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107-541: Kungsholm ( Swedish language for "King's Island") may refer to any of these passenger ships: Swedish language Swedish ( endonym : svenska [ˈsvɛ̂nːska] ) is a North Germanic language from the Indo-European language family , spoken predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland . It has at least 10 million native speakers, making it the fourth most spoken Germanic language , and
214-458: A Pomeranian griffin 's head. To distinguish it from the city's coat of arms the tinctures were changed and the official blazon for the provincial arms is, in English: Or , a griffin's head erased gules , crowned azure and armed azure, when it should be armed. The province was divided in two administrative counties 1719–1996. Coats of arms were created for these entities, also using
321-445: A common gender with the definite suffix -en and the definite article den , in contrast with the neuter gender equivalents -et and det . The verb system was also more complex: it included subjunctive and imperative moods and verbs were conjugated according to person as well as number . By the 16th century, the case and gender systems of the colloquial spoken language and the profane literature had been largely reduced to
428-470: A guttural or "French R" pronunciation in the South Swedish dialects ; consequently, these dialects lack retroflex consonants . Swedish is a stress-timed language, where the time intervals between stressed syllables are equal. However, when casually spoken, it tends to be syllable-timed . Any stressed syllable carries one of two tones , which gives Swedish much of its characteristic sound. Prosody
535-513: A sea level rise led to the complete drowning of Scania. Subsequently, marine sediments buried old surfaces preserving the rocky shores and hilly terrain of the day. In the Paleogene period southern Sweden was at a lower position relative to sea level but was likely still above it as it was covered by sediments. Rivers flowing over the South Småland peneplain flowed also across Scania which
642-522: A change from tauþr into tuþr . Moreover, the øy diphthong changed into a long, close ø , as in the Old Norse word for "island". By the end of the period, these innovations had affected most of the Runic Swedish-speaking area as well, with the exception of the dialects spoken north and east of Mälardalen where the diphthongs still exist in remote areas. Old Swedish (Swedish: fornsvenska )
749-582: A coat of arms had to be created for the newly acquired province, as each province was to be represented by its arms at his royal funeral. After an initiative from Baron Gustaf Bonde , the Lord High Treasurer of Sweden , the coat of arms of the City of Malmö was used as a base for the new provincial arms. The Malmö coat of arms had been granted in 1437, during the Kalmar Union , by Eric of Pomerania and contains
856-518: A conversation. Due to the close relation between the Scandinavian languages, a considerable proportion of speakers of Danish and especially Norwegian are able to understand Swedish. There is considerable migration between the Nordic countries , but owing to the similarity between the cultures and languages (with the exception of Finnish ), expatriates generally assimilate quickly and do not stand out as
963-420: A different shape. All other lakes tend to be round, oval or of more complex shape and also lack any specific cardinal direction. Ringsjön , in the middle of the province, is the largest of such lakes. In the winter, some smaller lakes east of Lund often attract young Eurasian sea eagles ( Haliaeetus albicilla ). Where the sea meets higher parts of the sloping landscape, cliffs emerge. Such cliffs are white if
1070-727: A group. According to the 2000 United States Census , some 67,000 people over the age of five were reported as Swedish speakers, though without any information on the degree of language proficiency. Similarly, there were 16,915 reported Swedish speakers in Canada from the 2001 census. Although there are no certain numbers, some 40,000 Swedes are estimated to live in the London area in the United Kingdom. Outside Sweden and Finland, there are about 40,000 active learners enrolled in Swedish language courses. In
1177-609: A large proportion of the remaining 100,000 in the Scandinavian countries, France, Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Canada and Australia. Over three million people speak Swedish as a second language, with about 2,410,000 of those in Finland. According to a survey by the European Commission , 44% of respondents from Finland who did not have Swedish as a native language considered themselves to be proficient enough in Swedish to hold
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#17328580658891284-425: A more abstract sense, such as that set of fish; while fisken means "the fish". In certain cases, the definite form indicates possession, e. g., jag måste tvätta hår et ("I must wash my hair"). Adjectives are inflected in two declensions – indefinite and definite – and they must match the noun they modify in gender and number. The indefinite neuter and plural forms of an adjective are usually created by adding
1391-435: A noun. They can double as demonstrative pronouns or demonstrative determiners when used with adverbs such as här ("here") or där ("there") to form den/det här (can also be "denna/detta") ("this"), de här (can also be "dessa") ("these"), den/det där ("that"), and de där ("those"). For example, den där fisken means "that fish" and refers to a specific fish; den fisken is less definite and means "that fish" in
1498-579: A regional parliament had been introduced by the Social Democratic Party 's local districts in Scania and Västra Götaland already in 1993. When Sweden joined the European Union two years later, the concept " Regions of Europe " came in focus and a more regionalist-friendly approach was adopted in national politics. These factors contributed to the subsequent transformation of Skåne County into one of
