Teach yourself swedish [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION Swedish is a Germanic language closely related to Norwegian and Danish; in fact educated Swedes, Norwegians and Danes can usually understand each other and read each other's languages without difficulty. Though historically Swedish belongs with Danish to the East Scandinavian language group, at the present time it is closer to Norwegian, especially the Norwegian Landsmdl. Both are tone languages^, in contradistinction to Danish ; and since the introduction of the recent spelling reforms in Norway there is much greater resemblance between the two languages in orthography. On the other hand Swedish spelling gives a more accurate picture of the pronunciation of the language than is the case with the other Scandinavian languages. Norwegian and Danish have many consonantal assimilations which make it difficult to form an idea of the pronunciation from the written word. Swedish is much more consistent in this respect. There are, it is true, certain consonantal letters which are mute, e.g. in djup the d is not pronounced, in hjdrta the h is not pronounced, and in ljus the I is not pronounced; but, compared to Norwegian and Danish, there are very few such "mute consonants." An Englishman will not find it very difficult to acquire a reading knowledge of Swedish. The grammar is comparatively simple, as English and Swedish have developed on similar lines. There is not the elaborate declensional system that confronts the student of German, though there is a certain amount of difficulty involved in mastering the plural formation of Swedish nouns. In many cases the plural can be deduced from the form of the singular. Thus a word like blomma, disyllabic and ending in -a, must have the plural form hlommor ; and similarly a word like oxe, disyUabic and ending in -e, must have the plural form oxar.^ But no one can tell at a glance how the plurals of hord, fisk and park are formed ; these are words, the plural of which 1 See § 68. ® There are s few exceptions to these rules among the neuter nouns. T.Y.S.—I* ix fV 'ii' t ¦ 11 ^ i-' il \ 1 i iff' t :¦ i ^.Ji-I fi.l.'il U.h^lL Ep sS