LiCTLe of the Month for January: Swedish

Welcome to this second edition of the LiCTLe of the Month Club, the periodic spotlight for Less Commonly Taught Languages. For those new to this site and the concept of a LiCTLe in general, check out the inaugural post. Furthermore, for those who find this sort of thing interesting, I now offer eMail subscriptions. Just send an eMail with "LiCTLe" in the subject line to schendo AT schendo to receive a monthly announcement when a new edition is published.

Back around the turn of the century, the UC German Department had more Swedish graduate students than it knew what to do with. Which was two, apparently. So, they ordered some textbooks and sent them out to teach Swedish. At the same time, a steady dose of medieval Castillian poetry had prompted my ears to stray from Spanish and start fantasizing about some linguistic strange. When I bumped into a blond, North Germanic LiCTLe in the course catalog, it was lust at first sight.

I started to reconsider my decision after the first day. The class was an eclectic bunch, as might be expected, and the teacher was quite enthusiastic. Actually, his enthusiasm on the first day was a bit overwhelming, as he had the whole class out of their chairs, running as we chanted "springer" and jumping as he shouted "hoppar."

I almost didn't show up to the second class, wondering if I shouldn't carry out my linguistic adultery with a more stable partner like Chinese. When I finally walked in to class ten minutes late the next day, the room was empty. Deciding that the Universe was trying to tell me something, I quietly backed out of the room, right into a faculty member from the German Department.

Oh, did you not get the eMail? she asked, rhetorically, The class was moved to another building. I nodded and apologized, lying that my computer was broken when, in fact, it didn't exist. It was mid-September and it was raining, and the anonymous German professor wouldn't let me escape. Why don't you join the other section, it's right down the hallway.

Sure, I shrugged and followed her down the hall and around the corner, interrupting the class taught by the other Swedish grad student.  At first sight, Madeleine convinced me to stick with this class.... Not blond, but elegant and classically proportioned and quick to blush whenever one of the half-dozen misfits in her class would tell an off-color joke.  Of course, I never did get around to professing my undying love to this Scandinavian princess, but I did come away from the class with a lifelong appreciation for Swedish film, IKEA and the North Germanic definite article.

Before we talk about definite articles, however, first a few words about Swedish and it's place in the linguistic landscape of our fair planet. Swedish is one of a group of languages that my first linguistic teacher called "DaNorWedish," for Danish-Norwegian-Swedish. All three of these languages are descended from Old Norse and remain mutually intelligible to a large degree. Which means they can all communicate, even if they think each other sound funny, as the Norwegians I knew always said of the Danish.

Swedish is spoken by about 8.3 million people, almost all of them in Scandinavia.  The only sizable populations of Swedish speakers outside of Sweden are in Finland, although prior to the mid-twentieth century, there was also an enclave in Estonia.

When linguists talk about a noun being definite, they generally mean something that is old information. Something that has been previously identified in the conversation, or that the people with whom we are communicating can easily identify. The pair of sentences:

I'm looking for a car.

I'm looking for the car.

differ noticeably in their meaning.  In the first, the exact car I am searching for is unspecified, as if I have decided to purchase a car, but don't know which one yet.  In the second, the suggestion is that there is a specific car that I am looking for.  Perhaps the car that I own and cannot find (something that happens to some people a lot on, say, Sunday mornings).

Almost all Germanic languages mark definiteness in the same way English does, by using a little word called an article. Sometimes the article is different because of the gender of the noun or it's function in the sentence (Subject vs. Direct/Indirect Object, etc). Fortunately, we haven't had to worry such things in about in English for many centuries

English	the man	the woman	the house
German	der Mann	die Frau	das Haus
Dutch	de man	de vrouw	het huis

Swedish, however, takes a different approach:

en kvinna a woman	kvinna-n woman-the
en man a man	mann-en man-the
ett hus a house	hus-et house-the

Here, the article actually attaches itself to the end of the noun as either "-(e)n" or "-(e)t" with the (vowel) being optional if the word, like "kvinna," already ends in one. The distinction between "en" or "ett" is a matter of gender, although not in the familiar masculine/feminine sense. Swedish has two genders, a "common" and a "neuter."  The distinction between the two is arbitrary, although most human beings and animals are part of the common gender.

This brings us to the end of this month's LiCTLe profile, although there is much more to be explored in the North Germanic languages, especially in the realm of definiteness.  Unfortunately, that will have to wait for another posting.  If you enjoyed this edition of the LiCTLe of the Month, tell your friends on Facebook about it and be sure to check back the first Wednesday of every month when another lesser known language gets its time in the spotlight.

Previous LiCTLe of the Month: Turkish
Next LiCTLe of the Month: Sanskrit I

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Much of the credit for this post goes to Philip Holmes and Ian Hinchliffe's Swedish: An Essential Grammar as well as Julian Granberry's Essential Swedish Grammar both of which helped to refresh my memory.  Any and all mistakes are my own and I reserve the right to make many more.