1605-667: A special branch of the Research Institute for the Languages of Finland has official status as the regulatory body for Swedish in Finland. Among its highest priorities is to maintain intelligibility with the language spoken in Sweden. It has published Finlandssvensk ordbok , a dictionary about the differences between Swedish in Finland and Sweden. From the 13th to 20th century, there were Swedish-speaking communities in Estonia , particularly on
1712-442: A suffix ( -t or -a ) to the common form of the adjective, e. g., en grön stol (a green chair), ett grönt hus (a green house), and gröna stolar ("green chairs"). The definite form of an adjective is identical to the indefinite plural form, e. g., den gröna stolen ("the green chair"), det gröna huset ("the green house"), and de gröna stolarna ("the green chairs"). Swedish pronouns are similar to those of English. Besides
1819-413: A village, Gammalsvenskby ("Old Swedish Village"). A few elderly people in the village still speak a Swedish dialect and observe the holidays of the Swedish calendar, although their dialect is most likely facing extinction. From 1918 to 1940, when Estonia was independent, the small Swedish community was well treated. Municipalities with a Swedish majority, mainly found along the coast, used Swedish as
1926-474: Is among the most fertile in the world. The Kullaberg Nature Preserve in northwest Scania is home to several rare species including spring vetchling, Lathyrus sphaericus . [T]he present landscape is a mosaic of landforms shaped during widely different ages. The gross relief of Scania reflects more the preglacial development than the erosion and deposits caused by the Quaternary glaciers . In Swedish
2033-787: Is generally not mountainous , though a few examples of uncovered cliffs can be found at Hovs Hallar , at Kullaberg , and on the island Hallands Väderö . With the exception of the lake-rich and densely forested northern parts ( Göinge ), the rolling hills in the north-west (the Bjäre and Kulla peninsulas) and the beech-wood-clad areas extending from the slopes of the horsts, a sizeable portion of Scania's terrain consists of plains . Its low profile and open landscape distinguish Scania from most other geographical regions of Sweden which consist mainly of waterway-rich, cool, mixed coniferous forests , boreal taiga and alpine tundra . The province has several lakes but there are relatively few compared to Småland ,
2140-477: Is generally seen as adding specific Central Swedish features to the new Bible. Though it might seem as if the Bible translation set a very powerful precedent for orthographic standards, spelling actually became more inconsistent during the remainder of the century. It was not until the 17th century that spelling began to be discussed, around the time when the first grammars were written. Capitalization during this time
2247-441: Is higher than in any other region in Sweden. The Scanian plains are an important resource for Sweden since 25–95% of the total production of various types of cereals come from the region. Almost all Swedish sugar beet comes from Scania; the plant needs a long vegetation period . The same applies also to maize , peas and rape (grown for its oil), although these plants are less imperative in comparison with sugar beets. The soil
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#17328580658892354-538: Is marked primarily through suffixes (endings), complemented with separate definite and indefinite articles . The prosody features both stress and in most dialects tonal qualities. The language has a comparatively large vowel inventory. Swedish is also notable for the voiceless dorso-palatal velar fricative , a highly variable consonant phoneme . Swedish nouns and adjectives are declined in genders as well as number . Nouns are of common gender ( en form) or neuter gender ( ett form). The gender determines
2461-563: Is often one of the most noticeable differences between dialects. The standard word order is, as in most Germanic languages , V2 , which means that the finite verb (V) appears in the second position (2) of a declarative main clause . Swedish morphology is similar to English; that is, words have comparatively few inflections . Swedish has two genders and is generally seen to have two grammatical cases – nominative and genitive (except for pronouns that, as in English, also are inflected in
2568-557: Is one of the official languages of the European Union , and one of the working languages of the Nordic Council . Under the Nordic Language Convention , citizens of the Nordic countries speaking Swedish have the opportunity to use their native language when interacting with official bodies in other Nordic countries without being liable for interpretation or translation costs. The Swedish Language Council ( Språkrådet )
2675-450: Is over 1,418,000. It represents 13% of the country's population. With 121/km (310/sq mi), Scania is the second most densely populated province in Sweden. Historically, Scania formed part of the kingdom of Denmark until the signing of the Treaty of Roskilde in 1658, when all Danish lands east of Öresund were ceded to Sweden. Denmark regained control of the province (1676–1679) during
2782-713: Is part of the pinewood vegetation zone, in which spruce grows naturally. Within the larger part, pine may grow together with birch on sandy soil. The most common tree is beech . Other common trees are willow , oak , ash , alder and elm (which until the 1970s formed a few forests but now is heavily infected by the elm disease ). Also rather southern trees like walnut tree , chestnut and hornbeam can be found. In parks horse chestnut , lime and maple are commonly planted as well. Common fruit trees planted in commercial orchards and private gardens include several varieties of apple , pear , cherry and plum ; strawberries are commercially cultivated in many locations across
