One extremely frequent question, that I get, is: Is Swedish hard to learn? To answer that, you must first know how much time you’ve got to learn and what proficiency level you want to achieve – basically what you need Swedish for. It depends on your native language, prior experience learning a language and your general motivation.

What is Swedish?

Swedish is a language spoken in Sweden and some parts of Finland. It is a small language but despite that, it is really important: You can use it to get by across all Scandinavian countries. It is one of the top 10 languages in which most books are printed, it is spoken in a region of the world which has many excellent universities, that is advancing in technology, medicine, movie production, game production, and music. Lots of people want to go to Sweden because of its openness, tolerance and breath-taking scenery.

Why should I speak Swedish?

If you know Swedish, you can comfortably speak to someone from Norway, Denmark and Finland. The North Germanic languages were dialects of a common language and they still have the same structure. Not much has happened. You can even get by in Iceland, since there they all learn an additional Peninsula-Scandinavian language besides Icelandic, a language which is pretty much incomprehensible for other Scandinavians. If you look at it that way, Swedish isn’t so small after all. In the end, you can communicate with over 20 million people!

The region around the Baltic Sea is gaining more and more economic importance, so if you want to go to Scandinavia, you should learn a Scandinavian language. You should do that even though Scandinavians, Swedes in particular, speak excellent English. In addition, it shows respect to the citizens of any country if you can speak their language. You immediately appear more sympathetic than just an ignorant tourist. If you are in Sweden on business, learning the language will also help you gain an advantage in negotiations if you speak Swedish. Even if it’s only on an introductory level.

So, is Swedish hard to learn?

The answer is: Not at all! If you speak English, you already speak a Germanic language. Swedish has a similar structure as English. You already know words like smörgåsbord and ombudsman.

What’s your way?

Are you a person listening to lessons on the go or are you a person practicing online? I've developed Say it in Swedish for all learning types. You can download the lessons as audio files and print them in text format. You can learn online or within the community, with the possibility to ask me, the founder and a native Swedish speaker, and other learners questions, using DMs, the comment system, or the Discord community. Furthermore you’ll find vocabulary lists on different topics with audio, videos and this blog. Forget about that expensive course or dusty text books.

Say It In Swedish provides you with a tight-knit learning community and is developed everyday and always up to date.

Photo: Cecilia Larsson Lantz/Imagebank.sweden.se

Updated June 3 2024