Standard Swedish

Standard Swedish (standardsvenska, rikssvenska, högsvenska) denotes Swedish as a spoken and written standard language. While Swedish as a written language is uniform and standardized, the spoken standard may vary considerably from region to region. Several prestige dialects have developed around the major urban centers of Stockholm, Helsinki, Gothenburg and Malmö-Lund.

Rikssvenska and högsvenska

In Swedish, the terms rikssvenska "Realm Swedish" and högsvenska "High Swedish" are used in Sweden and Finland respectively, particularly by non-linguists, and both terms are ambiguous. The direct translation of standardsvenska "Standard Swedish" is less common and primarily used in scholarly contexts.

In certain (mostly Finland-related) contexts, rikssvenska has come to mean all Swedish as spoken in Sweden as opposed to the Finland Swedish spoken in Finland. For speakers in Sweden, the term, however often, perhaps primarily, indicates "non-dialectal" (spoken) Swedish. The term Sweden Swedish (sverigesvenska) is sometimes used instead, as a parallel to the term Finland Swedish. There is, however, no common agreement on how rikssvenska should sound. What appears as rikssvenska to one Swede may appear dialectal to another. (Etymologically, "riks-" is a compound form that is a cognate of the German Reich.)

National Swedish television and radio news broadcasts that are often produced in Stockholm have historically preferred commentators who speak what is seen as rikssvenska, but that has gradually been relaxed.

The definition of högsvenska (literally "High Swedish") was formerly the same as for rikssvenska, the most prestigious dialect spoken in (the capital of) Sweden. During the 20th century, its meaning changed, and it now denotes the prestige dialect of the Swedish speakers in Helsinki.

Until the late 19th or the early 20th century, Swedish was the primary language of status, government and education in Finland although it was spoken as a first language by only a relatively small minority. Since the 1970s, both domestic languages have been mandatory subjects for all Finnish pupils in primary and secondary schools, but the requirement to include Swedish in the upper-secondary final examination ("studentexamen") was dropped in 2004.

Regional standards and rural dialects

Swedish linguists reserve the term "dialect" for rural dialects with roots that can be traced back to Old Swedish. However, among Swedish speakers in general, other regional standards are considered to be "dialects".

Although Swedish phonology is in principle uniform, its phonetic realizations are not. Contrary to the situation in Danish, Finnish or German (with three national standards for Germany, Austria and Switzerland) there is no one standard for spoken Swedish. There are several regional varieties (acrolects or prestige dialects) that are used in official contexts. The major regional variants include those of South Sweden (based on South Swedish dialects), Western Sweden (centered on Gothenburg), Central Sweden (centered on the capital of Stockholm) and Northern Sweden (based on Norrland dialects). There is also a separate standard for Swedish in Finland based on Finland Swedish. In national broadcast media Sweden, several of these occur, though the Central Swedish variant dominates and is often perceived as more "standardized" and more neutral than the others.

Official status

Swedish became Sweden's main official language on July 1, 2009, when a new language law was implemented.[1] The issue of whether Swedish should be declared the official language has been raised in the past, and the parliament voted on the matter in 2005—but the proposal narrowly failed.[2] The Swedish language also has official status in Finland (including the autonomous region of Åland), but no officially sanctioned standard actually exists. However, the Research Institute for the Languages of Finland has the purpose of language planning and dictionary compilation.

In Sweden, the Swedish Language Council is similarly funded by the Swedish government and may be said to have a semi-official status as a regulatory body being a joint effort that includes the Swedish Academy, Swedish Radio, Swedish Broadcasting Corporation and several other organizations representing journalists, teachers, actors, writers and translators. The recommendations of these bodies are not legally binding, though they are generally respected.

History

Standard Swedish evolved from the high prestige dialects of the Mälaren Valley region around Stockholm, the capital of Sweden.

In Sweden the concept of a unified standard language based on a high prestige dialect spoken in the capital region was primarily understood in terms of the written language as exemplified with the Swedification of the Danish and Norwegian provinces that were acquired in the 17th century. The people were taught Swedish hymns and prayers, but with a phonology that remained largely Danish or Norwegian.

During the latter half of the 19th century, the use of a standardized written language increased with each new innovation of communication and transportation. It was however not until the 1960s, when the major demographic situation of Sweden had changed from a quite rural and agrarian society to the highly urbanized society it is today, that the spoken varieties closed up towards unified dialects whose vocabulary and grammatical rules adhered to that of the (written) Standard Swedish. The different phonologies, particularly the different realizations of the tonal word accents, have however proved to be more variable.

With respect to other aspects of the spoken language, there are developments towards a unification that however is not always the effect of standardization or centripetal influence. For instance, realization of fricatives in the Central Swedish Standard has undergone a change in recent decades moving in the direction of the Southern Standard rather than that of northern Sweden and Finland.

Finland

The creation of the autonomous Russian Grand Duchy of Finland in 1809/1812 drastically decreased communication between Sweden and Finland, although Swedish remained the language of administration and higher education until Finnish was given equal status with it at the end of the 19th century. The position of Swedish gradually eroded in the 20th century as population shifts due to industrialization and war caused increasing numbers of ethnic Finns to move to the traditional coastal and urban Swedish enclaves. In reaction, Swedish-speaking Finns renewed their cultural and linguistic connections with Sweden and a Högsvenska based on the current variety spoken by educated mainland Swedes emerged. However, alienation between the two countries due to lack of tangible support from Sweden during the two World Wars, the Finnish Civil War, and the Åland crisis gradually led to Högsvenska being seen as the prestige dialect of Finland Swedish. In the second half of the 20th century, tensions between center and periphery in Finland made the concept of a spoken standard variety less popular, and the spoken Swedish in Ostrobothnia again oriented towards Sweden, particularly when switching to more elevated registers, resulting in a relation between Standard Swedish as spoken in Western versus Southern Finland that by and large echoed the relation between Standard Swedish as spoken in Central versus Southern Sweden.

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Landes, David (2009-07-01). "Swedish becomes official 'main language'". The Local. thelocal.se. Retrieved 2009-07-15.
  2. ↑ Svenskan blir inte officiellt språk, Sveriges Television, 2005-12-07. Retrieved on July 23, 2006. (in Swedish)

References

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