2889-475: Is termed nusvenska (lit., "Now-Swedish") in linguistics, and started in the last decades of the 19th century. It saw a democratization of the language with a less formal written form that approached the spoken one. The growth of a public school system also led to the evolution of so-called boksvenska (literally, "book Swedish"), especially among the working classes, where spelling to some extent influenced pronunciation, particularly in official contexts. With
2996-500: Is the national language that evolved from the Central Swedish dialects in the 19th century, and was well established by the beginning of the 20th century. While distinct regional varieties and rural dialects still exist, the written language is uniform and standardized . Swedish is the most widely spoken second language in Finland where its status is co- official language . Swedish was long spoken in parts of Estonia , although
3103-458: Is the main artery through the western part of Scania all the way from Trelleborg to the provincial border towards neighbouring Halland . It continues along the Swedish west coast to Gothenburg and most of the way to the Norwegian border. There are also several other motorways, especially around Malmö . Since 2000, the economic focus of the region has changed, with the opening of a road link across
3210-402: Is the only one of its kind using a heraldic coat of arms. It is also the same as the province's and the county's, but with a golden griffin's head on a blue shield. The 33 municipalities within the county also have coats of arms. The Scania Griffin has become a well-known symbol for the province and is also used by commercial enterprises. It is, for instance, included in the logotypes of
3317-517: Is the predominant language; in 19 municipalities , 16 of which are located in Åland , Swedish is the sole official language. Åland county is an autonomous region of Finland. According to a rough estimation, as of 2010 there were up to 300,000 Swedish-speakers living outside Sweden and Finland. The largest populations were in the United States (up to 100,000), the UK, Spain and Germany (c. 30,000 each) and
List of ships named Kungsholm - Misplaced Pages Continue
3424-450: Is the regulator of Swedish in Sweden but does not attempt to enforce control of the language, as for instance the Académie française does for French . However, many organizations and agencies require the use of the council's publication Svenska skrivregler in official contexts, with it otherwise being regarded as a de facto orthographic standard. Among the many organizations that make up
3531-407: Is the sole official language of Åland (an autonomous province under the sovereignty of Finland), where the vast majority of the 26,000 inhabitants speak Swedish as a first language. In Finland as a whole, Swedish is one of the two "national" languages, with the same official status as Finnish (spoken by the majority) at the state level and an official language in some municipalities . Swedish
3638-621: Is the term used for the medieval Swedish language. The start date is usually set to 1225 since this is the year that Västgötalagen ("the Västgöta Law") is believed to have been compiled for the first time. It is among the most important documents of the period written in Latin script and the oldest Swedish law codes . Old Swedish is divided into äldre fornsvenska (1225–1375) and yngre fornsvenska (1375–1526), "older" and "younger" Old Swedish. Important outside influences during this time came with
3745-422: Is used in English text, such as in tourist information, even sometimes as Skane with the diacritic omitted. Scania (as also Dalarna ) is one of the few Swedish provinces for which exonyms are widely used in many languages, such as French Scanie , Dutch and German Schonen , Polish Skania , Spanish Escania , Italian Scania , etc. For the province's modern administrative counterpart, Skåne län ,
3852-457: The Gustav Vasa Bible , a translation deemed so successful and influential that, with revisions incorporated in successive editions, it remained the most common Bible translation until 1917. The main translators were Laurentius Andreæ and the brothers Laurentius and Olaus Petri . The Vasa Bible is often considered to be a reasonable compromise between old and new; while not adhering to
3959-636: The Danish Copenhagen region at north-east Zealand , on the other side of Øresund Sea, is even more densely populated. The north-east part of Zealand (or the Danish Region Hovedstaden without the Baltic island of Bornholm ) has a population density of 878 inhabitants/km , most of Greater Copenhagen included. By adding the population of western Scania to the same of Metropolitan area of Copenhagen , then close to 3 million people live around
4066-463: The French vous (see T-V distinction ). Ni wound up being used as a slightly less familiar form of du , the singular second person pronoun, used to address people of lower social status. With the liberalization and radicalization of Swedish society in the 1950s and 1960s, these class distinctions became less important, and du became the standard, even in formal and official contexts. Though
4173-814: The Great Belt . Regardless of counting a smaller area with higher population density or a larger one, the Øresund Strait is located in the largest metropolitan area in Scandinavia with Finland . In 1658 , the following ten places in Scania were chartered and held town rights : Lund (since approximately 990), Helsingborg (1085), Falsterbo (approximately 1200), Ystad (approximately 1200), Skanör (approximately 1200), Malmö (approximately 1250), Simrishamn (approximately 1300), Landskrona (1413), and Kristianstad (1622). Others had existed earlier, but lost their privileges. Ängelholm got new privileges in 1767, and in 1754, Falsterbo and Skanör were merged. The concept of municipalities
