Name used by its speakers (Endonym): Svenska
Native speakers (estimated): 10 million
Total speakers, including second-language (estimated): 13 million
Where it’s spoken: Swedish is the most widely spoken Scandinavian language, spoken in Sweden as the official language and in Finland as one of two official languages. Around 300,000 native Swedish speakers live in coastal southern and southwestern Finland; in the autonomous Åland region Swedish is the sole official language. Another 300,000 Swedish speakers live outside these two countries, including both Swedish citizens abroad and those of Swedish ancestry. The largest numbers are found in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, Norway, and other Western European countries; however in North America and Australia only a minority of those with Swedish descent report fluency in the language.
Language family: Indo-European, Germanic branch (North Germanic). Swedish is the fourth most spoken Germanic language, after English, German, and Dutch.
Related languages: Like the other Scandinavian languages—Norwegian, Danish, Icelandic, and Faroese—Swedish is descended from Old Norse. There is a high degree of mutual intelligibility with Norwegian and Danish.