Swedish

1. 1
   adjective

   Connected with Sweden: its land, people, institutions, or culture.

   The Swedish coastline stretches for thousands of miles along the Baltic Sea.

   Several Swedish companies are admired worldwide for their minimalist furniture design.

2. 2
   proper nouncountable or uncountable

   The language of Sweden and Åland, and one of the two official languages of Finland, also spoken by a small minority in Estonia.

   He translated the novel from Swedish into English.

   Many road signs in Finland appear in both Finnish and Swedish.

   Note

   An English formation rather than a borrowing: Swede plus the suffix -ish, with cognates in Dutch Zweeds and German Schwedisch. The language itself is North Germanic, largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish, and written with three extra letters, å, ä and ö. It is usually uncountable (speak Swedish, translated into Swedish), but it takes a plural, Swedishes, when distinct varieties are being compared.

3. 3
   adjective

   Relating to the Swedish language: its grammar, vocabulary, or pronunciation.

   The Swedish alphabet includes three letters not found in English.

   Her Swedish pronunciation improved noticeably after a year in Stockholm.

   Note

   Here the adjective points to the language, not the country, and the two readings share one spelling. A Swedish teacher may teach Swedish or simply come from Sweden. Swedish grammar is unambiguous, but a Swedish newspaper is not. When the difference matters, recast the phrase as a teacher of Swedish or a Swedish-language newspaper. Like the national adjective, it has no comparative or superlative.

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