Die Sprachsituation in Schweden

The present paper describes the temporary language situation in Sweden. The country has a high rate of immigration and large minority groups have lived in Sweden for many hundreds of years. In order to reflect its cultural and language diversity Sweden has developed its own Language Law. This establishes Swedish as the main language in Sweden and declares five other languages to be national minority languages: Finnish, Meänkieli, Romani, Yiddish and Sami. Furthermore, the country’s language law protects and at the same time promotes Swedish Sign language. Swedish communes offer free Swedish courses for adult immigrants and immigrant children attend courses in Swedish as a Second Language both in primary and secondary school. Due to the multinational composition of Swedish suburbs a new variety of Swedish called rinkebysvenska has developed. This variety is characterized by many loan words from other languages, divergent pronunciation, morphology and syntax. Rinkebysvenska is used primarily by young immigrants living in Stockholm, Göteborg and Malmö and has assumed the status not only of a Sociolect, but also of a special Swedish slang. The mobility of Swedish inhabitants within the country has led to a smoothing out of Swedish dialects so that differences can only be observed in pronunciation. On the other hand, there is a strong tendency to protect and develop Övdalian – one of the dialects that differs most from Swedish.