4280-576: The Jurassic and Cretaceous epochs led to the formation of hundreds of small volcanoes in central Scania . Remnants of the volcanoes are still visible today. Parallel with volcanism a hilly peneplain formed in northeastern Scania due to weathering and erosion of basement rocks . The kaolinite formed by this weathering can be observed at Ivö Klack . In the Campanian age of the Late Cretaceous
4387-655: The Quaternary glaciations . The vast majority of Scania belongs to the European hardwood vegetation zone, a considerable part of which is now agricultural rather than the original forest. This zone covers Europe west of Poland and north of the Alps , and includes the British Isles , northern and central France and the countries and regions to the south and southeast of the North Sea up to Denmark. A smaller north-eastern part of Scania
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4494-574: The Scanian War and again briefly in 1711 during the Great Northern War . In July 1720, a peace treaty between Sweden and Denmark again confirmed the status of Scania as part of Sweden. The endonym used in Swedish and other North Germanic languages is Skåne (formerly spelled Skaane in Danish and Norwegian ). The Latinized form Scania is an exonym in English. Sometimes the endonym Skåne
4601-511: The United States , particularly during the 19th and early 20th centuries, there was a significant Swedish-speaking immigrant population. This was notably true in states like Minnesota , where many Swedish immigrants settled. By 1940, approximately 6% of Minnesota's population spoke Swedish. Although the use of Swedish has significantly declined, it is not uncommon to find older generations and communities that still retain some use and knowledge of
4708-519: The West Scandinavian languages , consisting of Faroese , Icelandic , and Norwegian . However, more recent analyses divide the North Germanic languages into two groups: Insular Scandinavian (Faroese and Icelandic), and Continental Scandinavian (Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish), based on mutual intelligibility due to heavy influence of East Scandinavian (particularly Danish) on Norwegian during
4815-581: The nationalist ideas that emerged during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the languages have separate orthographies , dictionaries, grammars, and regulatory bodies. Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish are thus from a linguistic perspective more accurately described as a dialect continuum of Scandinavian (North Germanic), and some of the dialects, such as those on the border between Norway and Sweden, especially parts of Bohuslän , Dalsland , western Värmland , western Dalarna , Härjedalen , Jämtland , and Scania , could be described as intermediate dialects of
4922-410: The object form) – although it is debated if the genitive in Swedish should be seen as a genitive case or just the nominative plus the so-called genitive s , then seen as a clitic . Swedish has two grammatical numbers – plural and singular . Adjectives have discrete comparative and superlative forms and are also inflected according to gender, number and definiteness . The definiteness of nouns
5029-463: The 1710 Battle of Helsingborg . In 1719, the province was subdivided in two counties and administered in the same way as the rest of Sweden . In July 1720, a peace treaty between Sweden and Denmark again confirmed the status of Scania as part of Sweden. On 28 November 2017, it was ruled that the Scanian flag would become the official regional flag of Scania. During Sweden's financial crisis in
5136-399: The 1950s, when their use was removed from all official recommendations. A very significant change in Swedish occurred in the late 1960s, with the so-called du-reformen . Previously, the proper way to address people of the same or higher social status had been by title and surname. The use of herr ("Mr." or "Sir"), fru ("Mrs." or "Ma'am") or fröken ("Miss") was considered
5243-478: The 8th century, the common Germanic language of Scandinavia, Proto-Norse , evolved into Old Norse. This language underwent more changes that did not spread to all of Scandinavia, which resulted in the appearance of two similar dialects: Old West Norse (Norway, the Faroe Islands and Iceland) and Old East Norse (Denmark and Sweden). The dialects of Old East Norse spoken in Sweden are called Runic Swedish , while
5350-464: The Modern Swedish period were the gradual assimilation of several different consonant clusters into the fricative [ʃ] and later into [ɧ] . There was also the gradual softening of [ɡ] and [k] into [j] and the fricative [ɕ] before front vowels . The velar fricative [ɣ] was also transformed into the corresponding plosive [ɡ] . The period that includes Swedish as it is spoken today
5457-532: The Scandinavian Peninsula and formed the eastern part of the kingdom of Denmark. This geographical position made it the focal point of the frequent Dano-Swedish wars for hundreds of years. By the Treaty of Roskilde in 1658, all Danish lands east of Öresund were ceded to Sweden. First placed under a Governor-General , the province was eventually integrated into the kingdom of Sweden. The last Danish attempt to regain its lost provinces failed after
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#17328580658895564-594: The Scanian Pågatåg trains serve Markaryd in Småland. There are basically three ticket systems: Skånetrafiken tickets can be purchased for all regional traffic including to Denmark, while the Danish Rejsekort system can only be used at stations served by Øresundståg and equipped with special card readers. Additionally, Swedish national SJ-tickets are available for longer trips to the north. The E6 motorway
5671-524: The Swedish population registration and other statistical uses. In 1999, the county council areas were amalgamated, forming Skåne Regional Council ( Region Skåne ), responsible mainly for public healthcare, public transport and regional planning and culture. During the Danish era, the province had no coat of arms . In Sweden, however, every province had been represented by heraldic arms since 1560. When Charles X Gustav of Sweden suddenly died in 1660
