The Language Council of Sweden ( sv, Språkrådet) is the primary

regulatory body A regulatory agency (regulatory body, regulator) or independent agency (independent regulatory agency) is a government authority that is responsible for exercising autonomous dominion over some area of human activity in a licensing and regula ...

for the advancement and cultivation of the Swedish language. The council is a department of the Swedish government's Institute for Language and Folklore ( sv, Institutet för språk och folkminnen). The

council A council is a group of people who come together to consult, deliberate, or make decisions. A council may function as a legislature, especially at a town, city or county/ shire level, but most legislative bodies at the state/provincial or nati ...

asserts control over the language through the publication of various books with recommendations in spelling and grammar as well as books on

linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Ling ...

intended for a general audience, the sales of which are used to fund its operation. The council also works with four of the five official minority languages in Sweden: Finnish,

Meänkieli (literally 'our language') is a group of distinct Finnish dialects or a Finnic language spoken in the northernmost part of Sweden along the valley of the Torne River. Its status as an independent language is disputed, but in Sweden it is recogn ...

Yiddish Yiddish (, or , ''yidish'' or ''idish'', , ; , ''Yidish-Taytsh'', ) is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated during the 9th century in Central Europe, providing the nascent Ashkenazi community with a ve ...

, and

Romani Romani may refer to: Ethnicities * Romani people, an ethnic group of Northern Indian origin, living dispersed in Europe, the Americas and Asia ** Romani genocide, under Nazi rule * Romani language, any of several Indo-Aryan languages of the Roma ...

( Sámi excluded) alongside the Swedish Sign Language. Between 1965 and 2007, the council published the quarterly journal ''Språkvård'' (lit. "Language care"). The journal published articles about the use and development of the Swedish language, Q&As about spelling and grammar as well as guidelines for the use of Swedish in various contexts.

History

The Language Council of Sweden has its roots in the attempt to assert control over the official language use among the

Nordic countries The Nordic countries (also known as the Nordics or ''Norden''; lit. 'the North') are a geographical and cultural region in Northern Europe and the North Atlantic. It includes the sovereign states of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sw ...

. The first ideas of a joint Nordic project surfaced in the 1930s and resulted in a Danish organization for Nordic language cultivation being founded in 1941. The idea of an all-Nordic cooperation was thwarted by the fact that all Nordic countries with the exception of Sweden were embroiled in the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...

. On 3 March 1944 a group of 16 organizations held the first

constituent assembly A constituent assembly (also known as a constitutional convention, constitutional congress, or constitutional assembly) is a body assembled for the purpose of drafting or revising a constitution. Members of a constituent assembly may be elected b ...

for what was then called ''Nämnden för svensk språkvård'' ("The Committee for Swedish Language Cultivation"). To counter difficulties in its finances, the council was reorganized in 1973 and assumed the name ''Svenska språknämnden'' ("The Swedish Language Committee"). The government also assured the future of the council by guaranteeing the financing of four permanent staff members; a figure which later grew and was no longer limited to a certain number of members, but by the actual needs of the council. Since the government assumed the responsibility for the financing, it also has the right to appoint the chairman and the head of the secretariat. The council assumed its current name (''Språkrådet''; "The Language Council") in 2006, as it became a department of the state agency the Institute for Language and Folklore. ''O-googlebar'' (from o-

prefix A prefix is an affix which is placed before the stem of a word. Adding it to the beginning of one word changes it into another word. For example, when the prefix ''un-'' is added to the word ''happy'', it creates the word ''unhappy''. Particul ...

(negative prefix) + googlebar (google + -bar

suffix In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns, adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can carr ...

( -able))) is a word, in Swedish, that the Language Council of Sweden has been forced to remove from its top 10 list of new words by a claim of brand protection from

Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...

. The word is translated as (and also when translated literally means) '' ungoogleable''. The council expressed its "displeasure with Google's attempts to control the language".

References

* Bergman, Gösta (1984), Kortfattad svensk språkhistoria, Prisma Magnum (in Swedish) (4th ed.), Stockholm: Prisma, , OCLC 13259382 * Bolander, Maria (2002), Funktionell svensk grammatik (in Swedish), Stockholm: Liber, , OCLC 67138445 * Crystal, David (1999), The Penguin dictionary of language (2nd ed.), London: Penguin Books, , OCLC 59441560 * Dahl, Östen (2000), Språkets enhet och mångfald (in Swedish), Lund: Studentlitteratur, , OCLC 61100963 * Dahl, Östen; Edlund, Lars-Erik, eds. (2010), Sveriges nationalatlas. Språken i Sverige (in Swedish), Stockholm: Kungl. Vitterhets historie och antikvitets akademien, * Elert, Claes-Christian (2000), Allmän och svensk fonetik (in Swedish) (8th ed.), Stockholm: Norstedts Akademiska Förlag, * Engstrand, Olle (1999), "Swedish", Handbook of the International Phonetic Association: A Guide to the usage of the International Phonetic Alphabet., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 140–142, , OCLC 40305532

External links

Language Council of Sweden

Recent books published by the council
{{Swedish language Organizations established in 1973 Swedish language Language regulators

History

See also

References

External links