Swedish alphabet

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Today, almost everything is written with the Latin alphabet, but the Runic alphabets dominated thousand years ago and lived on till quite recent times (a hundred years or two ago). See further about the Runic alphabets in Swedish.

Contents 1 Alphabetic order (bokstavsordning) 2 28 or 29 letters? (28 eller 29 bokstäver?) 3 Å, ä, ö 3.1 Sources

Alphabetic order (bokstavsordning)

	Letter	Name [IPA]
1	A a	a [ɑ:]
2	B b	be [be:]
3	C c	se [se:]
4	D d	de [de:]
5	E e	e [e:]
6	F f	eff [ɛf:]
7	G g	ge [ge:]
8	H h	hå [ho:]
9	I i	i [i:]
10	J j	ji [ji:]
11	K k	kå [ko:]
12	L l	ell [ɛl:]
13	M m	em [ɛm:]
14	N n	en [ɛn:]
15	O o	o [u:]
16	P p	pe [pe:]
17	Q q	ku [kʉ:]
18	R r	ärr [ær:]
19	S s	ess [ɛs:]
20	T t	te [te:]
21	U u	u [ʉ:]
22a/22	V v	ve [ve:]
22b/23	W w	dubbel-ve ['dɵb:əlˌve:]
23/24	X x	eks [ɛks]
24/25	Y y	y [y:]
25/26	Z z	säta ['sɛ:ta]
26/27	Å å	å [o:]
27/28	Ä ä	ä [ɛ:]
28/29	Ö ö	ö [ø:]

28 or 29 letters? (28 eller 29 bokstäver?)

The Swedish alphabet has 28 or 29 letters depending on how you count the v/w. In most alphabetic listings <v> and <w> are sorted together, with <v> coming before <w> if the words otherwise are identical. Which is according to the current official standard today, see note below. Compare the surnames' order:

in Swedish (current): Wall < Wijk < Vilander < Wilander < Vågman

in Swedish (proposal): Vilander < Vågberg < Wall < Wijk < Wilander

in English (note that <å> sorts under <a>): Vågberg < Vilander < Wall < Wijk < Wilander

The, more or less, official alphabetic order in Swedish might change with the new edition of SAOL (Svenska akademiens ordlista ‘wordlist of the Swedish Academy’), for more information see this link: http://www.språknämnden.se/aktuellt/dubbel-v.htm (in Swedish).

Å, ä, ö

In a historical point of view these letters were formed by transposing a small letter variant of either the vowel <o> or <e>. Thus forming <a^o>/<å>, <a^e> and <o^e>—with the difference that they were placed directly above the characters and not by the side. In this regard <o^e> (o + e) and <ö> (o + ¨) are different...

• aa > a^o/å (1526¹)
• æ > a˙ (1495) > a^e (1526) > ä
• ø > o˙ (1495) > o^e (1526) > ö

¹ Found as early as in the 1400:s in handwritten manuscripts. Cf. the German equivalent <a^a>.

Those familiar with the Danish alphabet can see that this change didn't occur in that. Recently in the early 1900:s both the Danish and Norwegian alphabets added the letter <å>.

Sources

Bergman, Gösta. 1968. Kortfattad svensk språkhistoria [Brief history of the Swedish language].
Pettersson, Gertrud. 1996. Svenska språket under sjuhundra år [The Swedish language during seven hundred years].

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Swedish >> Swedish writing