5778-584: The Swedish Language Council, the Swedish Academy (established 1786) is arguably the most influential. Its primary instruments are the spelling dictionary Svenska Akademiens ordlista ( SAOL , currently in its 14th edition) and the dictionary Svenska Akademiens Ordbok , in addition to various books on grammar, spelling and manuals of style. Although the dictionaries have a prescriptive element, they mainly describe current usage. In Finland,
5885-498: The administrative language and Swedish-Estonian culture saw an upswing. However, most Swedish-speaking people fled to Sweden before the end of World War II , that is, before the invasion of Estonia by the Soviet army in 1944. Only a handful of speakers remain. Swedish dialects have either 17 or 18 vowel phonemes , 9 long and 9 short. As in the other Germanic languages, including English, most long vowels are phonetically paired with one of
5992-399: The automotive manufacturer Scania AB and the airline Malmö Aviation . [REDACTED] Kingdom of Denmark 811?-1658 [REDACTED] Kingdom of Sweden 1658-present Scania was first mentioned in written texts in the 9th century. It came under Danish king Harald Bluetooth in the middle of the 10th century. It was then a region that included Blekinge and Halland , situated on
6099-535: The average of the temperature taken throughout both day and night unlike the more usual daily maximum or minimum average. This is done for specific measured periods of thirty years. The last period began at 1 January 1961 and ended at 31 December 1990. The current such period started at 1 January 1991 and will end by 31 December 2020. At that time it will be possible to with a high degree of mathematical certainty to measure possible climate changes, by comparing two separate periods of 30 years with each other. All three of
6206-498: The colloquial spoken language of its day, it was not overly conservative in its use of archaic forms. It was a major step towards a more consistent Swedish orthography . It established the use of the vowels "å", "ä", and "ö", and the spelling "ck" in place of "kk", distinguishing it clearly from the Danish Bible, perhaps intentionally, given the ongoing rivalry between the countries. All three translators came from central Sweden, which
6313-745: The current status of the Estonian Swedish speakers is almost extinct. It is also used in the Swedish diaspora , most notably in Oslo , Norway, with more than 50,000 Swedish residents. Swedish is an Indo-European language belonging to the North Germanic branch of the Germanic languages . In the established classification, it belongs to the East Scandinavian languages , together with Danish , separating it from
6420-403: The declension of the adjectives . For example, the word fisk ("fish") is a noun of common gender ( en fisk ) and can have the following forms: The definite singular form of a noun is created by adding a suffix ( -en , -n , -et or -t ), depending on its gender and if the noun ends in a vowel or not. The definite articles den , det , and de are used for variations to the definitiveness of
6527-527: The dialects of Denmark are referred to as Runic Danish . The dialects are described as "runic" because the main body of text appears in the runic alphabet . Unlike Proto-Norse, which was written with the Elder Futhark alphabet, Old Norse was written with the Younger Futhark alphabet, which had only 16 letters. Because the number of runes was limited, some runes were used for a range of phonemes , such as
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#17328580658896634-535: The early and mid-1990s, Scania, Västra Götaland and Norrbotten were among the hardest hit in the country, with high unemployment rates as a result. In response to the crisis, the County Governors were given a task by the government in September 1996 to co-ordinate various measures in the counties to increase economic growth and employment by bringing in regional actors. The first proposal for regional autonomy and
6741-616: The endonym Skåne is used in English. In the Alfredian translation of Orosius 's and Wulfstan 's travel accounts, the Old English form Sconeg appears. Frankish sources mention a place called Sconaowe ; Æthelweard , an Anglo-Saxon historian, wrote about Scani ; and in Beowulf 's fictional account, the names Scedenige and Scedeland appear as names for what is a Danish land. The names Scania and Scandinavia are considered to have
6848-540: The firm establishment of the Christian church and various monastic orders, introducing many Greek and Latin loanwords. With the rise of Hanseatic power in the late 13th and early 14th century, Middle Low German became very influential. The Hanseatic league provided Swedish commerce and administration with a large number of Low German -speaking immigrants. Many became quite influential members of Swedish medieval society, and brought terms from their native languages into
6955-416: The first "trial regions" in Sweden in 1999, established as the country's first "regional experiment". The relatively strong regional identity in Scania is often referred to in order to explain the general support in the province for the decentralization efforts introduced by the Swedish government. On the basis of large scale interview investigations about Region Skåne in Scania, scholars have found that
7062-502: The first among its type in the Nordic countries overall. Swedish, like the other Nordic languages , is a descendant of Old Norse , the common language of the Germanic peoples living in Scandinavia during the Viking Age . It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish , although the degree of mutual intelligibility is dependent on the dialect and accent of the speaker. Standard Swedish , spoken by most Swedes ,
