Script guide › Latin

How to recognize Swedish

Swedish is one of 35 languages in Grafle's Latin group. Here's what it looks like, where you'll see it on signs, and how to tell it apart from its lookalikes.

What Swedish looks like

Alla människor är födda fria och lika i värde.

Hej! Trevligt att träffas — hur mår du?

Borta bra men hemma bäst.

Latin scripts: The alphabet you're reading now. Each language gives itself away by its own special letters and accent marks.

Where you'll see it on signs

• Sweden
• Finland

Easy to confuse with

• Danish — Swedish dots its vowels (ä, ö); Danish strikes them (æ, ø). Two-dot letters = Sweden.
• Norwegian — Swedish uses ä/ö, Norwegian uses æ/ø — that letter swap is the fastest tell.
• Finnish — Both write ä and ö — but Finnish runs long and vowel-heavy with doubled vowels (aa, ää) and barely uses b, c or x; Swedish keeps words short, with å and tell-words like och.

Neighbors in the Latin group

• Finnish
• Danish
• Norwegian
• Icelandic