — reading, writing and speaking — is the standard proof of Swedish for admission to a Swedish-taught degree, at a level around B2 to C1. The third is Swedex, a certificate exam at A2, B1 and B2 offered by the Folkuniversitetet adult-education association and accepted by employers across the Nordic countries.

Residence permits and permanent residence in Sweden carry no language condition. Swedish citizenship does: applicants must show Swedish at B1 in reading and listening and A2 in speaking and writing, together with a test on Swedish society, and the proof is a pass in SFI course D, a grade in Swedish or Swedish as a second language from municipal adult education, a Tisus result, or the Migration Agency's own Swedish test once it is offered. Universities ask for Tisus or the equivalent school grade; employers outside the English-speaking sectors ask for “fluent Swedish” and mean the level of SFI D or above. A newcomer in full-time SFI reaches course D in about a year; evening classes take roughly twice as long.

Sweden gives the self-learner nearly everything free. Every day the public broadcaster puts out a news bulletin in simplified Swedish, to read and to hear, its television is subtitled in Swedish and streams abroad, and the state's SFI materials and the big dictionaries are online. The kit is a dictionary that marks “en” or “ett” and the plural on every noun, a daily dose of slow Swedish, then ordinary Swedish, and some patience with the sound: the “sj” and the melody come from hearing, not from reading about them.

A tutor earns their keep in Swedish on three things. The “sj”-sound and the two melodies, which a learner cannot judge in their own speech until a Swede repeats the word back; the verb-second word order, which has to be heard a thousand times at speed before it comes unprompted; and the simple fact of a Swede who keeps speaking Swedish when the learner hesitates, which no stranger in Stockholm will do.