7169-400: The forest-dominated province of Småland . While the landscape typically has a slightly sloping profile, in some places, such as north of Malmö, the terrain is almost completely flat. The narrow lakes with a long north to south extent, which are very common further north, are lacking in Scania. The largest lake, Ivösjön in the north-east, has similarities with the lakes further north, but has
7276-532: The former provinces of Halland and Småland , to the northeast Blekinge , to the east and south the Baltic Sea , and to the west Öresund . Since 2000, a road and railway bridge, the Öresund Bridge , bridges the Sound and connects Scania with Denmark. Scania forms part of the transnational Øresund Region . From north to south Scania is around 130 km; it covers less than 3% of Sweden's total area. The population
7383-489: The griffin motif. The new Skåne County, operative from 1 January 1997, got a coat of arms that is the same as the province's, but with reversed tinctures. When the county arms is shown with a Swedish royal crown, it represents the County Administrative Board, which is the regional presence of central government authority. In 1999 the two county councils ( landsting ) were amalgamated forming Region Skåne . It
7490-430: The industrialization and urbanization of Sweden well under way by the last decades of the 19th century, a new breed of authors made their mark on Swedish literature . Many scholars, politicians and other public figures had a great influence on the emerging national language, among them prolific authors like the poet Gustaf Fröding , Nobel laureate Selma Lagerlöf and radical writer and playwright August Strindberg . It
7597-555: The islands (e. g., Hiiumaa , Vormsi , Ruhnu ; in Swedish, known as Dagö , Ormsö , Runö , respectively) along the coast of the Baltic , communities that today have all disappeared. The Swedish-speaking minority was represented in parliament , and entitled to use their native language in parliamentary debates. After the loss of Estonia to the Russian Empire in the early 18th century, around 1,000 Estonian Swedish speakers were forced to march to southern Ukraine , where they founded
7704-484: The language, particularly in rural communities like Lindström and Scandia . Swedish is the official main language of Sweden. Swedish is also one of two official languages of Finland. In Sweden, it has long been used in local and state government, and most of the educational system, but remained only a de facto primary language with no official status in law until 2009. A bill was proposed in 2005 that would have made Swedish an official language, but failed to pass by
7811-480: The last millennium and divergence from both Faroese and Icelandic. By many general criteria of mutual intelligibility, the Continental Scandinavian languages could very well be considered dialects of a common Scandinavian language. However, because of several hundred years of sometimes quite intense rivalry between Denmark and Sweden, including a long series of wars from the 16th to 18th centuries, and
7918-408: The lowest ever recorded is −34 °C (−29 °F) ( Stehag , 26 January 1942) Temperatures below −15 °C (5 °F) are relatively rare even at night, while summer temperatures above 30 °C (86 °F) occurs once in a while every summer. Precipitation is spread fairly evenly, both across the province and during the year. Slightly more precipitation falls during July and August than during
8025-560: The narrowest possible margin (145–147) due to a pairing-off failure. A proposal for a broader language law, designating Swedish as the main language of the country and bolstering the status of the minority languages, was submitted by an expert committee to the Swedish Ministry of Culture in March 2008. It was subsequently enacted by the Riksdag , and entered into effect on 1 July 2009. Swedish
8132-421: The national standard languages. Swedish pronunciations also vary greatly from one region to another, a legacy of the vast geographic distances and historical isolation. Even so, the vocabulary is standardized to a level that make dialects within Sweden virtually fully mutually intelligible. East Germanic languages West Germanic languages Icelandic Faroese Norwegian Danish Swedish In
8239-424: The north. An early change that separated Runic Danish from the other dialects of Old East Norse was the change of the diphthong æi to the monophthong é , as in stæinn to sténn "stone". This is reflected in runic inscriptions where the older read stain and the later stin . There was also a change of au as in dauðr into a long open ø as in døðr "dead". This change is shown in runic inscriptions as
8346-523: The northern locations are at low altitude and fairly close to the Baltic Sea. Compared with locations further north, the Scanian climate differs primary by being far less cold during the winter and in having longer springs and autumns. While the July temperatures does not differ much (see table above). The highest temperature ever recorded in the province is 36.0 °C (97 °F) ( Ängelholm , 30 July 1947) and
8453-469: The number of municipalities, and a second subdivision reform, carried out between 1968 and 1974, established today's 33 municipalities ( Swedish : kommuner ) in Scania. The municipalities have municipal governments, similar to city commissions , and are further divided into parishes ( församlingar ). The parishes are primarily entities of the Church of Sweden , but they also serve as a divisioning measure for
8560-441: The only acceptable way to begin conversation with strangers of unknown occupation, academic title or military rank. The fact that the listener should preferably be referred to in the third person tended to further complicate spoken communication between members of society. In the early 20th century, an unsuccessful attempt was made to replace the insistence on titles with ni —the standard second person plural pronoun)—analogous to
