Indo-European · ISO 639-3 swe · sv
Swedish Language svenska
Swedish is an Indo-European language spoken by about 12 million people in 3 countries. It is an official language of Sweden and Finland. It is written in the Latin script.
Where Swedish is spoken
- Official language
- Regional official
- Spoken by 10%+
- 1–10%
- Smaller communities
Countries that speak Swedish
About the Swedish language
Swedish (svenska) is spoken by about 12 million people, which makes it the 101st most spoken language in the world — just behind Hungarian (13 million) and ahead of Kinyarwanda (12 million). It belongs to the Indo-European language family and, more precisely, to the East Swedic group within the Germanic branch.
Where is Swedish spoken?
Swedish is used in 3 countries. The largest communities live in Sweden (10 million), Finland (2.5 million) and Denmark (776,508). More than half of the population speaks it in Sweden — the places where travellers will hear it everywhere.
Share of the population that speaks Swedish: Sweden 95% (10 million), Finland 44% (2.5 million) and Denmark 13% (776,508).
Swedish is an official language in 2 countries: Sweden and Finland.
Writing system and status
Swedish is written in the Latin script. It is a safe, widely transmitted language: children still learn it at home as their first language.
Its closest relatives in the same branch of the family are Danish, Icelandic, Faroese, English, German, Nigerian Pidgin and 2 more.
ISO codes: ISO 639-1 sv, ISO 639-3 swe.
Frequently asked questions about Swedish
How many people speak Swedish?
Where is Swedish spoken?
In which countries is Swedish an official language?
What language family does Swedish belong to?
What is Swedish called in Swedish?
Is Swedish an endangered language?
Data: Languages of the World dataset (MIT) — ISO 639-3, Glottolog (CC BY 4.0), Unicode CLDR, Google LinguaMeta (CC BY 4.0) and Wikidata; country lists: samayo/country-json (MIT). Speaker numbers include first- and second-language speakers where sources report them.