Swedish Alphabet at a Glance
- 29 letters: 9 vowels (including å, ä, ö) and 20 consonants from Latin script
- Spoken by approximately 10 million people in Sweden and Finland [2]
- North Germanic language closely related to Norwegian and Danish
- Three distinctive letters å, ä, ö placed at end of alphabet after z
- Features pitch accent system with two distinct tonal patterns
- Official language of Sweden and co-official language of Finland [3]
- Relatively straightforward pronunciation with consistent letter-sound correspondence
Swedish Vowel Letters
The Swedish alphabet has 5 basic vowel letters: a, e, i, o, u. Swedish vowels can be either long or short, and this distinction is important for pronunciation and meaning.
Swedish Vowels (Lowercase)
Swedish Vowels (Uppercase)
Swedish-Specific Letters
Swedish has 3 special letters with diacritics: å, ä, ö.
These letters represent distinct vowel sounds and come at the end of the Swedish alphabet.
Swedish-Specific Letters (Lowercase)
Swedish-Specific Letters (Uppercase)
Swedish Consonant Letters
Swedish has 20 consonant letters. Swedish consonant pronunciation is generally consistent, though some combinations create special sounds.
The letter combinations sk, skj, and tj create the characteristic Swedish "sh" sound.
Swedish Consonants (Lowercase)
Swedish Consonants (Uppercase)
Special Characters in Swedish
Swedish writing uses punctuation marks and symbols including period (.), comma (,), question mark (?), exclamation (!), apostrophe ('), and Swedish quotation marks (" "). The Swedish krona symbol (kr) is also commonly used.
Swedish punctuation follows Scandinavian conventions.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
References:
- [1] Unicode Consortium. "Latin Extended-B Block". Retrieved from Unicode Latin Extended-B
- [2] Statistics Sweden (SCB). "Population Statistics - Languages". Retrieved from Sweden Statistics
- [3] Institutet för språk och folkminnen. "Swedish Language Council". Retrieved from Swedish Language Council
Sambhu Raj Singh ·