8667-402: The original Germanic three- gender system. Nouns , adjectives , pronouns and certain numerals were inflected in four cases; besides the extant nominative , there were also the genitive (later possessive ), dative and accusative . The gender system resembled that of modern German , having masculine, feminine and neuter genders. The masculine and feminine genders were later merged into
8774-483: The other historical provinces of Sweden, Scania still features in colloquial speech and in cultural references, and can therefore not be regarded as an archaic concept. Within Scania there are 33 municipalities that are autonomous within the Skåne Regional Council . Scania's largest city , Malmö , is the third-largest city in Sweden, as well as the fifth-largest in Scandinavia . To the north, Scania borders
8881-400: The other months. Scania is divided into 33 municipalities with population and land surface as the table below shows. There is a large population difference between the western Scania, that is located by, or close to Øresund sea compared to the middle and eastern parts of the province. A small part of Båstad municipality is located within the neighbouring province of Halland , this includes
8988-448: The prevailing trend among the inhabitants of Scania is to "[look] upon their region with more positive eyes and a firm reliance that it would deliver the goods in terms of increased democracy and constructive results out of economic planning". Electrified dual track railroad exists from the border with Denmark at the Øresund Bridge to Malmö and onwards to Lund . The latter part is consists of four tracks since October 2023. In Lund,
9095-468: The province directly to the north. Stretching from the north-western to the south-eastern parts of Scania is a belt of deciduous forests following the Linderödsåsen ridge and previously marking the border between Malmöhus County and Kristianstad County. The much denser fir forests — typical of the greater part of Sweden — are only found in the north-eastern Göinge parts of Scania along the border with
9202-579: The province. Examples of wild berries grown in domesticated form are blackberry , raspberry , cloudberry (in the north-east), blueberry , wild strawberry and loganberry . Three of the 29 National parks of Sweden are situated in Scania. Scania has the mildest climate in Sweden, but there are some local differences. The table shows average temperatures in degrees Celsius at ten Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute (SMHI) weather stations in Scania and three stations further north for comparison issues. Average temperature in this case means
9309-480: The reform was not an act of any centralized political decree, but rather the result of sweeping change in social attitudes, it was completed in just a few years, from the late 1960s to early 1970s. The use of ni as a polite form of address is sometimes encountered today in both the written and spoken language, particularly among older speakers. Swedish is the sole official national language of Sweden , and one of two in Finland (alongside Finnish ). As of 2006, it
9416-463: The rune for the vowel u , which was also used for the vowels o , ø and y , and the rune for i , also used for e . From 1200 onwards, the dialects in Denmark began to diverge from those of Sweden. The innovations spread unevenly from Denmark, creating a series of minor dialectal boundaries, or isoglosses , ranging from Zealand in the south to Norrland , Österbotten and northwestern Finland in
9523-744: The same etymology. The southernmost tip of what today is Sweden was called Scania by the Romans and thought to be an island. The actual etymology of the word remains dubious and has long been a matter of debate among scholars. The name is possibly derived from the Germanic root *Skaðin-awjã , which appears in Old Norse as Skáney [ˈskɑːnˌœy] . According to some scholars, the Germanic stem can be reconstructed as * Skaðan- meaning "danger" or "damage" (English scathing , German Schaden , Swedish skada ). Skanör in Scania, with its long Falsterbo reef, has
9630-523: The same stem ( skan ) combined with - ör , which means "sandbanks". Between 1719 and 1996, the province was subdivided in two administrative counties ( län ), Kristianstad County and Malmöhus County , each under a governor ( landshövding ) appointed by the central government of Sweden . When the first local government acts took effect in 1863, each county also got an elected county council ( landsting ). The counties were further divided into municipalities. The local government reform of 1952 reduced
9737-444: The short /e/ (transcribed ⟨ ɛ ⟩ in the chart below). There are 18 consonant phonemes, two of which, / ɧ / and /r/ , vary considerably in pronunciation depending on the dialect and social status of the speaker. In many dialects, sequences of /r/ (pronounced alveolarly) with a dental consonant result in retroflex consonants ; alveolarity of the pronunciation of /r/ is a precondition for this retroflexion. /r/ has
9844-428: The short vowels, and the pairs are such that the two vowels are of similar quality , but with the short vowel being slightly lower and slightly centralized. In contrast to e.g. Danish, which has only tense vowels, the short vowels are slightly more lax, but the tense vs. lax contrast is not nearly as pronounced as in English, German or Dutch. In many dialects, the short vowel sound pronounced [ɛ] or [æ] has merged with
9951-450: The soil has a high content of chalk. Good examples of such coastlines exist at the southern side of Ven , between the towns of Helsingborg and Landskrona , and in parts of the south and south-east coasts. In other Swedish provinces, steep coastlines usually reveal primary rock instead. The two major plains, Söderslätt in the south-west and Österlen in the south-east, consist of highly fertile agricultural land. The yield per unit area
10058-425: The subject in a clause, a trait that is restricted to North Germanic languages: Scania Scania , also known by its native name of Skåne ( Swedish: [ˈskôːnɛ] ), is the southernmost of the historical provinces ( landskap ) of Sweden . Located in the south tip of the geographical region of Götaland , the province is roughly conterminous with Skåne County , created in 1997. Like
