Modern Swedish
| Modern Swedish | |
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| nysvenska | |
| Region | Sweden, Finland, Saint Barthélemy and Estonia |
| Era | developed into contemporary Swedish by the late 19th century |
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Indo-European
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Early form
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| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | – |
| Glottolog | None |
Modern Swedish (Swedish: nysvenska) is the linguistic term used for the Swedish language from the Bible translation of 1526 to the development of a common national language around 1880. The period can further be divided into Early Modern Swedish (1526–1750) and Late Modern Swedish (1750–1880).
Early Modern Swedish was established in 1526 with a complete Swedish translation of the Bible. The translation followed the spoken word rather closely, as opposed to the more Latin-inspired way of writing commonly used in the Middle Ages.
The Vasa Bible is considered to be a reasonable compromise between old and new; while not adhering to the spoken language of its day it was not overly conservative in its use of old forms. Though it was not completely consistent in spelling, particularly when it came to vowels, it was a major step towards a more consistent Swedish orthography. It established the use of the letters "ä" and "ö" in place of the older "æ" and "ø" and introduced the completely new "å" in place of "o" in many words. It also introduced conventions such as using ck instead of kk in words like tacka; "thank". The ongoing rivalry with Denmark can be argued to have some influence on the new translation, with infinitive suffixes like -a being favored over the -e more typical of Danish. While the influence of individual translators should not be exaggerated, the fact that all three came from provinces in central Sweden (Andreæ was from Västmanland and the Petri brothers were from Närke) is generally seen as adding specific Central Swedish features to the new Bible as well as the fact that the royal printing house was situated in . Though it might seem as if the Bible translation set a very powerful precedent for orthographic standards, spelling actually became more inconsistent in the following century. It was not until the end of the 17th century that the issue started being discussed, around the time when the first grammars were written. Some important changes in sound during the Modern Swedish period were the gradual assimilation of several different consonant clusters into /ɧ/ and the softening of /g/ and /k/ into /ʝ/ and /ɕ/ before frontal vowels.
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Wikipedia