10165-529: The tracks split into two directions. The dual tracks going towards Gothenburg end at Helsingborg , while the other branch continues beyond the provincial border to neighbouring Småland , close to Killeberg . This latter dual track continues to mid-Sweden. There are also a few single track railroads connecting cities like Trelleborg , Ystad and Kristianstad. Just as five Scanian stations are served partly ( Hässleholm and Osby ) or entirely ( Ballingslöv , Hästveda and Killeberg ) by Småland local trains,
10272-526: The two cases and two genders of modern Swedish. A transitional change of the Latin script in the Nordic countries was to spell the letter combination "ae" as æ – and sometimes as a' – though it varied between persons and regions. The combination "ao" was similarly rendered a , and "oe" became o . These three were later to evolve into the separate letters ä , å and ö . The first time the new letters were used in print
10379-517: The two natural genders han and hon ("he" and "she"), there are also the two grammatical genders den and det , usually termed common and neuter . In recent years, a gender-neutral pronoun hen has been introduced, particularly in literary Swedish. Unlike the nouns, pronouns have an additional object form, derived from the old dative form. Hon , for example, has the following nominative, possessive, and object forms: Swedish also uses third-person possessive reflexive pronouns that refer to
10486-474: The village Östra Karup and some area around it, around 500 people live in Båstad municipality, but beyond the historical boundaries of the Scanian province. These figures can be compared with around to 21 inhabitants per km for entire Sweden . Western Scania has a high population density, not only by Scandinavian standards but also by average European standards, at close to 300 inhabitants per square kilometre. But
10593-439: The vocabulary. Besides a great number of loanwords for such areas as warfare, trade and administration, general grammatical suffixes and even conjunctions were imported. The League also brought a certain measure of influence from Danish (at the time Swedish and Danish were much more similar than today). Early Old Swedish was markedly different from the modern language in that it had a more complex case structure and also retained
10700-538: The word ås commonly refers to eskers , but major landmarks in Scania, such as Söderåsen , are horsts formed by tectonic inversion along the Sorgenfrei-Tornquist Zone in the late Cretaceous . The Scanian horsts run in a north-west to south-east direction, marking the southwest border of Fennoscandia . Tectonic activity of the Sorgenfrei-Tornquist Zone during the break-up of Pangaea in
10807-462: The Øresund Bridge to Denmark . The car ferry service between Helsingborg and Helsingør has 70 departures in each direction daily as of 2014 . There are three minor airports in Sturup , Ängelholm and Kristianstad . The nearby Copenhagen Airport , which is the largest international airport in the Nordic countries , also serves the province. Unlike some regions of Sweden, the Scanian landscape
10914-422: The Øresund sea, within a maximum distance from Øresund of 25 to 30 kilometres, at a land surface of approx. 6100 km (approx 460 inhabitants/km ). This is in many ways a better measurement of describing the area around Øresund than what the far wider Øresund Region constitutes, as the latter includes also eastern Scania (whose beaches are Baltic Sea ones and is far less populated) as well as all Denmark east of
11021-451: Was at the time covered by thick sediments. As the relative sea level sank and much of Scania lost its sedimentary cover antecedent rivers begun to incise the Söderåsen horst forming valleys. During deglaciation these valleys likely evacuated large amounts of melt-water. The relief of Scania's south-western landscape was formed by the accumulation of thick Quaternary sediments during
11128-484: Was during the 20th century that a common, standardized national language became available to all Swedes. The orthography finally stabilized and became almost completely uniform, with some minor deviations, by the time of the spelling reform of 1906. With the exception of plural forms of verbs and a slightly different syntax, particularly in the written language, the language was the same as the Swedish of today. The plural verb forms appeared decreasingly in formal writing into
11235-636: Was in Aff dyäffwlsens frästilse ("By the Devil's temptation") published by Johan Gerson in 1495. Modern Swedish (Swedish: nysvenska ) begins with the advent of the printing press and the European Reformation . After assuming power, the new monarch Gustav Vasa ordered a Swedish translation of the Bible . The New Testament was published in 1526, followed by a full Bible translation in 1541, usually referred to as
11342-519: Was not standardized. It depended on the authors and their background. Those influenced by German capitalized all nouns, while others capitalized more sparsely. It is also not always apparent which letters are capitalized owing to the Gothic or blackletter typeface that was used to print the Bible. This typeface was in use until the mid-18th century, when it was gradually replaced with a Latin typeface (often Antiqua ). Some important changes in sound during
11449-526: Was the sole native language of 83% of Swedish residents. In 2007, around 5.5% (c. 290,000) of the population of Finland were native speakers of Swedish, partially due to a decline following the Russian annexation of Finland after the Finnish War 1808–1809. The Fenno-Swedish - speaking minority is concentrated in the coastal areas and archipelagos of southern and western Finland. In some of these areas, Swedish
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